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…

• Slop Bible – Nat Torkington. “Irascible Kiwi Nat Torkington has, like me, Had It With Slop. LinkedIn is turning into auto-responded pablum, and I’m convinced that the vast majority of posts and responses are AI-assisted if not outright written by agents. Maybe I’m oversensitive, but as someone whose craft is words, it feels like an asymmetric onslaught on my time and attention. So please enjoy The Ten Commandments, slop edition.” (Alistair for Hugh).
  
• The AI Superforecasters Are Here – Scott Alexander – Astral Codex Ten. “If algorithms get better than humans at predicting the future, we’re in for a real societal change that feels more like the plot of Foundation than 2001 – A Space Odyssey. Not only because prediction markets like Kalshi have financialized the future, but also because it eats away at our sense of free will. The canary in the coal mine for this stuff is superforecasters, people who are dramatically better at betting on what’s going to happen. And it seems like AIs are about to trounce humans in yet another field.” (Alistair for Mitch).
• On Every Continent, Food Supplies Have Grown Faster Than The Population – Pablo Rosado and Max Roser – Our World In Data. “For Alistair who loves a good dataviz. This is mostly about the content: in 1966 the global population was 3 billion. Now it’s 8 billion. Somehow food production has not just kept pace, but outstripped population growth.” (Hugh for Alistair).
• A Dying Art – John Semley – Harper’s Magazine. “I was surprised when I learned that the son of some friends of mine was studying mortuary sciences, even that there is such a discipline. I shouldn’t be, after all every single human will die and something has to happen next. But, even if the market for after death services isn’t going anywhere, the art of making dead bodies look prettier is fading.” (Hugh for Mitch).  
• Inside The Billion-Dollar Trading Card Boom And How It Happened – The Hobby – Documentary+ – YouTube. “I’m always fascinated by the intersection of culture, nostalgia, hobbies and things we love as young people. I was never much of a trading card kind of kid… but I did play with them in elementary school and dabbled with non-sports card as a comic book nerd… but it never stuck. Watching the card business become valuable like art (oftentimes more valuable) is just another human culture signal that I love. This documentary tells a big part of the story, but since it’s already a few years old… I’m here to tell you how much bigger (and broader) the trading card industry has grown. In a word: wild. This doc is well worth your time… as is exploring how this industry has multiplied and grown… just fascinating stuff…” (Mitch for Alistair).
• Daniel Lanois’ “What’s In My Bag?” – Amoeba Music- YouTube. “Sticking with pure culture this week… and the stuff of humans/things we can only do in our ‘protein form’… here’s just some beuatiful thinking about music, art, creating and creativity as Daniel Lanois (IYKYK) fills his record shopping bag with with a bunch of different and loving musicians… this is a good entry point if you’re looking for some new musical rabbit holes to burrow in…” (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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