Angus Blair |
Things I have read that I think you should as well. You’re welcome |
Tim Kreider:
Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets. The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration — it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done. “Idle dreaming is often of the essence of what we do,” wrote Thomas Pynchon in his essay on sloth. Archimedes’ “Eureka” in the bath, Newton’s apple, Jekyll & Hyde and the benzene ring: history is full of stories of inspirations that come in idle moments and dreams. It almost makes you wonder whether loafers, goldbricks and no-accounts aren’t responsible for more of the world’s great ideas, inventions and masterpieces than the hardworking.
I’m not very busy in Paris. It’s lovely for the most the part but happiness does certainly lie somewhere between the extremes.
They’ve faced resistance from investors of course. Investors have a deep-seated bias against hardware. But investors’ opinions are a trailing indicator. The best founders are better at seeing the future than the best investors, because the best founders are making it.
Paul Graham
Interestingly, in elemental terms, both films told the same story. Inasmuch as the main character of “Dick Tracy” is Dick Tracy and “Rescuers” is Bernhard, when you cut through all of the action, the basic story of both of these movies concerns how these two characters came to make their marriage proposals.
This may sound absurd, but it is absolutely true. And it is a key reason why these to brilliantly executed films failed to develop the “legs” that we had hoped for. The core stories were uninvolving. There was no central character who had to confront his or her demons or resolve anything more challenging that when to mouth the words, “Will you marry me?”
In both movies, everything remained static for the main characters. At the end, nothing elemental had changed.
To compensate for the lack of an emotionally driving core story, the two films showered the audience with dazzling and inventive “business.” But much of this failed another test of storytelling — i.e., the movies would still have made sense had many of these scenes been cut. Just like songs in a musical, no matter how beautiful the melody, if they don’t move the plot along, they don’t belong.
The letter from Katzenberg to the rest of Disney in 1991, you can see how it helped lay the foundation for making movies like the ‘The Lion King’ in years to come. Awesome executive thinking fr any industry.
Some weirdo says something to you in the grocery store and you smile and nod your head, “Yup!” Just to avoid a scene right? You have a meeting with a sales rep and indulge the friendly but pointless chitchat even though you hate it. But a friend mispronounces a word and we leap to correct them. Your girlfriend tells a boring story and you’ve got to say something about it, you’ve get short with her. What kind of bullshit is this? We give the benefit of courtesy to everybody but the people who earned it.
Guilty as charged, great advice from Ryan Holiday.
If you haven’t figured it out by now, Mooney considers himself a liberal, and he’s doubtful that any amount of “nurture” could turn him into a conservative. But he said liberals could learn a lot from conservatives, specifically about loyalty to leaders and to their cause. Like conservatives, some liberals may find themselves at odds with the scientific consensus on some issues. Which issues, specifically? Mooney pointed to hard-line stands against hydraulic fracturing (a.k.a. fracking), nuclear power, childhood vaccination and genetically modified organisms.
The rest of the piece is on the science behind why conservatives don’t trust in science as much as they used too.
In fact, Thiel argues, we often shouldn’t seek to be really good competitors. We should seek to be really good monopolists. Instead of being slightly better than everybody else in a crowded and established field, it’s often more valuable to create a new market and totally dominate it. The profit margins are much bigger, and the value to society is often bigger, too.
In this brave new world, the role of advertising agencies would change as well. Instead of being a pack of well-paid liars, ad agencies would act more like consultants, helping companies figure out how to fix their businesses and improve their brand reputation based on actual accomplishments.
The problem is that most big agencies either can’t or won’t adapt to this way of thinking. They’re still cranking out 30-second spots and splattering banner ads on Web sites, even though it’s become clear that we’ve all become very good at tuning out those advertisements. The big ad agencies stick with their 50-year-old business model because they don’t know what else to do. As a result, Rosenblum says, the entire advertising industry, which is worth $150 billion in the U.S., $300 billion worldwide, is about to get blown to bits.
Glad to have worked for an agency that got and lived this.
He ticked off some received wisdom: To improve the odds, wear red underwear and switch on all the lights before leaving home. To prevent a losing streak, avoid the sight of nuns and monks when travelling to the casino. Never use the main entrance. Always find a side door
If you’ve been to Vegas or Macau would like to one day, this is a must read. Loads of intrigue.
Dora and I spent a few days there before heading to Europe this year, it’s as crazy a place as it sounds. Also, the food is good.
So the marketer brags about how tasty the food on the airplane is, or how reliable the cell phone service is or how magically transporting the aromatherapy of the soap is—and then someone else, someone under different pressures and constraints—has to deliver. And they rarely do.
They rarely do because the paying customer isn’t their customer. Their customer is the quality control department, the accounting department and the “don’t-rock-the-boat” department.
My former boss reminded me with this article today why experience design needs to be at the forefront of a CEOs role. Couldn’t agree more b
If you’ve picked up a business book in the last four years, you undoubtedly heard it: the endless championing of Netflix’s $1 Million Prize.
It made for great “the future of business” fodder. A technology company crowdsources their R&D by ponying up $1,000,000 to anyone who can improve their recommendation engine. Netflix, stickler for user-experience as it is, was willing to pay all this money even if it meant making their algorithm just 10% better. Amazing! If you were looking for an anecdote to cheerlead web 2.0 to, this was almost too good to be true.
And in fact, it was.
I’m really digging the articles Ryan Holiday is posting at Fast Company. Really cutting just like his personal work. Worth following if you’re in marketing or strategy.