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:
- The Commodordion. “A bit of a palate-cleanser this time: Linus Akesson likes to build weird instruments. Here’s an 8-bit accordion: When wind flows through the bellows, it measures wind speed (how he did this is a pretty interesting story in itself, included in this post). And that information is sent to a pair of computers that play the melody and accompaniment. Genius!” (Alistair for Hugh).
- What I learned as a hired consultant to autodidact physicists – Aeon. “If you want to do physics, there’s no way to avoid the math. But that doesn’t stop people from trying. Researcher, Sabine Hossenfelder, received so many quirky, uninformed, or just plain curious messages from amateurs claiming to have cracked physics’ hardest problems, she launched a business to listen to them.” (Alistair for Mitch).
- Huge Cameco deal makes it a nuclear giant, too – Saskatoon Star Phoenix. “The history of nuclear energy is fascinating, largely for what didn’t happen rather than what did. While nuclear promised emission free, inexpensive energy, public fear driven by disasters such as Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and more recently, Fukushima, has meant no new nuclear power plants were built in North America between ~1975 and 2010. This all despite very few actual deaths attributed to nuclear power including disasters. An executive at Electricite de France (still hugely committed to nuclear power) once told me that living within a 10km radius of coal-fired power plant is equivalent to smoking a pack a day of cigarettes in terms of health outcomes; whereas nuclear was the safest of all the power sources. Climate change, and more recently security concerns driven by Russia’s control of natural gas and oil supplies in Europe have revived nuclear as a viable option. Cameco, a Canadian uranium mining company, has decided to buy the whole supply chain, purchasing Westinghouse, a major nuclear services business (along with partner Brookfield Renewable Partners).” (Hugh for Alistair).
- Canadian CPI massively underestimates housing costs – Howe Street. “We’ve heard for the past 20 years that inflation was minimal, until suddenly in the past year it has exploded. One of the curiosities about the low inflation story we’ve been told and been telling ourselves for the past 20 years is that the calculations don’t account very well for cost of housing. Specifically, Statistics Canada (responsible for calculating inflation in Canada), doesn’t include house/building/apartment purchase prices in its inflation calculations. It takes a while for those higher purchase prices to work their way through the system, but renters in my neighbourhood have now pay 3x what I paid for rent in 2002. That’s started to work its way, far too late, into inflation calculations. As Groucho Marx said: ‘Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?'” (Hugh for Mitch).
- Mastodon gained 70,000 users after Musk’s Twitter takeover. I joined them – The Guardian. “The amount of people proclaiming that they’re leaving Twitter in the past few days (since Elon Musk took it private and became the self-declared ‘Chief Twit’) isn’t alarming to me. It makes me laugh (or cry… it depends). Meaning: It’s standard fare when a big change takes place in the world, that people choose sides and publicly announce their decision… as if leaving any particular platform has any true bearing on anyone else. How many times have you heard from an American that if so-and-so gets elected that they’re moving to Canada? With that, I had never heard of Mastodon. And, if it is truly home to a ‘devoted base of left-leaning communities,’ I’m not sure anyone’s feed is going to get that much better. I guess I am left wondering what our options truly are in a world where – quite frankly – I could live and move from any one platform, so long as there’s another one where I have some decent networks and connections?” (Mitch for Alistair).
- Campus.FM. “Where does culture develop and get transmitted? Obviously, campus and college radio plays a big part in creating the next generation of taste-makers. With that, I am loving this platform. It’s your chance to check out college radio stations throughout the US. Take a listen…” (Mitch for Hugh).
Feel free to share these links and add your picks on Twitter, Facebook, in the comments below or wherever you play.
Mitch Joel Mitch 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.