The Gambler
’Cause every hand’s a winner
This is a semi-whenever list of interesting articles, podcasts and videos that I come across during the week. Hope you enjoy it, have something new to think about, and share it with your friends.
My 13 year old son made a really interesting (and profound) observation this past week — “dad, with all the news on the virus, people are missing some really important things that are going on in the world”. And he’s right.
I tried to keep my “virus” updates to the early morning and before bed, and spent a lot more of my time reading articles and watching videos that got me back to thinking. Here’s what I found the most interesting.
This weeks “Deep Links”
While I’m not the biggest country music fan, you can’t argue that “The Gambler” is probably one of the most recognizable songs of the genre. Was really sad to see that Kenny Rogers passed on this morning — More
How NASA transformed itself by creating a culture of ‘rebel thinking’ and fighting the status quo — More
“We Trust You” are the 3 most important words when establishing remote working — More
A look inside ‘Naked and Afraid’; and apparently it’s as real as the show proclaims — More
While ‘War Games’ inspired me to learn as much as possible on how computers work, all the ways they could break, and ultimately led me to being responsible for a security organization within The Walt Disney Company, apparently President Reagan had a different impression. After watching it, he was infatuated and asked the Joint Chiefs if this could really happen — he was equally unimpressed with their answer — More
The old privacy battleground on data rages on. While many proclaim “data is the new oil”, I really prefer looking at it like “uranium”. Apparently NYC has a new tap-to-pay system which fosters a new contactless payment across their buses and subway. The downside — there’s massive collection of user data from everything from device identifiers, location, and data that can be used to basically map out a riders entire pattern of life — More
Since being at home, we’ve been trying to do more “family game nights”, and I am not a fan of Monopoly, so this read on “How To Ruin Monopoly and Make People Hate You” is more timely than ever — More
Given how crazy the world has been the last few years, I’ve been joking for some time that the multi-verse split when David Bowie died in 2016. Wired explores the latest in quantum physics around the same theory — there may be endless worlds with countless versions of you — More
Every morning, I try to have a cup of coffee ready for Liz. In “The Power of Making a Cup of Coffee for Someone Else”, they capture the magic around the ritual from the start of grinding beans to the look of approval upon the first sip — More
Studio are taking a beating right now, here’s two articles that start to look at the future of movies. During this “stay at home” phase, it’s really an ideal time for studios to test out at home digital-first releases of films. Looking at what Pixar did with ‘Onward’, I’d love to see a future where this becomes the norm as rather than a nightmare. On a similar front, Movies Anywhere is going to allow you to start “loaning” movies to friends in May — More
On the COVID-19 front:
- 3D printing came to the rescue in Italy where it was being used to print values for reanimation devices — More
- Game Theory and the virus — More
- Face it — “we’re not going back to normal” — More
- A fascinating look at Patient 31 and how he/she contributed to the spread of coronavirus in Korea — More
Closing Thoughts
Every gambler knows
That the secret to survivin’
Is knowin’ what to throw away
And knowin’ what to keep
’Cause every hand’s a winner
And every hand’s a loser
And the best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep