Six Links Worthy of Your Attention #604

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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 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 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: 

  • Rest of World“Every morning I listen to NPR, the CBC, and the BBC for my news in an effort to diversify my information intake. Sometimes the stories are significantly different. But that’s still a filter bubble that excludes much of the planet. Turns out, there’s a site for that. As their About page says, ‘the term ‘rest of world’ is a symptom of a larger problem: a Western-centric worldview that leaves innumerable insights, opportunities and complexity out of the conversation.'” (Alistair for Hugh).
  • Jodorowsky’s Dune. “Years ago, before Dune first hit the big screen with Sting and Kyle MacLachlan, there was an attempt to make it. There’s a fantastic documentary, Jodorowsky’s Dune, that chronicles the journey of this bizarre, impish, creative producer who wouldn’t take no for an answer. He got Mick Jagger and Salvador Dali on board. Some of the art informed Star Wars and Alien. There are only a few copies of the long, detailed storyboards he produced to convince backers to fund the project. Anyway, fast forward to 2022, and a bunch of crypto enthusiasts raised money to buy one of the copies at auction, having hilariously misunderstood the difference between copy and copyright. That’s not the point of my link, however. Rather, it’s thanks to this tempest in a Web3 teapot that I learned one of those rare books has been scanned, and is online. Mitch, I know you love comics. So here, in its entirety, is the art of legendary French comicbook artist Moebius, painstakingly detailing a Dune that never was.” (Alistair for Mitch).
  • The first fairy stories were never intended for children – The Spectator. “Just about every culture has a Cinderella story of some kind; true of many other classic fairytales. Deep dive into the collective unconscious of the human mind and the stories we tell ourselves.” (Hugh for Alistair).
  • Babies In Art – Emily Nussbaum – Twitter. “Art history grad student analyzes whether or not these renaissance painters have ever seen a baby, and rates their work in consequence.” (Hugh for Mitch).
  • Why Are NFTs So Ugly? – Solar Sands – YouTube. “I had a friendly little back and forth this morning with my good friend (and Shopify boss), Harley Finkelstein, about NFTs, crypto, Web3 and whatever else we are lumping into this bucket of ‘next tech’. It’s hard to debate the value of art… or what art even means. Case in point: Comic books… seems silly to most, but extremely valuable to others (“expensive paper” is a way others have labelled comic books). Well what if NFTs are just ‘expensive pixels’.? In this video, you get a breakdown that will both answer many questions that you might have about NFTs, while opening the door to many more (it’s all quite subjective, isn’t it?). Is a pixelated photo in JPG format worth tens of thousands of dollars? That might be the wrong question. The right question just might be: What’s that NFT worth to the next buyer…” (Mitch for Alistair).
  • The Oversimplified Superstring Hit Incubation Theory Of Podcasting – I Hear Things – Tom Webster. “Last week,I shared a link with you titled, Podcasting Hasn’t Produced A New Hit in Years – Bloomberg. I don’t think that the few sentences I wrote along with the link did it any justice. Thankfully, Tom Webster (of Edison Research who is widely regarded as the number one expert in digital audio and audience) wrote this extremely brilliant thought piece about it… and what it really means. Here’s just one of the many gems in this article: ‘… unlike the media I’ve listed above, podcasting is barely in its terrible teens. There are more people who don’t listen to podcasts regularly than do listen, so I am not willing to make any kind of blanket statement about what podcasting can or cannot do.’ In short, it’s still early days… a long road ahead and many of podcasting’s greatest hosts and shows have yet to be created.” (Mitch for Hugh).

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

Are you interested in what’s next? How to decode the future? I publish between 2-3 times per week and then the Six Pixels of Separation Podcast comes out every Sunday. Feel free to subscribe (and tell your friends):