Is there one link, story or idea that stopped you this week… and made you think, “someone else needs to see this”?
My friends: Alistair Croll (Just Evil Enough, 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 made a simple pact years ago. Once a week, each of us would share one link with the others… something we genuinely believed the other two had to see. No trend-hunting… no performance. Just six ideas exchanged with intent. What started as a small ritual between curious friends became Six Links That Make You Think.
These are the six links we passed to one another this week… take your time with them…
- Moravec’s Paradox And The Robot Olympics – Physical Intelligence. “We’re not watching the robots enough. What happens when they learn using the kinds of algorithms that brought us Generative AI? In September 2025, Benjie Holson – a Google roboticist who spent nearly a decade trying to get robots to do things that are simple for humans – proposed a set of ‘olympic events’. A sort of Turing Test for machines. In December, Physical Intelligence basically crushed it. Here’s the proof.” (Alistair for Hugh).
- Horses – Andy Jones. “A fantastic post from one of Anthropic‘s first researchers. ‘It took horses decades to be overcome, and chess masters years, it took me all of six months to be surpassed.’ A very short, very powerful talk on something I know you’re thinking a lot about.” (Alistair for Mitch).
- Niall Ferguson: ‘We don’t need to invoke fascists or Roman emperors to explain Trump’ – The MacDonald Laurier Institute – YouTube. “Sorry, I know we’re supposed to avoid politics, but it’s sure hard these days. Here’s Niall Ferguson talking about what the US thinks of Canada (answer: it doesn’t), and what that means for our future. Part of a longer talk worth listening to all the way through: Does the West have a future.” (Hugh for Alistair).
- Wikipedia’s Existential Threats Feel Greater Than Ever – Stephen Harison – Wired. “What makes me most sad about this is that the idealism of Wikipedia, which has inspired much of my professional life, seems to have evaporated from the universe. There is not much left in popular culture that focuses on ‘doing good for the world.’ Well, we’ll always have Greenland.” (Hugh for Mitch).
- Why People Create AI “Workslop” – And How To Stop It – Kate Niederhoffer, Alexi Robichaux, Jeffrey T. Hancock – Harvard Business Review. “There are some weak signals in the evolution of work that I keep a swap file for as digital transformation continues to innovate and disrupt. The minute I heard the term ‘worksslop’, I opened up a new file. It seems like it is inevitable that if we have AI slop and people are using a lot of generative AI tools at work, whether they are sanctioned or not, that it would lead to workslop… and here we are. Workslop is low-effort, AI-generated work that wastes time and harms trust in the workplace. It happens because leaders push vague AI (or general work) mandates while employees feel overwhelmed and unsupported. What is the result… this… or maybe what we used to call ‘make work’ has morphed into workslop? So how do we nip it in the bud? Build trust, clarify AI use and support employees with training and clear expectations. What’s your level of confidence that this will solve for that? What’s your level of confidence that much of the knowedlege work space is about to be run over by workslop?” (Mitch for Alistair).
- ‘Read this and you will be happier’: experts pick the self-help books that really work – Amy Fleming – The Guardian. “There’s a lot of doom and gloom out there… probably way too much. I find it overwhelming; I’m sure you do as well. Where is refuge? I believe the best refuge is in books. While I’m not necessarily someone who always bangs the drum for self-help or motivational books, I am always interested in how the people who authored those books think and where they get their learnings from. Here are the self-help books that these experts recommend. Why do I like this? Most of them are based on research or real-life experiences or both. Whether you’re looking to improve your level of happiness or the quality of your relationships, I think this is a good place to start. I’m always interested in books that give both practical tools that are backed by science by thinkers who have actually done the work rather than hyperbole. Also let’s face it, a lot of the thinking in these books will help you cope with challenges like trauma, narcissism, and maybe even what you should be doing next. The safest space right now for your attention and your psychology is between the pages.” (Mitch for Hugh).
If one of these sticks with you, pass it on… and let us know what earned your attention this week…
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