Six Links Worthy of Your Attention #435

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Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (Solve for InterestingTilt the WindmillHBS, chair of StrataStartupfestPandemonio, and ResolveTO, Author of Lean Analytics and some other books), Hugh McGuire (PressBooks, LibriVox, iambik and co-author of Book: A Futurist’s Manifesto) and I decided that every week the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person “must see”.

Check out these six links that we’re recommending to one another: 

  • Meet Centigo – A Prime Example of a Bossless Organization – Corporate Rebels. “A while back, I got into some discussions about algorithms and companies. I argued that companies will eventually need an algorithm on the board, because a CEO can’t possibly keep up with the flood of data coming in from a connected organization. But such algorithms wouldn’t just inform, they’d react, making the organization headless. Well, here’s an example of a business set up as a free market. And for certain industries, I can see how that would work.” (Alistair for Hugh).
  • IKEA Life at Home 2018. “Every year, IKEA publishes its findings about how people around the world live their lives. For a company that sells around the world — their ubiquitous Billy bookcase is actually used by economists to judge the relative buying power of nations — this is some profound insight. One of the big takeaways I found perplexing was how much people crave alone time, often hiding from spouses and kids in their cars, lost in their phones.” (Alistair for Mitch).
  • What Minimum-Wage Foes Got Wrong About Seattle – Bloomberg. “Do facts matter any more? It doesn’t seem so. Anyway, all those scare-tactics about how higher minimum wages will kill jobs are not borne out by research in places where minimum wages have been raised. Oh well.” (Hugh for Alistair).
  • Impossibly Hungry Judges – Nautilus. “I love giving talks at conferences just before lunch, because it gives a perfect opportunity to butter the crowd up with the following description of some astounding research: a study was done on what is the biggest influence on whether judges grant prisoners parole in their parole hearings. You would expect the biggest influencing factor to be race, or age, or family background, or severity of crime, or disciplinary record or something similar. But, according to a study by Daniel Kahneman,  all of this is wrong. The most important factor is how hungry the judge is. Kahneman’s research shows that parole is granted in around 65% of cases, EXCEPT the ones heard just before lunch, where the number goes to ZERO. Cue presenter’s punchline: ‘So, I hope you will see it in your hearts to be more sympathetic to me, even if you are getting hungry!’ It’s a great way to start a talk. Except that the conclusions of the research are almost certainly wrong. I’ll probably still use the story anyway.” (Hugh for Mitch).
  • How Instagram Saved Poetry – The Atlantic. “There are some days when the social media feeds just feel more like a full moon than anything else. There’s often these little slivers of hopes. The silver lining, and all. Here’s one of them. Poetry. In the mess of narcissism, self-inflated posts and more, maybe – just maybe – we can save something as profound, powerful and needed as poetry… on Instagram. After the week of social media that I have consumed, I’ll take poetry FTW.” (Mitch for Alistair).
  • The Founder of the Little Free Library Has Died – Quartz. “Anybody who loves books, community, libraries, book stores, culture and more needs to take a moment of silence here. You’ve (hopefully) seen them around in your community. If you haven’t, why not build one? A little space where people can leave a book or grab a book. The little free library was a magical and beautiful idea that caught fire. Anything that brings book reading more into our daily lives is a huge win (for me). RIP Todd Bol… and thank you for your vision with the Little Free Library.” (Mitch for Hugh). 

Feel free to share these links and add your picks on TwitterFacebook, in the comments below or wherever you play.