Mitch Joel's Blog: Six Pixels of Separation, page 101

Six Links Worthy of Your Attention #565

Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (Solve for Interesting, Tilt the Windmill, Interesting Bits, HBS, chair of Strata, Startupfest, FWD50, and Scaletechconf; author of Lean Analytics and some other books), Hugh McGuire (Rebus Foundation, PressBooks, LibriVox) and I decided that every week the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person “must see.”

Check out these six links that we’re recommending to one another: 

On “The Fast and the Furious” – Sara Benincasa – Medium. “Sarah Benicasa is a great writer. But this one really stands out. She’s made a pact to watch—and write essays about—every installment of The Fast And The Furious, one of the longest-running action franchises out there. This is the first one. While it’s ostensibly about movies, it’s about much, much more: Epidemics, and mental health, and the chaos of life, and the American Dream, and so much more.” (Alistair for Hugh).
Monster Supplies . “Years ago, when we started this link sharing thing, it was about the sites you can’t stop thinking about. We’ve covered a lot of science and society, but sometimes it’s great to get back to our roots: This may be the greatest e-commerce site I have ever visited. My Just Evil Enough partner in shenanigans, Emily, pointed me at this. Flawless branding, great layout, and subversive everywhere. Make sure you try the translations. And seriously: If you want to quantify the value of brand, look no further. So damned good.” (Alistair for Mitch). Welcoming Our New Robot Overlords – The New Atlantis . “Our well-founded worries about AI have shifted in the past few years. Once upon a time, we were worried about AI becoming sentient and deciding humans were too big of a risk to have around; or following human directives so precisely and turning the world into a giant paperclip. But our fears about AI are now much more tightly tied to fears of other humans: of our fellow-people being whipped up into a frenzy by AI-amplified ideas we don’t like (because they are wrong, or dangerous, or immoral, etc). Just a few months ago, the President of the United States was banned from Twitter and Facebook, ostensibly for egging on rioters who overtook the Capitol spurred in part by a belief that Democrats drink the blood of children, and that millions of fraudulent ballots contained fake votes for the President, while simultaneously containing real votes for congress. Welcome to 2021. We’ve placed so much human communication in the hands of companies and systems that we hardly understand, and don’t really have any idea how to control. AI on its own is pretty scary; it’s even scarier when people get involved.” (Hugh for Alistair). Superintelligence – Idle Words . “Here’s the great Maciej Cegłowski on some older worries about AI, as we contemplate our newer worries about AI.” (Hugh for Mitch). Genesis Live Bataclan France 16mm January 10, 1973 (4K) – G Music – YouTube . “I have no idea whether or not you like the band Genesis. Especially the version of Genesis from the early 70s that featured Peter Gabriel on vocals (and, yes, that is Phil Collins on the drums). Is the music amazing? It sure is. Is the music weird? It sure is. But what makes this extra special is how clean and crisp this whole thing looks and sounds. It’s from 1973 (this is almost fifty years old!). So… here’s a really crazy music trip for you. It’s going to take you places. I promise.” (Mitch for Alistair). A trip to Montreal with Leonard Cohen in 1965 is a glimpse into a singular poetic mind – Aeon . “This may be one of the greatest finds on the Internet these days. Whether or not you’re a fan of Leonard Cohen, this is true time capsule. Not just of an incredible artist that will never be duplicated, but to see him – at such a young age – working. Plus, if you know Montreal and/or Westmount many of these scenes will leave you feeling such joy for a time and city that has changed so much over the years, but still (culturally) feels so vibrant (even in these times). This short documentary is about 45 minutes long and it’s all in black and white, but it left me with all of the warm and fuzzies about being an artist, this city that I love so much, and the pure nostalgia from a time that happened well before I even existed. Pure magic.” (Mitch for Hugh).

Feel free to share these links and add your picks on Twitter, Facebook, in the comments below or wherever you play.

Are you interested in what’s next? How to decode the future? I publish between 2-3 times per week and then the Six Pixels of Separation Podcast comes out every Sunday. Feel free to subscribe (and tell your friends): 

An Actual House Is Also An NFT – Tech Tuesday In Two Minutes

Buy The House Get The NFT.

That’s what a clever real estate agent in California came up with.
He’s auctioning off an actual house with a psychedelic piece of art (actually video) of the house.
Both the house and NFT are up for auction on OpenSea (one of the bigger NFT marketplace platforms).

This is more hype for NFTs than a new model of sales.

Still, it’s working.
We’re talking about it, aren’t we?

What’s that NFT thing again?

An NFT is a Non-Fungible Token.
Simpler: It’s a way to turn any digital item into a unique digital piece.
Think of it as digital provenance.

The full story is here: An Actual House Is An NFT Now (The Verge).

This is what Heather Backman and I discussed this morning over on Jack 103 FM for a couple of minutes.

What is Tech Tuesday?

If you ever find yourself wondering… What, exactly, is the point of TikTok? How can I make myself look better on a Zoom? Reddit? What’s that about? How do I help my kids be safer online? Who’s the latest creator and streamer that I should be checking out?

You are not alone.

Every Tuesday – for just a few minutes – I join Heather Backman (my old buddy from her days on CHOM FM) on the air at Jack 103 (Rogers Sports & Media) to give a quick blast about the current state of technology, media and Internet culture. We’re calling the segment Tech Tuesday (and we do it in just a few minutes).

Mitch Joel · An Actual House Is Also An NFT – Tech Tuesday – Jack 103 FM – April 20th, 2021

Subscribe to get it free in your inbox right here.

Once the segment goes live on Jack 103, I will post it here for you to listen in, learn, share and engage….

Martin Lindstrom Wants To End Bureaucracy – This Week’s Six Pixels of Separation Podcast

Episode #771 of Six Pixels of Separation is now live and ready for you to listen to.

When I first started getting interested in being a professional marketer, the work of Martin Lindstrom was always front and center… and for a good reason. Martin Lindstrom is one of the world’s leading brand and culture transformation experts. Time Magazine called him one of the “World’s 100 Most Influential People.” He’s also been on the Thinkers50 list for more than few years. Martin continues to be an in-demand public speaker, and has authored seven bestselling books that have been translated into 60 languages (if you have not checked out Brand Sense, Buy-ology, Small Data, and his latest, The Ministry of Common Sense, you definitely should). Martin is still a marketing expert, but has been expanding his thought leadership into the truism that business needs much more common sense, a lot less bureaucracy, red tape, and corporate mumbo jumbo. His work is both thoughtful and humorous. And, after reading his latest, you will be constantly asking yourself, “what happened to common sense?” Enjoy the conversation…

You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via iTunes): Six Pixels of Separation #771.

Before you go… if you enjoyed this, please subscribe (all new content arrives in your inbox). It’s easy, it’s free and it’s right here.

SPOS #771 – Martin Lindstrom Wants To End Bureaucracy

Welcome to episode #771 of Six Pixels of Separation.

Here it is: Six Pixels of Separation – Episode #771 – Host: Mitch Joel. When I first started getting interested in being a professional marketer, the work of Martin Lindstrom was always front and center… and for a good reason. Martin Lindstrom is one of the world’s leading brand and culture transformation experts. Time Magazine called him one of the “World’s 100 Most Influential People.” He’s also been on the Thinkers50 list for more than few years. Martin continues to be an in-demand public speaker, and has authored seven bestselling books that have been translated into 60 languages (if you have not checked out Brand Sense, Buy-ology, Small Data, and his latest, The Ministry of Common Sense, you definitely should). Martin is still a marketing expert, but has been expanding his thought leadership into the truism that business needs much more common sense, a lot less bureaucracy, red tape, and corporate mumbo jumbo. His work is both thoughtful and humorous. And, after reading his latest, you will be constantly asking yourself, “what happened to common sense?” Enjoy the conversation…

Running time: 55:46.Hello from beautiful Montreal.Subscribe over at Apple Podcasts.Please visit and leave comments on the blog – Six Pixels of Separation.Feel free to connect to me directly on Facebook here: Mitch Joel on Facebook.or you can connect on LinkedIn.…or on Twitter.Here is my conversation with Martin Lindstrom.The Ministry of Common Sense.Brand Sense.Buy-ology.Small Data.Follow Martin on Linkedin.Follow Martin on Instagram.Follow Martin on Twitter.This week’s music: David Usher ‘St. Lawrence River’.

