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Reading Against the Scroll – Reflections on The Siren’s Call
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This is the monthly wrap-up of book club get it, along with all the posts for the month, in your inbox for free by clicking that link. Next month I’ve got a busy month of travel so we’re reading a shorter book, The Burnout Society (Amazon). Early in The Siren’s Call Chris Hayes, makes a…
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Good Books, Deep Rest, Enough Work
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Get this in your inbox by joining the email list. Workload and Rest Cal Newport brought up a few studies that looked at the four-day work week to show that productivity barely decreases, if it decreases at all, when you reduce work by an entire day. But Alex Pang spent two books examining this idea.…
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Opportunity = Let’s put all risk on workers
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While reading the magazine version of Plastic Money I came across this quote near the end. For its part, Plastic Bank isn’t interested in hiring full-time collectors. “I think it’s even more exciting for the world’s most resourceful to have an unlimited opportunity,” Katz says. “If they want to work more, they’ll work more. They…
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My least favourite part of `the web`
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I was catching up with some tech news yesterday and while I was listening to a discussion about the latest updates coming from Google and their potential impact on the web I had a sudden realization: when tech reporters say “the web” they don’t mean the web. When these people talk about the web they’re…
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The Attention Arms Race – When AI Both Protects and Pollutes
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You go to Google to screen out irrelevant information and to reliably focus on the output of Googles information processing system. This gives Google exclusive access to the most precious resource, which is your attention. And since they have your attention, they can sell your attention to interested parties. – The Sirens’ Call – Chris…
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Old Tools, Quiet Moments, and Slower Living – A Rebellion Against the Frenzy
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New stuff isn’t necessarily better I agree, old software has value. One of Cal Newport’s books puts forward the idea that we automatically view any new technology as good, he contrasts this with the Amish who evaluate the utility of a technology in helping them maintain the way of life they want to have. This…
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Back to analogue to reduce overwhelm
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Yup, analogue tools can help reduce overwhelm because they don’t notify you. They just sit there and do their jobs.
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From Billboards to Big Tech: When Will We Draw the Line on Attention Theft?
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In Paris at the turn of the twentieth century, commercial artists began putting up posters around the city advertising venues and shows and the like. It was so effective that soon posters were covering every surface of the city, leading to a concerted push by Parisians to regulate and rein in what had become visual…
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Rejecting Status, Resisting YouTube, and Redefining Success in Unseen Work
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Unstatus Joan had an interesting post about stepping away from the status markers of society. While many people are stepping away from the traditional markers of status, cars/houses, that also shows the status they have as she acknowledges. Rejecting conventional status markers often requires already possessing substantial financial, social, and cultural capital. The lawyer can…
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White and Pink Noise from the Terminal
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I was travelling recently and realized I didn’t pack the small fan I often would bring on trips since I’m used to sleeping with a fan at home. Luckily with a quick search I found this excellent StackExchange answer to use SoX that come with some excellent formula’s in the answers. Installing SoX was a…