Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #279

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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 (BitCurrent, Year One Labs, GigaOM, Human 2.0, Solve For Interesting, the author of Complete Web Monitoring, Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks and Lean Analytics), Hugh McGuire (PressBooks, LibriVox, iambik and co-author of Book: A Futurist’s Manifesto) 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: 

  • This American Life – Cars. ”A bunch of people I know told me this is the best episode of the iconic This American Life. Sell 129 cars? Bonus. Sell 128? Catastrophe. Dealerships are facing back-pressure from direct-sales models, too. If you thought Glengarry Glen Ross was a good example of sales pressure, you should probably listen to this.” (Alistair for Hugh).
  • Chris Draws A Cartoon – FilmCow. “An animator’s busy, so his friend offers to help him out by drawing the weekly cartoon. Rather than being nice and helpful, the animator comes up with the hardest script imaginable. What a nice friend.” (Alistair for Mitch).
  • Day of the Dead In Chiapas – Fusion. “Artist Isaac Cordal‘s photographs of skeleton figurines in little corners of Chiapas, on the Mexican Day of the Dead. Absurdist and moving. These really hit me… it’s interesting how some art does this to us sometimes, it feels like an only-just-perceptible conversation between your soul and some kind of ‘Understanding’, and in the best cases, you have to spend a whole lot of time thinking about it afterwards to try to make sense of it. I can’t quite get my finger on what it is about these images that affect me so. Our mortality? Our smallness? The crumbling world around us? The cycle of life? The absurdity of it all? I don’t know, but I’ll have to look at these again, and think some more.” (Hugh for Alistair).
  • If Everything Is So Amazing, Why’s Nobody Happy? – VQR. “Persons of the Dialogue: Plato. CK. Scene: A cafe near Hell’s Kitchen, NYC. Now, there’s a conversation I’d like to hear.” (Hugh for Mitch).
  • 24 Pics That Prove ‘Ken M’ Is The Greatest Troll On The Internet – Smosh. “I don’t laugh that hard when I see silly memes and stuff online. I may smirk. I may chuckle. I had not heard of Ken M, but his type of ‘trolling’ is right up my alley (and totally acceptable). Wow, is this hilarious. Read it, laugh and share it. Well worth it.” (Mitch for Alistair).
  • What Is Art For? – The New York Times. Seth Godin told me to check out the book The Gift by Lewis Hyde, when I was prodding him for something new, different and fascinating to read. I devoured the book. Loved it. Wound up picking up his other two books, before realizing that The Gift was written in the early 80s. Crazy how relevant it still is. More surprising, is this article. I was embarrassed that I had never heard of him prior to Seth’s mention. Now, it’s clear to me, that if you’re a creative soul, you should know his story. This is his story.” (Mitch for Hugh).

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