Download the Podcast here: Six Pixels of Separation – Episode #771 – Host: Mitch Joel.

Before you go… if you enjoyed this, please subscribe (all new content arrives in your inbox). It’s easy, it’s free and it’s right here.

Six Links Worthy of Your Attention #564

Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (Solve for Interesting, Tilt the Windmill, Interesting Bits, HBS, chair of Strata, Startupfest, FWD50, and Scaletechconf; author of Lean Analytics and some other books), Hugh McGuire (Rebus Foundation, PressBooks, LibriVox) and I decided that every week the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person “must see.”

Check out these six links that we’re recommending to one another: 

Lauren Dobson-Hughes: Are we actually a country? – The Line. “Nice guys finish last, or so the saying goes. In Canada’s case, we’re not last by a long stretch—but we are in the middle of the pack – vaccine-wise – and relying on our good nature isn’t a particularly defensible strategy. So says this Macleans op-ed, which asks some serious questions about Canada as a country. European-minded, attached to the US, we’re a country of compromise, and that’s being tested by global health and commercial pressures.” (Alistair for Hugh). Michael Levin – The Electrical Blueprints That Orchestrate Life – TED . “I’ve been an avid reader of Robert Sapolsky, the polymath Stanford professor whose life work has been to unify emergent complexity — from a neural impulse, to the endocrine system, to social pressures, to natural selection. In that time, new technologies like brain imaging, and research into bacterial biomes, have reshaped what we think make us us. This interview by Michael Levin takes that to the next level—the electrical, rather than chemical, signaling between cells. A hundred years from now, we’ll look back on today the same way we look back at nineteenth-century medicine, and see just how much of our current understanding is brutal and uninformed. As Sapolsky says, ‘Free will is just biology we haven’t discovered yet.’” (Alistair for Mitch). 8 year olds have to go through this – reddit . “I’ve never heard of reduced price lunch, a federally supported program in the US where kids who live (substantially) below the poverty line are eligible for lunch at $0.40/day. Turns out sometimes when their parents don’t have anything, kids don’t even have $0.40 per day. And when that happens, the kids are not allowed to eat. The stories in the comments in this thread are just incredible: about the lunch lady who was fired because she regularly covered the cost for kids who didn’t have their 40 cents. One person writes about a time they didn’t have their $0.40 and, ‘they made me sit at the last table in the cafeteria, had one of those big cardboard dividers put around me, and had half a warm tuna sandwich and 5 brown apple slices.’ Sometimes you wonder a little bit about the sanity of the systems that run the most powerful and wealthy country world.” (Hugh for Alistair).  Teacher “farts” on Zoom – Emma Ginder – YouTube . “There comes a time, after a year of lockdown and masks and endless stats about infections and hospitalizations and vaccines, after isolation and 20,000 Zoom calls, when the only thing that can make things better is kids’ reactions to a teacher farting on a Zoom call.” (Hugh for Mitch). Can Clubhouse Keep The Party Goin? The Verge . “With each passing week, I find my feelings for Clubhouse vacillate between loving the live interactions, meeting new people, getting more ‘live’ reps in for my communication skills, and not loving the weird ‘influencers’ who command million of followers on the platform that are both not compelling to listen to and hold court as if Clubhouse is already an established media entity with cultural norms (and with those many followers there are usually only a few hundred people in these rooms talking about the future of NFTs, how to 10x your business, or how to master Instagram). It can be both lovely and sad in the same experience. I’m not alone. And, as with all of the cycles that social media platforms go through, many are asking whether there’s a ‘there’ there. I’m still spending time on the platform, and I’m having some great engagements, but I wonder if the thrill is gone (or fleeting) and/or if those who aren’t pre-disposed to spend their time studying our digital culture are really going to stick with it?” (Mitch for Alistair).  Floating Wizard Desk – David Lundell – YouTube . “I’m not in the least bit handy. Like… not at all. A door in my home recently broke, and not only could I not fix it… I didn’t even know who to call (what is the name of a person who fixes doors?). It’s that bad. Now, if I was handy… I would would do amazing projects like this…” (Mitch for Hugh).

