Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?
My friends: Alistair Croll (Solve for Interesting, Tilt the Windmill, Interesting Bits, HBS, chair of Strata, Startupfest, FWD50, and Scaletechconf; author of Lean Analytics and some other books), Hugh McGuire (Rebus Foundation, PressBooks, LibriVox) and I decided that every week the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person “must see.”
Check out these six links that we’re recommending to one another:
- Maybe It’s Good We Get This Attached – Everything Is Amazing. “I’ve been playing Valheim in my spare time lately. It’s an open-world roleplaying game, and I’m not very good. I keep losing my stuff when I die, making me a pitiable newbie once again. I loved this piece about attachment in another survival-focused game, The Long Dark, but also about teddybears. If you can get past the increasingly annoying Substack chaff, it’s worth a read.” (Alistair for Hugh).
- The Internet’s Biggest Mystery – New York Magazine. “How many people use the Internet? Because engagement is tied to eyeballs, and revenue is tied to engagement, online platforms play fast and loose with their user counts. But companies have gradually pulled ‘active users’ from their numbers in recent years. Feels like another part of the slide from ‘tech industry’ to ‘everything is tech now’ that is robbing many of the Internet behemoths of their immunity even as brick-and-mortar reality comes creeping back.” (Alistair for Mitch).
- Disenshittify Or Die – Cory Doctorow. “One of the great coinages of the last few years is Cory Doctorow‘s name for what happens to web platforms as time goes on: ‘enshitification.’ My candidate for entry into the Oxford English Dictionary. Doctorow defines it as the inexorable path that big tech (see: X, Facebook, etc) platforms follow. Here’s a long update from Cory, and the full title is: ‘Disenshittify Or Die! – How Hackers Can Seize The Means Of Computation And Build A New, Good Internet That Is Hardened Against Our Asshole Bosses’ Insatiable Horniness For Enshittification’.” (Hugh for Alistair).
- NASA Says Astronauts Stuck In Space Will Not Return On Boeing Capsule, Will Wait For Spacex Craft – NBC News. “I would hate to work for Boeing‘s PR team: My newsfeed the past six months have had about one article a day about various pieces of Boeing planes falling off around the world. When I saw Boeing was sending a manned Starliner to the ISS, I thought: Well, they’ll be happy to have that news to distract the public from the rest of the Boeing debacle. Guess not.” (Hugh for Mitch).
- The Pez Outlaw. “I’m a sucker for documentaries. I’m a sucker for pop culture. I’m a sucker for nostalgia. I’m a sucker for collectibles. I’m a sucker for a good business story. This hit all of those feels. And, even if those things are not your jam, this is definitely a documentary worth checking out. Forget those true crime stories about drug smuggling, crooked executives and corrupt border guards… this is all of that and more… and… it’s about Pez! Yes… Pez candy… What an amazing and fun ride this movie is! Check it out… I watched it on Amazon Prime.” (Mitch for Alistair).
- Procedural Portraits (1): Decoding ‘Eno’s’ Generative Structure – Justin Pickard. “Let’s keep going on the topic of great documentaries. I’m also a sucker for music documentaries. It could be about a band, a solo artist, the making of album or even conversations about how music gets created (I don’t even have to know or like the band to love the documentary – weird… I know). Well, now we have two personal favorites coming together. Brian Eno is the subject of a new documentary called, Eno, which was created by Gary Hustwit (and if you have not seen his documentaries Helvetica, Objectified, Urbanized, Rams, etc… can we still be friends?). I had the chance to see the premiere last week at the Mutek Festival in Montreal (and Gary was there to take questions). This film is unique in that every showing is a different version of the film. Confused? Don’t be. This is a new take on film and storytelling that they call ‘Generative’ based on custom software called Brain One (a clever anagram for ‘Brian Eno’). This is a great two-part article on the process, and if this doesn’t stoke the flame to get you interested in catching a viewing of Eno, I don’t know what will. Hat-tip to Sentiers for this article.” (Mitch for Hugh).
Feel free to share these links and add your picks on X, Facebook, in the comments below or wherever you play.
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Mitch Joel Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.