Six Links Worthy of Your Attention #618

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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: 

  • Run Your Own Social – Darius Kazemi“With Elon buying Twitter, lots of folks are wondering if they can start their own social network. The truth is, platforms like Discord are already fast-rising as smaller communities, and most of the teeth-grinding nonsense we’re seeing on Twitter is longtime users wondering, ‘if this goes away, who will listen to me?’ Internet artist, Darius Kazemi, has a great roundup of what it takes.” (Alistair for Hugh).
  • Welcome To Airspace – The Verge. “Tech is gentrifiying the world – one review at a time. This 2016 post is a little too close to home for me. ‘White or bright accent walls, raw wood, Nespresso machines, Eames chairs, patterned rugs on bare floors, open shelving, the neutered Scandinavianism of HGTV.” I feel seen.” (Alistair for Mitch).
  • Why These Whales Are ‘Standing’ In the Ocean – National Geographic. Sperm whales sleep vertically in pods of five to thirty or so of adults, suspended for 15 minutes up to a couple of hours at a time. Looks relaxing.” (Hugh for Alistair). 
  • The Band – Jam #2 – The Last Waltz – YouTube. “Every once in a while, I land on some collection of rock n’ roll legends performing together on stage – usually at an awards show – and mostly these are interesting but scripted affairs, and not all that interesting. Here’s something different though: a true, free flowing jam session with an unwieldy number of Rock Gods: Ringo Starr (Drums/The Beatles), Levon Helm (Drums/The Band), Ronnie Wood (Guitar/The Rolling Stones), Neil Young (Guitar), Eric Clapton (Guitar, but it’s not plugged in!!), Dr. John (Piano), Garth Hudson (Organ/The Band), Paul Butterfield (harp) as well as Stephen Stills (Guitar/Crosby, Stlls & Nash) and Carl Radle (Bass/Derek and the Dominoes). Pretty fun to watch, if you like any of those musicians.” (Hugh for Mitch).
  • Money is about to enter a new era of competition – Technology Review. “When I think about the current (and ever-growing) buzz surrounding cryptocurrency, I’m often dismayed at how many people are simply focusing on their own wallets and financial diversity (and, yes, this is only applicable for a very small swath of the privileged population). If you really want to think bigger, this article is for you. Bigger means thinking about digital technology and how it will, fundamentally, change our relationship with money and currency. This is something to think about in relation to entire countries, economies and the greater world. This long read breaks it down, and it’s an article everyone should read, whether you have your own cold storage wallet or think that Dogecoin is scam…” (Mitch for Alistair).
  • Facebook Doesn’t Know What It Does With Your Data, Or Where It Goes: Leaked Document – Motherboard – Vice. “It’s almost like there’s so much craziness in the news, that it’s hard for us mere humans to stop, look at certain articles, read, ponder and ponder some more. This is one of those articles that seems to be ignored because of things like war, waves of infection and the climate crisis (not to mention Elon and other cult of personality chaos stories). In a leaked document, a Facebook engineer said this: ‘We do not have an adequate level of control and explainability over how our systems use data.’ Scary? Yes. Imagine not knowing how your business actually works. Now, imagine that business is Facebook… you know, something at real scale (and using all of our data to support it). Will anybody do anything about this? I’m not feeling confident that much will change.” (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)