Categories: Articles

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #383

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:

Bell’s Theorem: The Quantum Venn Diagram Paradox – Minute Physics – YouTube. “Quantum mechanics is weird, but it happens at the sub-atomic level, and it’s not really something we can observe with our own eyes, right? Wrong. This simple experiment with polarized glasses makes no sense at all. Take two polarized lenses, rotate one of them 90 degrees, and no light goes through. But then put a third one between them at 45 degrees — and light comes through! If you think hard about this (like, physicist hard) you learn new things about light and probability. I find this incredibly inspiring — science you can do on your kitchen table that makes us rethink the nature of matter.” (Alistair for Hugh).
How I Socially Engineer Myself Into High Security Facilities – Motherboard. “I love me a good heist movie. This is a great example of how our human failings, rather than secret codes or weak software, are our biggest vulnerability. Also, this kind of job would give me constant panic attacks.” (Alistair for Mitch).
What Are We Doing Here? – The New York Review of Books. “A deep and painful look at the origins of humanist/liberal arts learning (particularly in the US), its impact on ushering in unprecedented wealth, and its current, dangerous, place on the chopping block in the name of economic efficiency.” (Hugh for Alistair).
The Meaning of Emoji – a16z Podcast – Andreessen Horowitz. “Delightful podcast about innovation, standards, creativity, and dumpling emojis.” (Hugh for Mitch).
Master of mindfulness, Jon Kabat-Zinn: ‘People are losing their minds. That is what we need to wake up to’ – The Guardian. “Meditation and mindfulness used to be relegated to random and weird stores that would sell everything from incense to religious literature to crystals. Nothing has permeated into corporate offices more than the practical application of these longstanding techniques and tools to help individuals both decrease their stress levels and increase their focus. My tool of the trade is the Headspace app. With that, mindfulness really does open up a pandora’s box into a world that we should all be desperately be trying to embrace more. It’s a mad, mad world out there, so you better be checking yourself.” (Mitch for Alistair).
The Uncanny Resurrection of Dungeons & Dragons – The New Yorker. “I used to play this game a lot. More than I care to admit. I’m not sure if I played it because I loved it, or if I played it to avoid girls and getting rejected. Either way, it doesn’t get much nerdier than Dungeons & Dragons… or… has that changed as well and it’s cool like ComicCon now?” (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.