reviews

🔖 bookmarks that I often share with friends

Visakan Veerasamy
March 17, 2016

Disclaimer – I find these reads interesting. I don’t necessarily agree with them. 

#Bestof / Most Shared

These are links that I find myself sharing with other people the most, or links that return to over and over again.

  • Everything Is A Remix [48:41] – all-time favorite video, this relieved a lot of creative anxiety for me. Don’t obsess about trying to be original, because everything is derivative. Just aim to consume good content, create whatever you can (which will be informed by whatever you’re consuming, no matter what) and aim to remix artfully. This informed my essay “letter to a young songwriter” – don’t obsess about being great or having fun, just strive to be prolific.
  • The Information: How The Internet Gets Inside Us [2011] Adam Gopnik essay about how people are affected by information and media over time. All-time favorite essay, for many different reasons. I tweeted about this.
  • David S Rose’s answer to Why are there crushed stones alongside rail tracks? I find myself looking up this answer so many times because I find the idea here presented so powerful, and grounded (heh) in real practice. I did a Twitter thread about this.
  • Wordy Weapons of Is-Ought Alloy – ” It should be standard practice to say “I reject your vocabulary”, instead of “you’re wrong”, “that’s just your opinion”, or whatever. It would force the conversation into one of two paths: either the point is restated in more neutral terms, or it becomes clear that a substantive point is not, well, the point, and that the goal is to impose vocabulary. Then the conversation can either continue in a constructive manner or end promptly.”
  • BBC: China bans ‘erotic’ banana-eating live streams This is one of my favorite news stories of all time. Basically young girls are eating bananas erotically for horny men to jerk off to, and presumably they must be getting good money for it. It’s interesting to me because it demonstrates the cat-and-mouse nature of human sexuality.
  • The Secret Lives Of Tumblr Teens – A hearty exploration of what it’s like to grow up on Tumblr. Really does justice to the inner and social lives of teenagers. I find myself sharing this with people whenever they ask something along the lines of “What are teenagers like these days?” – though this is already becoming quickly outdated.
  • Melting Asphalt – Ads Don’t Work That Way – it’s not about what you personally think about the brand, it’s about the collective impression/understanding of the brand.
  • Knowing Less – The Trauma Narrative – “Young girls are genitally mutilated. Did all the children of these cultures grow up with deep traumas? In a sense, probably not – if all the adults act like it’s no big deal, then you as a kid don’t think it’s a big deal either, and will probably never think it’s a big deal, and you’ll grow up and mutilate your own daughter the same way you were mutilated, because tradition. These people would probably strongly deny being traumatized, much like I didn’t believe I was traumatized – at least in the narrative sense – in stage 2. They also probably don’t experience the suffering that I did in stage 3, and in that sense have better lives.”
  • The “Some Asshole” Initiative – the simple and powerful idea that we shouldn’t give media attention to mass shooters.
  • The Gervais Principle – a really extensive, thoughtful exploration into the nature of relationships in the workplace.
  • Narrative cycles in the tech media – I often find myself referencing this when talking about media cycles. The author wrote a similar post about the concept of “narrative gravity“.
  • Remember – Wanderweird – this is a reminder to open your mind, that the map is not the territory.
  • The Flinch – about subconscious aversion to things, a sort of self-preservation impulse
  • @buster’s cognitive bias cheat sheet (bit.ly/thinking-is-hard/) – TMI, not enough meaning, not enough time&resources, not enough memory
  • “Ethics” is advertising – Vividness – the title alone is fantastic
