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…
- The Shape Of The Curve – Jen Van Der Meer – Contribution Design. “The world is on fire. You might be so busy reading news about the conflagration in the Middle East that you missed India and Pakistan going to war, and forgot about Ukraine. The asymmetry of drones and munitions is changing combat (we’re in the You Can Build a Rocket Launcher for $96 fand the Plans are on Github part of the timeline now.) The brilliant Jen van der Meer points out that economies and governments always went through cycles of boom and bust, and the transition (or interregnum) was never easy. But what if our economic systems had somehow consumed those cycles instead of being subject to them? What if, instead of being subject to boom and bust, we’d made the cycle something to profit from – and lost its rejuvenating, cleaning power as a result? What if, as she says, ‘the bubble does not pop into a Golden Age. It reinflates. It has one move, and the move works every time’.” (Alistair for Hugh).
- Sloponomics And The Coming Storm – Seb Bacon – Bacon Boutique. “If Enshittification was the word of 2025, my vote for 2026 so far is ‘Sloponomics’. In Banff at an AI summit this week, the National Art Center’s Jason Westerlund said, ‘AI is a great tool to do somebody else’s job with.’ We’re quickly learning that when you can make ten times the things you once did, you wind up foisting that on others. Seb defines Sloponomics as ‘when synthetic output is cheap to generate, but costly for others to resolve’.” (Alistair for Mitch).
- Americans Think Their Neighbors Are Bad People – Kyle Saunders – Sacred Cow BBQ. “There are a few striking things about this article: first, 53% of Americans think their fellow Americans are very or somewhat morally bad. This is the worst level of moral distrust of any country in this data set (fwiw the worst trust level countries are: US, Turkey, Brazil, Greece, France). And it sure is hard to run a country when people have such a low opinion of each other. The second striking thing is that Canada is the most trusting: 92% of Canadians think their fellow citizens are fundamentally good people. That’s an incredible number, and my first reaction was pride. But part of me wonders as well what the downsides are, as I look at things Canada is getting dangerously bad at: growing the economy, growing productivity and wealth (with the result that all the nice things we care about like healthcare, education and affordable living are all collapsing). Could thinking everyone else is fundamentally… nice… kill our drive to improve things? To build world-class, competitive businesses? To grow top-level institutions and radically effective government services?” (Hugh for Alistair).
- Nuclear War: An LLM Scenario – Chris Clapham. “This is fine.” (Hugh for Mitch).
- Google AI Overviews cut search clicks 42%: Report – Danny Goodwin – Search Engine Land. “If you think about Google… their products… how they make money… where they want to make money, this is a really fascinating look at how a massive organization can introduce hyper-disruptive technology (hello, AI) while still trying to mitigate the risk of the disruption to their main business model. In this instance, Google’s AI Overviews have caused a 42% drop in traditional search clicks (which is… just… breathtaking…), especially for evergreen content. With that, breaking news and Google Discover (which is a part of their app) traffic have grown significantly, offering new opportunities for publishers (but is this the same as driving traffic based on users searching… and clicking around?). We also learn here that AI summaries appear less for news queries, as Google prefers showing direct links to recent news articles to ensure accuracy. Wild and dramatic swings and changes!” (Mitch for Alistair).
- Please STOP Sending Me This – Rick Beato – YouTube. “Another week… another Angine de Poitrine share (hey, you started this!). This one is the one that I was waiting for. I was wondering how long it would be for Rick Beato to comment on what has become one of the most viral/talked about bands in a long time. Well, the wait is over… and… no surprise… he’s all in… like us…” (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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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.