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: 

• Social justice in a digital age: Essay 1 – James Plunkett – Medium. “I’m chairing the FWD50 conference next week. Since we launched it in 2017, it’s become the largest digital government gathering in the world. We make it nonpartisan—the FWD means ‘Neither left not right but forward’ — but I’m very partisan about the forward part. And while the event is about modernizing the public sector with technology that benefits everyone, this year I’m going to be giving a much more pointed talk about what digital means to how we organize ourselves as a society. It’s a bully pulpit, and I’m going to use it; it may ruffle some feathers. But as this ongoing series from James Plunkett explains, the rise of digital platforms has fundamentally changed many of the norms on which modern government was built. This is a great read that summarizes many of the things we’ve discussed over the past years.” (Alistair for Hugh).
• Longitudinal analysis of sentiment and emotion in news media headlines using automated labelling with Transformer language models – Plos One. “Hoo, boy, what an exciting title. But I prefer to cite the source, so here it is. A study released this month looks at sentiment and emotion across 19 years of data from 47 popular US media outlets. Using a machine learning language model, they show an increase in negativity across all news outlets, with a higher rating of anger across right-wing outlets. Are we living in negative times, or is it just that negativity gets clicks? More good fodder for your talks, Mitch!” (Alistair for Mitch).
• Air Pollution Levels Declined When U.S. Embassies Installed Monitors Abroad And Tweeted Readings – Carnegie Mellon University – Heinz College. “Reading this article, it’s interesting that something as small as a respected entity Tweeting info about air pollution levels in cities resulted in actions taken to reduce that air pollution. Unrelated, but I wonder if and how we can start moving our increasingly fractured politics towards outcomes based debate. That is, focus as a society on better shaping and agreeing on the outcomes we all want, so that we can debate from a common starting point.” (Hugh for Alistair).
• Why Does Every Tech Company Want to “Democratize” Something? – Mother Jones. “As a would-be democratizer of book publishing (LibriVox, Pressbooks), this article cuts a little close to home.” (Hugh for Mitch). 
• How ‘Andor’ fulfills George Lucas’ plan for ‘Star Wars’ – Mashable. “When the new Star Wars series, Andor, showed up on Disney+, I was excited… admittedly, the first few episodes felt long and I had hard time connecting my deep love for all things Star Wars to this new series. Then, slowly – episode after episode – I found myself deeply immersed in this new and different world that was still… a part of the Star Wars universe. This article really drives home what was happening to me, emotionally. It also speaks to an incredible concept (that seems so obvious): As the original Star Wars story is unfolding in that universe, so too are a million other stories from people we could have never imagined. I wish that more franchises embraced this concept. Now? I’m loving Andor… and you should too.” (Mitch for Alistair).
• Beware the ‘desk-bombers’: Anxiety over unscheduled office conversations the latest worker malady – Financial Post. “What is our (work) world coming too? Are you a desk bomber? This is someone who shows up to your space (desk, office, etc…) without a meeting or appointment… I think we used to just call this… working together? I dunno… this sort of stuff really grinds my gears. Now, not only do I have to really think about what I wanted to discuss with a fellow team member, but now I have to wonder if I am going to be shamed or judged because of it. In my office, we used to have a rule that you don’t bother someone if they’re wearing their headphones. Still, this feels pretty sanctimonious and judgey to me… maybe I’m just old and grumpy…” (Mitch for Hugh).

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