  • Disintermediation Theory by Taylor Pearson – “If you want to improve the outcome you’re getting, you don’t ask for people in power to be “nice” or “fair” or “just,” you disintermediate the people that have power and distribute it to more people.”
    • Access Denied, on the future of media post-disintermediated by social media
    • Someone on Twitter has a compelling argument that since facts are now democratized, media organizations are mainly in the business of manufacturing takes.
  • The Toxoplasma of Rage “Every community on Tumblr somehow gets enmeshed with the people most devoted to making that community miserable […] if memes spread by outrage they adapt to become as outrage-inducing as possible.”
    • Right Is The New Left – I really like this post for its ability to explain fashion very well, as a game of signals and countersignals. I reference this one often.
    • The Ideology Is Not The Movement – about the tribal impulse, explaining things like why many deaf people don’t want to be cured, how the rationalist community began, etc. “Since the Gamer Tribe has no designated cultural spaces except video games forums and magazines, they view this as an incursion into their cultural spaces and a threat to their existence as a tribe.”
  • Jon Kabat-Zinn: Coming to our senses [57:20] – About the power and importance of mindfulness – dropping on yourself to say “hello, are you there?”
  • Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams [1:16:26] – I watch this every year or so. It’s really wholesome and encouraging.
  • People are violent because their morality demands it — Tage Rai — Aeon At the same time, if violence is motivated by moral sentiments, what is it motivated toward? [..] Across all cases, perpetrators are using violence to create, conduct, sustain, enhance, transform, honour, protect, redress, repair, end, and mourn valued relationships. [..] The purpose of violence is to sustain a moral order.
    • The righteous mind “If you think that moral reasoning is something we do to figure out the truth, you’ll be constantly frustrated by how foolish, biased, and illogical people become when they disagree with you. But if you think about moral reasoning as a skill we humans evolved to further our social agendas—to justify our own actions and to defend the teams we belong to—then things will make a lot more sense. Keep your eye on the intuitions, and don’t take people’s moral arguments at face value. They’re mostly post hoc constructions made up on the fly, crafted to advance one or more strategic objectives.”
  • Emotional Labor, the MetaFilter thread – Very eye-opening read for men to get a sense of the burdens women deal with.
  • A millennial and a baby boomer trade places – Always nice when people from different backgrounds and perspectives get to see the other person’s point of view.
  • Why is it hard to scale a database, in layman’s terms? – a very accessible way to thinking about the problems of scaling
  • Parable of the Polygons – about racism and migration. All of ncase’s games are great.
  • SMBC — ”Each group is some percent crazy assholes.” – simple and strong visual.
  • What makes an entrepreneurial ecosystem? — Welcome to TheFamily – very considered exploration of the variables that influence the ecosystem, with examples of how different ecosystems look different.
  • history of japan [9:00] – Entertaining and informative. There should be more videos like this.
  • Deceit And I [3:26] – very powerful personal story
  • Tact filters “So, nerds need to understand that normal people have to apply tact to everything they say; they become really uncomfortable if they can’t do this. Normal people need to understand that despite the fact that nerds are usually tactless, things they say are almost never meant personally and shouldn’t be taken that way. Both types of people need to be extra patient when dealing with someone whose tact filter is backwards relative to their own.”
    • Ra “When you give your opinion, it sounds like you think you’re smart.” / “I’ve spent a lot of time feeling ashamed of ‘thinking out loud’ in public”.

