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…
- On The Consumption Of AI-Generated Content At Scale – Shreya Shankar. “This is how the world ends; not with a bang but with a billion regenerated whimpers. ‘If we’re asking AI to analyze our data, the AI decides what patterns are worth surfacing, what anomalies matter, what questions are worth asking, we see the world through a filter we didn’t choose and can’t fully inspect.’ This is true not just for data science, but for every algorithmically mediated feed. We can’t drink from the firehose, and we can’t understand the tools we use to make the firehose drinkable. Also, I solemnly promise that I’m writing these by hand. Typing is proof of work.” (Alistair for Hugh).
- Former Jimmy Kimmel Writer Mocks Trump During Explosive Capitol Hearing – The Financial Express – YouTube. “Yes, this is a clickbait link title. The video is anything but. A heart-wrenching indictment of how polarized parents are demolishing anything they perceive as ‘from the other side’, and what that means for free speech.” (Alistair for Mitch).
- Mastering The Art Deep Listening In Japan’s Jazz Cafes – Joe Hagan – National Geographic. “I’ve made some changes to my life that have had a huge impact on my general feeling of wellbeing. Among other things, I do Qigong (related to tai chi) daily for 15 minutes; and I walk 25 minutes to work listening to a walking mediation (didn’t like anything I found for free online, so I recorded my own meditation, focusing on breathing, observing my body and nature, and what is probably called mindfulness). I don’t want to overplay things but: I am focused at work, sleep better, and somehow feel less anxious about the crazy universe we live in. All of this adds to the biggest change that I cannot recommend highly enough: getting off social media, and deleting all these apps: X, Facebook, Reddit, and LinkedIn. I don’t know if I will add going to Japanese jazz listening cafes to my life changes but I sure love the idea.” (Hugh for Alistair).
- Gideon Lewis-Kraus: How Anthropic Sees Claude – Aboard. “Paul Ford talks to The New Yorker writer Gideon Lewis-Kraus about what the people working on the edge of AI development are thinking about these days, and what AI is thinking about too.” (Hugh for Mitch).
- Has AI Ended Thought Leadership? – John Winsor – Harvard Business Review. “My friend John Winsor is saying the quiet part out loud. The things that I think about deeply but haven’t put the energy into writing or talking about. AI has made it easy for anyone to sound like an expert, but most of these insights lack real-world testing for validation. Most recently, I watched a YouTube video from an ‘AI expert’ rant about how everybody is doomed in a world where you can vibe code all of these types of software and work. I just sat back and wondered: does this person work with a team of people or within an organization or with anybody who has any form of an IT department? It’s very easy for someone to tell you how to easily replace your email marketing system if you are the one who both writes it and makes sure that it gets pumped out on MailChimp. It’s very different when you’re sending multiple campaigns to multiple target audiences within an organization with multiple stakeholders and there’s any kind of an IT infrastructure. It just doesn’t track as being all that easy to vibe code and replace. But John is right in that true progress comes from ‘Thought Doers’ (as he calls them) who build, test and learn through client experience… not just talk. The good news is that most thought leaders can’t even be hired to do the ‘actual’ work that creates real change. So, is thought leadership still valuable? John questions it, but I believe it is… if you have the right thought leader… with experience… currenlty ‘in it’ on multiple real projects… with a true ability to connect ideas with actual work realities… and one where the motivation is toned down (unless that’s what your audience needs).” (Mitch for Alistair).
- Guitar Teacher Reacts: Angine de Poitrine – Mata Zyklek (Live on KEXP) – Michael Palmisano – YouTube. “A few week’s back, Hugh shared a link to a performance by a band called Angine de Poitrine. And… well… it was stunning and I loved it… But what happened next shocked me… the band has suddenly gone truly ‘viral’. They are everywhere… and along with that… My feed is completely them across all of the social media channels and beyond. It’s very strange and I haven’t seen anything like this in a long long time. You should definitely check out the concert that started this all but these types of reaction videos have been equally enjoyable to watch. Having actual musicians try to cut through the music and figure out how they are making this sound is almost as interesting and enjoyable as the band itself… Hugh was definitely ahead of the curve on this one…” (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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