Friday’s Finds

On the last Friday of each month I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

“When from our better selves we have too long
Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop,
Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired,
How gracious, how benign, is Solitude.”
—William Wordsworth, The Prelude — via @sonjabl

“If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won’t amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.” —Abraham Lincoln — via The Marginalian

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On the last Friday of each month I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

“Sometimes it’s better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.” —@TerryandRob

“To think critically is always to be hostile — thinking itself is such a dangerous enterprise.” —Hannah Arendt

“You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end each of us must work for his own improvement, and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful.” —Marie Curie

“The knowledge you take for granted could be life-changing for someone else. You owe it to the world to hit ‘publish’.” —@JustinSaaS

“One of my most important learnings as a facilitator has been that, to move forward together, agreement isn’t required as often or on as many matters as most people think.” —Adam Kahane

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On the last Friday of each month I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

“I fell in love with what now seems to be called web1. It was limitless, open, free. We now seem to be rushing towards the opposite of that with web3. Needlessly replicating the problems of the real world online. Scarcity, exclusivity, even eco-destruction. I don’t get it.” —@iamharaldur

“If you want to understand the difference between a network and a community, ask your Facebook friends to help paint your house. Networks connect; communities care.” —@mintzberg141

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On the last Friday of each month I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

“Music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for.” —@taylorswift13 in Innovation Lessons from Taylor Swift by @skap5

Reg Revans — “Unless your ideas are ridiculed by experts, they are worth nothing.” via @ShaunCoffey

In the Pursuit of Knowledge, There Be Dragons

“Data are never neutral. They are biased. They are rife with uncertainty and limitations and all sorts of other imperfections. But for data to be legitimate in the eyes of non-technical actors, data must be performed as precise and objective and neutral. This creates a conundrum from anyone whose practice relies on communicating data. When high-powered people want to rely on data as truth, they don’t want to be faced with confidence intervals or error bars. They want to be told that the data are reliable, by which they mean accurate, by which they mean a perfect representation of whatever they wanted to measure. Ignorance is bliss. It’s also political.”

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On the last Friday of each month I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

“The biggest butterfly effect is how a horny college student wanting to rate girls caused the collapse of global democracy.” —@santiagomayer_

“Levels of scientific literacy among non-scientists doesn’t seem important until all of a sudden it does.” —@paulisci

“The [Federal Reserve Bank] can hike interest rates all it wants, it’s not going to make it rain in Brazil, open ports in China, find truck drivers in the UK, change covid-0 policies in Australia. Bet that the Fed will hike rates if you want, but don’t bet it will help this supply-driven inflation.” —@francesdonald

“Disinformation will always get more viral traffic than the truth, because disinformation comforts people that everything is connected and purposeful, while the truth is coldly random and offers little sense.” —@rothschildmd

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On the last Friday of each month I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

“One day historians will view ant-vaxxers the same way they viewed climate deniers and those who drowned women because they were witches.” —@DavidPrice

“When the virus is circulating in a vaccinated population, variants that are more rapidly transmitting are selected for — those are vaccine evading variants. By vaccinating without shutting down transmission we are promoting vaccine evading variants.” —@YaneerBarYam

“Maybe the problem is that we shouldn’t be looking to politicians for leadership. There’s nothing saying anyone we elect at virtually any position have any abilities to succeed in times of this. We need to develop a civic self-efficacy where we join together with those around us.” —@ClayForsberg

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Every fortnight I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds. The next Friday’s Finds post will be on 24 September, as these will now be posted the last Friday of each month.

“Twitter is a place where you can watch people who don’t read books argue with people who write them.” —Mark Safranski

“It’s far better to adapt your organisation to the future than to try and force everyone back into the past. This ‘return to the office’ has more to do with status symbols, fragile executive egos, and idiocy than shareholder value. It is bonkers — Hybrid [work] is just a way of saying ‘let us have the future but just like the past because we’ve spent lots of money on the past’. It never works but we never seem to learn.” —@SWardley

“Vaccinated people are like wet logs, unvaccinated like dry kindling. COVID is the fire.
Can wet logs catch fire? Yes.
Can wet logs SPREAD fire once they catch flame? Sure.
But it’s MUCH harder to start a fire with wet logs, and nearly impossible when there’s no more kindling.” —@AuforGA

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Every fortnight I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

The Twitter Paradox — “I loathe the fact that Twitter is a place where I am exposed to profound thoughts and new experiences, as well as a breeding ground for hate and harassment.” —@TheWorstDev

Before Tom Peters, before Peter Drucker, we had Mary Parker Follett by @TimKastelle

“There are three ways of dealing with difference: domination, compromise, and integration. By domination only one side gets what it wants; by compromise neither side gets what it wants; by integration we find a way by which both sides may get what they wish.” —Mary Parker Follett

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Every fortnight I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds. After a two-week hiatus I will slowly get back to more regular blogging.

@PicardTips — “Picard management tip: Keep group meetings short. Take your time with one-on-ones.”

@DThom_ — “Universities: let’s be leaders and innovate, innovate, innovate. Also universities: let’s not mandate vaccines unless everyone else does first.”

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Every fortnight I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

“The hardest part of teaching: Having to justify to students that what they’re learning in school is relevant and will be useful in the future.” —@AnaFabrega11

The Most Precious Resource is Agency

Agency is the capacity to act. More subtly: An individual’s life can continue, with a certain inertia, that will lead them on to the next year or decade. Most people today more-or-less know what they are going to be doing for the first twenty-or-more years of their life—being in some kind of school (the “doing” is almost more “being told what to do”). Beyond that age there is of course the proverbial worker, in modern stories usually an office worker, who is often so inert that he becomes blindsided by a sudden yank of reality (that forces him out of his inertia, and in doing so the story begins).

Gaining agency is gaining the capacity to do something differently from, or in addition to, the events that simply happen to you. Most famous people go off-script early, usually in more than one way. Carnegie becoming a message boy is one opportunity, asking how to operate the telegraph is another. Da Vinci had plenty of small-time commissions, but he quit them in favor of offering his services to the Duke of Milan. And of course no one has to write a book, or start a company. But imagine instead if Carnegie or Da Vinci were compelled to stay in school for ten more years instead. What would have happened?

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