#Biographies, Profiles, Interviews

  • [shared frequently] Kobe Bryant Will Always Be an All-Star of Talking “I have friends. But being a “great friend” is something I will never be. I can be a good friend. But not a great friend. A great friend will call you every day and remember your birthday. I’ll get so wrapped up in my shit, I’ll never remember that stuff. And the people who are my friends understand this, and they’re usually the same way. You gravitate toward people who are like you. But the kind of relationships you see in movies—that’s impossible for me. I have good relationships with players around the league. LeBron and I will text every now and then. KG and I will text every now and then. But in terms of having one of those great, bonding friendships—that’s something I will probably never have. And it’s not some smug thing. It’s a weakness. It’s a weakness.”
  • For Arianna Huffington and Kobe Bryant: First, Success. Then Sleep. – I think I liked this because it was so interesting to see how two people who you would think probably don’t have a lot in common… have a lot in common?
  • [shared + revisited] HBR: Philippe Starck I like the stuff he makes and I think he has some good ideas about how to make things.
  • Thread of Steve Jobs quotes
  • Richard Feynman thread

#Biz:

  • /u/ClownFundamentals on accounting in large companies “Here’s one simple example. Suppose you sell beer and make $100 each year. Now you buy a factory for $1,000. How do you account for this?” – it gets interestingly complicated.
  • Why Amazon Is The Best Strategic Player In Tech [2011] – It’s interesting to see how it was possible for some people to tell really on that Amazon was going to be this successful.
  • HN – Google makes so much money, it never has to worry about financial discipline – This story highlights what I call the “spray tan fallacy” – just because bodybuilders get spray tans, doesn’t mean that getting a spray tan will make you look more like a bodybuilder. Google isn’t necessarily the way it is because of its unique practices – it can afford its unique practices because of its monopoly on search advertising.
  • The $500 Million Battle Over Disney’s Princesses – Disney is a fascinating company to me. They started out by taking folk tales and making them “sexier” for kids – which means cuter, more family-friendly, colorful and so on. And they own Marvel, and Star Wars. It feels to me like Disney is going to be a huge empire for quite some time, because now it’s the place that aspiring storytellers seek out as a place to work. I wonder what it would take for Disney to go out of business?
  • The Pop Analytics ecosystem – “Ultimately, Pop Analytics is a reflection of an ecosystem that is designed to move cash from my client base to Analytics vendors.”
  • Why Do So Many Zippers Say YKK? [Slate] Cool story about the company that makes zippers for pretty much everybody.
  • What do people with office jobs do all day? – this one is interesting because you get to hear all sorts of different responses from different people

#Careers (for creatives in particular)

I highly recommend reading The War Of Art, by Stephen Pressfield. Watch Everything Is A Remix.

  • Your elusive creative genius [19:09] – I reference this one quite often. It’s about having a healthy relationship with yourself as a creator. People give too much credit to creators, both when things go well and when things go badly. A creator’s job is to create. People aren’t mystical geniuses, they’re people.
  • Micropatronship: Amanda Palmer’s TED Talk – The Art Of Asking [13:47] – Amanda Palmer understands the nature of how communities work, what it means to make something cool and to have other people involved in that. Cross-reference this with “Geeks, Mops and Sociopaths”.

#Civilization

I think a lot about how modern civilization is so… sick. Everything is industrialized, commoditized. I want to understand it better, so that I can hopefully live with it better. I have an ongoing essay about this.

#Celebrity #Fame

I have a lot of sympathy for celebrities. I think it’s pretty crazy what they go through. It’s not normal, and it’s not healthy. There’s a reason why so many celebrities end up committing suicide, or have substance addiction problems. I have a separate post about this here: The Seductive-Destructive Siren-Song of Fame

“That’s the trouble with being me. At this point, nobody gives a damn what my problem is. I could literally have a tumor on the side of my head and they’d be like, ‘Yeah, big deal. I’d eat a tumor every morning for the kinda money you’re pulling down.” – Jim Carrey

#Class:

  • Inside the Secretive World of Elite Wealth Management “The secret point of money and power is neither the things that money can buy nor power for power’s sake…but absolute personal freedom, mobility, privacy.”
  • What the Rich Won’t Tell You “Then she made a confession: She took the price tags off her clothes so that her nanny would not see them. “I take the label off our six-dollar bread,” she said.”

#Comedy

Comedy is very interesting and important to me. How do you make people laugh? Comedy is one of the most powerful ways to tell the truth in a way that people actually accept.

  • Gervais, Louis CK, Chris Rock, Seinfeld – Talking Funny [49:32] – I’ve revisited this a few times. It’s interesting to see a few different people discussing their craft with one another. I quite enjoy Seinfeld’s “Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee” for the same reason.
  • How Wile E. Coyote explains the world – I love this one for the idea that “life is a joke – your expectations are the setup and reality is the punchline.”
  • Chris Rock 2014 interview – “You keep notes. You look for the recurring. What’s not going away? Boy, this police-brutality thing — it seems to be lingering. What’s going to happen here? You don’t even have the joke, you just say, “Okay, what’s the new angle that makes me not sound like a preacher?” Forget being a comedian, just act like a reporter. What’s the question that hasn’t been asked? How come white kids don’t get shot? “

#Death

We’re all going to die. I think it’s very important to come to terms with it.

