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…
- Picks & Shovels. “The irascible genius Jesse Vincent—he of Superpowers coding fame—has given us the web-based casual game we all need. ‘You run Picks & Shovels Inc., selling GPUs to every AI lab in the Valley. You are also the only CEO who can see the p(doom) gauge. Keep the hype alive. Keep the world alive.’ Parking this for an evening with a bottle of wine and some nihilism.” (Alistair for Hugh).
- “Just warming you up, that’s all.” – Mike Sowden – Everything Is Amazing. “Ukraine’s attacks on Russian data centers may or may not have interfered with a global disinformation platform. They definitely reduced web crawler traffic from Yandex, Russia’s equivalent of Google. But did they actually reduce the slopaganda filling our feeds and dividing us? People certainly wanted them to—I had folks on Facebook clamoring to tell me it was real. As Mike Sowden points out, the real question is how do you know you’re talking to a real person—and if this were an easy thing, we’d already have blocked the bots and wouldn’t be blaming them for what social media has done to us anyway.” (Alistair for Mitch).
- Why were Victorian elites so effective? – Samuel Hughes – Works In Progress. “Britain’s Victorian ruling class were boozers and parties and somehow built much of the modern world, how did they get innovation right across so many areas at such a fast clip? Maybe those parties is what made it work?” (Hugh for Alistair).
- These Wild Lemurs Sing Just Like Opera Stars, Widening Their Mouths as They Hit the High Notes, Study Suggests – Sarah Kuta – Smithsonian Magazine. “I cannot sing, but god I would love to get some coaching from a lemur.” (Hugh for Mitch).
- An AI Agent Joined a Listserv of Top Internet Researchers. The Reply-All Chaos Is Still Unfolding – Olivia Snow – Wired. “I see as story like this, and my first instinct is… ‘do I even need to read this before knowing it’s an immediate share for Alistair in our weekly link exchange?’ Welp…this one will not dissapoint. In this week’s episode of ‘Bot or Not’… An openly identified AI joined a public research mailing list, sparking outrage before moderators removed it. The members on this listserv overlooked (forgot?) how public online posts can be reused… including for AI training. A fascinating look at the confusion about privacy and consent… even among internet experts.” (Mitch for Alistair).
- What are some extremely interesting rabbits holes you got into? – Reddit. “I love a good rabbit hole as much as the next person… so glad I came across this link via Estelle Metayer’s excellent newsleter. In case you’re wondering what rabbit hole to next stumble into… might I suggest…” (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 JoelMitch 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.