Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #349

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, HBS; chair of Strata, Startupfest, Pandemonio, and ResolveTO; Author of Lean Analytics and some other books), 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: 

• Hollywood’s Forgotten Gay Romance – BuzzFeed. “Since Will and Grace, Brokeback Mountain, and their ilk, Hollywood’s portrayal of gender diversity in relationships has changed quite a bit. But this 1982 film was way before its time — and despite its progressive message, the AIDS crisis quickly shut the door with even more stigma. 35 years later, this is an interesting look at what it took to make the film, for which one of the producers said, ‘I want to make this movie so some kid in a small town in Missouri will know that he’s not alone. And it’s going to be OK.'” (Alistair for Hugh).
• The Alien Style of Deep Learning Generative Design – Carlos E. Perez – Medium. “If you have a design conceived by a human, it must meet certain constraints: Weight; force; durability; cost; and so on. But that design is guided by patterns humans know, and by tools at our disposal. What happens when you feed those constraints into a machine and let it explore possibilities? Turns out, you get better designs that look like something HR Giger would have put on the set of Aliens.” (Alistair for Mitch).
• Hardcore History 48 – Prophets of Doom – Dan Carlin. “You get the feeling, with fake news and thousands of Albanian political Twitter bots/agents provocateur, and the implosion of the mainstream media (as reported in mainstream media), and info silos and Milos and alternative facts and that guy I’m not allowed to talk about in our link sharing, that perhaps, perhaps the info revolution of the web might create more societal chaos than (some of us) expected. We’ve been through this before: Gutenberg‘s printing press ushered in more craziness than me and my bookish friends like to talk about. Listen to Dan Carlin talk about one of the most insane periods in early post-Reformation history, and the strange case of the city of Munster, in 1534-35. (Note: the audio is … long!).” (Hugh for Alistair).
• Why Aren’t Baby Boomers Eating Pho? – Jennifer Wright – Medium. “How many articles have you read about the mystery of millennials and why they don’t [insert thing olds expect them to do]. But the big, unexamined question is: why don’t boomers eat pho?” (Hugh for Mitch).
• Sorry Y’All – Humanity’s Nearing An Upgrade To Irrelevance – Wired. “We’re about to enter The Matrix and – once we do this – what will be the point in humans? Don’t laugh. Think about it. If all we’re here for is to create, nurture and consume data this may not be the life that we had all thought we would be participating in, as we opened the Pandora’s Box of technology. Yuval Noah Harari is a deep thinker about life, civilization and what we’re really working towards. His new book, Homo Deus – A Brief History Of Tomorrow, is getting rave reviews. In this Wired interview, he talks about the future that we are creating and how useless we may all become.” (Mitch for Alistair).
• Life’s Work: An Interview with Jerry Seinfeld – Harvard Business Review. “He’s not just a comedian. He’s not just the guy behind one of the most successful sitcoms of all time. Jerry Seinfeld is – without a doubt – one of the most creative humans beings in the world. He brings a serious work ethic to everything that he does. In this awesome Harvard Business Review interview, Seinfeld gives out gem and gem insights that are relevant to anybody who toils in creative work – which is all of us.” (Mitch for Hugh).

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