  • Louis C.K. Hates Cell Phones — “Underneath everything… you’re forever empty… that knowledge that it’s all for nothing and you’re alone. […] Life is tremendously sad just by being in it. People are willing to risk taking lives and ruining their own because they don’t want to be alone for a second because it’s so hard. […] You never feel completely sad or completely happy, you’re just feel kinda satisfied with your products and then you die.”
  • Oliver Sacks: My Periodic Table – An admirable life.
  • Existential Riddles “A man turned off the light and went to bed. Because of this, several people died. Why?” “The man lives in a lighthouse; when he turned off the light, two ships crashed. For months, the man is wracked with guilt — how could he forget to keep the light on? What was he thinking? Years pass. The man moves to a small inland town. He attends group therapy regularly. At one session, he meets a widow of three years. She is beautiful in a quiet way. They get married. She never questions why he refuses to turn off the lights at night. Days become decades. They don’t have children, but they are happy together. One day, the man visits an antique shop and breaks down sobbing when he sees a ship in a bottle. He asks his wife to drive him to the ocean. She does. She knows not to ask why. They arrive. The man forgives himself. He finally forgives himself.”
  • Life and Donuts, by Pablo Stanley – Life doesn’t make sense. Find someone you can share donuts with.
  • How to tell a mother her child is dead. – I will show you: If it were my mother you would say, “Mrs. Rosenberg. I have terrible, terrible news. Naomi died today.” You say it out loud until you can say it clearly and loudly. How loudly? Loudly enough. If it takes you fewer than five tries you are rushing it and you will not do it right. You take your time.
  • A protocol for dying – written by someone in preparation for his own death.
  • Suicide notes “These suicide notes were gathered at the coroners’ offices by a suicidologist/psychiatrist who asked to be anonymous. He edited identifying details out of the compiled manuscript, and we changed the names. But the text of each letter plus the age and sex given are real. All these people did kill themselves. Were they ambivalent about it? About half the hundred or so letters we saw seemed to have some element of doubt.”
  • Learning to Measure Time in Love and Loss “I’m constantly aware of lost opportunities. I used to think such lost opportunities were beautiful towns flashing by my train windows, but now I imagine they are lanterns from the past, casting light on what’s ahead.”
  • On Mother’s Day, my Mom asked me to help end her life “If I were your mother, would you advise me to do these things?” After a long pause, he replied, “No.”

#Drawing, Photography, Visual Design, Film

#Drugs

I like reading about drugs. Part of it is because they’re still quite taboo in contemporary modern society. There’s something very compelling to me about altered states of mind.

  • Eat Pray Roll What’s really great about this one is how the writer articulates… everything. Feelings, expectations, a sense of novelty… “What I want is a vacation from myself. I’ve tried exercise, meditation, sex, and food. I wait for the desire to plan a wedding or have a kid or buy a house and when those things don’t take hold or are plainly untenable, I get my aura read. I open a trillion tabs of internet and drink it in. I gorge on studies about magnets that make you think differently and begin researching the properties of crystals. I don’t think about any of it as self-help because that’s way too pathetic, certainly more than the itchy meh I feel. I want to hurl my brain into outer space; it’s real, real quiet there, the ultimate holiday of feeling small. But because I’m not pregnant and don’t have cancer, I just want to do drugs again.”
  • Russell Brand: my life without drugs “I still survey streets for signs of the subterranean escapes that used to provide my sanctuary. I still eye the shuffling subclass of junkies and dealers, invisibly gliding between doorways through the gutters. I see that dereliction can survive in opulence; the abundantly wealthy with destitution in their stare.”
  • /u/AellaGirl – I did so much acid I almost died “Acid was exactly the opposite. It heightened senses, heightened what I was aware of in my own mind, let me explore the way my own thoughts formed. It took what I was and shoved my own face in it. I couldn’t look away. There were times of deliberately induced and absolutely excruciating emotional pain, to which nothing in my regular life has ever come close. I did it on purpose. I needed to know.”
  • Generation Adderall
  • The Trip Treatment
  • The Man Who Invented the Drug Memoir
  • Legalize It All
  • A Natural Fix for ADHD
  • Atlantic – The Science of Choice in Addiction
  • HN – Researchers are beginning to disentangle pain relief from addiction and overdose
  • Chris Arnade’s Faces Of Addiction

