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: 

• Calculators – Flickr. “Before the high-polish ads for Androids and iPhones, before even the Motorola flip-phone thirst-traps and Nokia N95 FOMO ads, calculators were an indispensable business tool. And they competed on brand and design; some even became status symbols. This Flickr album from Greg Maletic documents some the many designs from a byegone era. Love me some minimalist bakelite.” (Alistair for Hugh).
• Charanjit Singh: 2014 – REProduce – YouTube. “There’s a subgenre of EDM called Acid House. It was popularized by Josh Wink, and it has a very distinctive sound — made by playing with the frequency and resonance knobs on a Roland 303 bass emulator. But it turns out that long before Wink’s Higher Consciousness, an Indian composer named Charanjit Singh hooked a keyboard up to a synth, laid down a disco beat, and played traditional ragas, releasing them as Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat in 1982. Here’s a short documentary about him playing live decades later.” (Alistair for Mitch).
• The Climate Benefits of a Four-Day Workweek – Future Planet – BBC. “Pressbooks became a four day workweek company last year, and it’s been largely extremely positive. We’ve seen a marked improvement in overall employee satisfaction and wellbeing, reduced burnout risks, and either no impact on productivity, or perhaps even a slight increase. We’ve also, apparently, done one little bit of good for climate change.” (Hugh for Alistair). 
• India Overtakes China as the World’s Most Populous Country – Information Is Beautiful. “Delightfully clear visualization of where all the people live.” (Hugh for Mitch).
• Canadian news is seriously fudged. Here’s why – Michelle Rempel Garner. “This link was sent to me via my friend, Mitch Lafon. It’s a deep and clear explanation of why Canadians can no longer see or even post any news items in Canada on Meta (Facebook, Instagram, etc.). It’s looking like Google might even remove news sources for Canadians in their search results as well. This has to be one of the biggest mis-steps from the Canadian government and the traditional media lobbyists. It is so frustrating to me, that I find it hard to contain myself. Here’s a link to my overview of the problem for those who don’t know about this new law (Bill C-18 aka as The Online News Act). In short, the Canadian government is forcing Google, Meta (and others) to pay media publishers for links or repurposed content (while, at the same time, Big Tech does not share in/get any of the advertising or subscription revenues that is generated from this referral traffic). With that, Meta made the call to no longer display/share news to their Canadian users (and, yes, this includes all news… not just the content created in Canada). My only analogy for this madness is: You sell cars. I refer someone to you as a customer. You then turn around and want me to pay you for bringing in the customer. Does journalism need protection? It does. Should Big Tech be a part of this solution? They should. Is this law the answer? Absolutely not.” (Mitch for Alistair). 
• Twitter begins throttling all links to Threads, Instagram, news outlets, and more – 9To5 Mac. “This story isn’t even connected to the one above, but together you can begin to get a sense of how worrisome the state of information might be. Now, this is just Elon Musk doing what he does, but if you can’t put the pieces of this strange puzzle together, let me help you out: If the owners of the main social media platforms no longer want people to share news links and have all of that traffic go off of their platform, we will need to take a serious look at how we get trusted information and news to the citizens of this world. All of this is making me really edgy… can you tell?” (Mitch for Hugh).

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

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