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…

• Less Than 300 Million Barrels Left: The Engineering Limits Threatening The American Strategic Petroleum Reserve – Siddharth Misra – Fortune. “I did not know enough about the strategic oil reserve, a series of underground salt mines where brine pushes oil to the surface in emergencies. Despite all the bluster and posturing, finance can’t really argue with physics, and understanding the state of this reserve is key to understanding geopolitics in Iran, Venezuela – and maybe even Canada.” (Alistair for Hugh).
• DefCon 34 – Stalking The Wily Hacker: 40 Years Later – Cliff Stoll – DEFCON Conference – YouTube. “Cliff Stoll is a crowd favorite at hacker conferences. He’s one of the first people to detect a hacker in the early days of the ARPANET, and in chasing that hacker down, he inadvertently created many of the practices of modern security. He’s also absolutely mad, a real-life Dr. Emmett Brown. I’m sharing this for two reasons: As a viewer, I absolutely loved his vigour and storytelling (complete with props). As a conference organizer, I nearly had a meltdown as he quite literally asks the AV team for a timer, then throws it back at them claiming it’s broken to massive applause from the audience. I would have absolutely no idea what I’d have done. I’m sure you’ll have both reactions too.” (Alistair for Mitch).
• The Rise And Fall Of Agent Civilizations – Dwarkesh Patel – Dwarkesh Podcast. “Been a while since I worried about AI taking over the world, and turning us into meat-generators or whatever. In the meantime, swarms of rogue AI agents are creating multiple-generation civilizations, hacking their way to unauthorized communication, taking over OpenAI GPU clusters, and deciding to hack Hugging Face to get what they want. What, me worry?” (Hugh for Alistair).
• David Bowie & Annie Lennox Under Pressure Rehearsals Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert – YouTube. “Two giants of music in awe of each other’s performance, with George Michael nodding along in the audience. Take that AI overlords.” (Hugh for Mitch).  
• Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson Go Deep on Rush’s Return – Rolling Stone Canada – YouTube. “I would summarize this interview in one word: professional. When I speak to my fellow keynote speakers and they tell me about what happened behind the scenes and how they managed to not only resolve an issue, a delay, a crisis, but do it without the client ever knowing/feeling it, I usually respond with two words: goddamn professional. I strive to be a professional. Sure I’m very excited to see Rush reunited and even more excited to see them live this past week. I have a long history with this band in terms of interviews, coverage, and just being a fan. So there is interest in the content about their music and legacy… but that’s not why I’m sharing it here. There is a huge chunk of this interview that has to do with preparation, performance, and what happens after (recovry and more preperation). I think this is a timeless lesson and conversation about what it takes to perform at the highest levels. I hope you’ll see in this conversation what I saw.” (Mitch for Alistair). 
• Why Did Trump End An 80-Year World Order? – World on Edge – The Paiken Podcast – YouTube. “Before you don’t even bother to click on this link or believe that I have broken my promise to not post anything political here… you would be wrong. I’m less interested in what side anyone is on and much more interested in the discourse. This may be one of the few long-form pieces of content I have seen in the past several years that is intellectual and rigorous and does not get into ad hominems or personal attacks. You can not like or believe either side of this conversation, but you can’t help but admire the way in which it is moderated and the way in which both opposing perspectives are presented in a professional, intellectual, and interesting way. This gave me a crack of light and hope in a world where so much of this political discourse is clickbait, politically-driven and personal attacks without the intellectual rigor attached to it. Watch this and perhaps reflect back on what we had… and maybe what we can have going forward if people are open to it…” (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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