#Education, #Learning, #School

#Fashion

Games

Gaming was a big part of my childhood growing up. I think they are an incredibly interesting and important artistic medium – one of the few things that really gets the “audience” involved.

Geopolitics

A 21st-Century Migrant’s Essentials: Food, Shelter, Smartphone – This is a story about the details of being a refugee that really sticks with me

Giftedness

#History

Human interest

#Identity

  • Bret Easton Ellis on Living in the Cult of Likability “No matter how genuine or authentic we think we are, we are still manufacturing a construct.”
  • To Body Mod Away From Brownness And Back I’ve revisited this piece by Alok Vaid-Menon several times – “Now white boys in Brooklyn are sewing hair onto their faces in the same city where brown boys still have scars from ripping it off. […] Just a decade ago, my peers were flinging words like “terrorist” and “faggot” to me in the halls of our high school. Now I’m “trendy” and “fierce.” Either assessment rings lonely and desperate.”
  • The Queer Poor Aesthetic

#Internet

Insight Porn

Disregard ideas, acquire assets – “When I talk about assets, cash is the least interesting of all of these. Instead, I’m talking about more intangible assets like skills, reputation, relationships, attention & fame. I’m of the strong opinion that the most reliable path towards startup success is to focus relentlessly on acquiring interesting assets and then execute on the startups that naturally fall out of them.”

Undercover Economist – Keyhole Surgery

Liminal spaces – places where reality is a little altered

How many lightbulbs does it take to change a person?

Breaking Smart Newsletter: Ambiguity vs Uncertainty – I’ve always liked thinking about how creative work feels different in different contexts and under different constraints. Venkat really explores this well with his classic 2×2 graphs, distinguishing between ambiguity (do I know what I’m looking at?) and uncertainty (is there a clear answer?). Play happens when things are the right amount of ambiguous and the right amount of uncertain. Too much or too little of either and it gets boring, frustrating, etc.

#Language

#Mindfulness, Mindset, Mind, Cognition

#Management (Organizations)

#Media

#Money / Finance / $$$$

#Race

#Religion

VV: My own personal journey

How I Believe In God, Roger Ebert

#Science

#Sex, #Gender:

Girlboss – is Sophia Amoruso a feminist icon?

#Startups

#Technology

AI The Great AI Awakening

#Thinking

#Time (the nature of)

Politics

Marketing

#War

  • Army officer /u/nightowl1135 on the ambiguity of war ” The “ACM” we were positive we were watching emplace IED’s on a notorious route were just farmers irrigating their fields. This is just one small anecdote that shows how literally hundreds of different activities and things can look VVVVEERRRYYY different from 30,000 feet up through a thermal lens. Ever heard of the saying: “When your a hammer… everything looks like a nail”?”
  • The Tragedy of the American Military – “We love our troops but we’d rather not think about them”. “If I were writing such a history now, I would call it Chickenhawk Nation, based on the derisive term for those eager to go to war, as long as someone else is going. It would be the story of a country willing to do anything for its military except take it seriously.”
  • Army Deploys Old Tactic in PR War – body counts – can victory be measured by counting the enemy dead? A very powerful way to think about metrics.