Attack The Ideas

Programming Note: Due to the Thanksgiving holiday, I’ll be taking a hiatus next week and will be back the week after.

It's been a busy week pre-Thanksgiving; I've started working on the popular 'Things I Like' annual review, been heads-down at work, and trying to get things for a few days of needed rest and refocus.

I’ll keep it short, and in order to keep your favorite weekly dose of bliss being timely, I'm going to start with an excellent tweet from Tim Urban:

Grateful for the friends that are fun to argue with. 6 qualities they have in common:

1. Their motivation for claiming is more "obsession with finding the truth" than "winning a competitive game."
2. Their conviction level fits their knowledge of the topic.
3. They attack my ideas, not me.
4. They get that I'm doing the same and don't take my disagreements personally.
5. They're independent thinkers whose views are often hard to predict. They never agree with me just for the sake of being agreeable.
6. They acknowledge when they're wrong.

I loved this post. Who Over What. Always.

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Forward Thinking

Canlis is known to most Seattle folks as one of the best dining experiences that the city has to offer, so my mind was blown 🧠🤯 on the adapatibility here. "Seattle fine-dining restaurant Canlis serves Dick's burgers during power outage"

Thought of the week

Latest obsession

I discovered The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows this past week and instantly ordered the recently published book. Described as "a dictionary of made-up words for emotions that we all feel but don't have the words to express," I thought it was fascinating and a must-read.

Take the word ambedo:

n. a kind of melancholic trance in which you become completely absorbed in vivid sensory details—raindrops skittering down a window, tall trees leaning in the wind, clouds of cream swirling in your coffee—which leads to a dawning awareness of the haunting fragility of life, a mood whose only known cure is the vuvuzela.

I could watch the YouTube channel all day. Brilliant stuff.

This weeks "Deep Links"

Here are a few of the articles and videos that resonated with me over the last week:

• Another under 'who knew! - "modern bowling balls contain an asymmetric weight block in the middle that looks like a car's starter" in "How Bowling Balls Are Made" - More
• Going to leave this one here: "Stop Letting OKRs Masquerade as Strategy." Read on around the pros/cons of OKRs - More
• In the most poignant read of the week, "Climbing the wrong hill" explores what '(we) should learn from computer science: meander some in your walk, randomly drop yourself into new parts of the terrain, and when you find the highest hill, don't waste any more time on the current hill no matter how much better the next step up might appear.' - More
• Want to make your conversations weirder and more interesting? "Try Asking People Why Things Matter to Them" - More
• In the same vein as the last link, "How to Ask Useful Questions" provides some additional prompts around context and avoiding friction when trying to get answers - More
• I never realized that, in relative terms, Forks are the new kid on the block. "Knives and Spoons Are Ancient. Not Forks." explores more than you ever cared to know about Forks - More
• Want some tremendous insight into the grocery business? Look no further than "Trader Joe Wrote a Memoir" - More
• "13 Ways Of Looking At A Post-It Note" dives into the quintessential 'tool for thought,' the Post-It Note, and its ability to 'organize our mental work, find and sort information, and make sense of the world' - More
• It doesn't matter if you like the music of KISS, but you can't take away the business sense of front-runner Gene Simmons. "Gene Simmons of Kiss Says This 1 Word Made Him a Millionaire" explores the brand of KISS, not the band - and that makes all the difference - More
• I'm always a sucker for great in-depth articles on the magic of film-making, and in "How They Shot the Breathable Fluid Scenes in 'The Abyss'," they explore the techniques that James Cameron used to film Ed Harris 'breathing water' - More
• A great read on meditation, an view the practice of exploring the mind is "An Adventure and Not a Chore" - More

Fin

I finally got around to watching No Time To Die last week, and as always - a standout for me was Hans Zimmer's fantastic soundtrack. I’ll leave you with the music video for "Final Ascent."

Be well. ✌🏻