Friday Reading #27

A sunny and busy week. Coincidentally I had a fewer links to choose from which shows what impact nice weather can have on my usage of the web. No real theme or big topics this week, although there are two stories with connections to drugs which might have some meaning.

You Are Not an Artisan

People substitute creative for sexy in describing their aspirations (to themselves and others) because it sounds less narcissistic. If you seek sexy work, you could be viewed as self-absorbed, entitled and attention/status seeking. If you pretend it is creative work, you’re suddenly God’s gift to the world, basking in the gratitude, admiration and adoration of all simply for existing.

Heat Death, Crap Systems, How Connected Studio Will Save the BBC

Money and ideas went in one end; those of us unconnected with the innards of the black box hung around and eventually watched or listened to what came out the other end: a naked production of Shakespeare, the Six O’Clock News, a documentary about Hitler’s Killer Sharks, an exhibition of Rutger Hauer’s artwork. No doubt what went on inside the box was complex. But the processes were invisible and the box was not connected to the outside world.

When To Give Up

A simple measure to know if you need to kill something, is to be aware of how you’re feeling when you’re talking about the thing you’re working on. In giving the latest in a long line of elevator pitch summaries to a stranger, how are you feeling? When you’re talking to friends, are you excited about other things, and when asked about how it’s going with your main thing, do you deflate, feel flat, change the subject? How’s your body language when you’re talking about it?

The #indieweb as a minimum viable social web ecosystem

Although there have been significant advances in the field over the last five years, there remains a need to prove the business value of decentralized web technologies. To many of us involved in both the industry and the movement, this seems silly: after all, the business value of other decentralized technologies, like email and the phone system, are hardly questioned. Nonetheless, in a world where centralized data siloes regularly receive multi-billion-dollar valuations, the onus is on those of us who are building more open technologies to demonstrate their worth. Note, it is not enough to argue their worth: we must build, ship, and actively demonstrate a profitable product or service with a business model where the decentralized social web is an inextricable component.

Why I’m hiring graduates with thirds this year

So my game theoretic instincts suggest that if we confine our recruitment efforts to people in the lower half of the degree ladder we shall have an exclusive appeal to a large body of people no less valuable than anyone else. And such people will be far more loyal hires, since we won’t be competing for their attention with deep-pocketed pimps in investment banking.

Can a Low Dose Go a Long Way?

He’s been in the trenches of legitimate mind-altering research for over four decades, and with time has become a sort of champion of the micro dose. Nowadays, he’s tickled to find himself almost sober, if you could call it that, among the brain-blasted, self-important new gurus and high priests of what could be called a psychedelic renaissnace. Speaking at the 2013 Psychedelic Science conference in San Francisco, Fadiman did not mince words: “It’s wonderful to be conservative in this crowd.”

Have a nice sunny weekend (assuming you are in the summer half of the world). Subscribe to these reads via email here or via RSS here