Feel free to share these links and add your picks on Twitter, Facebook, in the comments below or wherever you play.

Are you interested in what’s next? How to decode the future? I publish between 2-3 times per week and then the Six Pixels of Separation Podcast comes out every Sunday. Feel free to subscribe (and tell your friends ;): 

The Great Crypto Heist – Tech Tuesday In Two Minutes

It’s a story that should be a James Bond movie… or Mission: Impossible.

High speed boat chases in the early morning, as smugglers try to get their goods into a market and out of the hands of the authority.
Gold bullion? Drugs? Jewelry? Contraband?
Nope.
GPUs.

What’s a GPU?

A CPU is the central processing unit of a computer.
A GPU is the graphics processing unit of a computer.
Not just for rendering graphics, but now the GPU is used for everything from artificial intelligence to mining for cryptocurrency.
Plus, it’s happening is a world where there is a shortage of computer parts and hardware.

The plot thickens.

Hong Kong Customs and Excise Department nabbed a fishing boat outside of Honk Kong’s airport, and busted up a smuggling ring that was trying to get 300 Nvidia CMP 30HX graphic cards into the black market.
The boat managed to get away, but the boat owners caught.
Crypto mining seems to be the big push in the GPU smuggling business.
These GPUs are dedicated for professional mining (according to Nvidia’s website).
What a world we live in.

The full story is here: Smugglers transported 300 GPUs in a Mission Impossible-style speed boat chase (via DigitalTrends).

This is what Heather Backman and I discussed this morning over on Jack 103 FM for a couple of minutes.

What is Tech Tuesday?

If you ever find yourself wondering… What, exactly, is the point of TikTok? How can I make myself look better on a Zoom? Reddit? What’s that about? How do I help my kids be safer online? Who’s the latest creator and streamer that I should be checking out?

You are not alone.

Every Tuesday – for just a few minutes – I join Heather Backman (my old buddy from her days on CHOM FM) on the air at Jack 103 (Rogers Sports & Media) to give a quick blast about the current state of technology, media and Internet culture. We’re calling the segment Tech Tuesday (and we do it in just a few minutes).

Mitch Joel · Tech Tuesday – The Great Crypto Heist – April 13th, 2021

Subscribe to get it free in your inbox right here.

Once the segment goes live on Jack 103, I will post it here for you to listen in, learn, share and engage….

Charlene Walters On Launching Your Inner Entrepreneur – This Week’s Six Pixels of Separation Podcast

Episode #770 of Six Pixels of Separation is now live and ready for you to listen to.

Women and people of color are underfunded and under-index when it comes to entrepreneurship. There are both systemic and societal reasons for this (none of them are fair or reasonable). This needs to change. Charlene Walters is here to help. Charlene is an entrepreneurship coach, branding mentor, author and speaker. She developed a Digital Entrepreneurship MBA program, serves as a mentor to many, and is constantly fighting hard to get more diverse voices to start their own business. Her new book is titled, Launch Your Inner Entrepreneur – 10 Mindset Shifts for Women to Take Action, Unleash Creativity, and Achieve Financial Success. The truth is that the book’s content is valuable for all of us. According to Charlene, “36% of all small business or franchise owners are women, and there are 13 million female-owned businesses contributing to more than $1.8 trillion in revenue. Now, with a fast-changing economy making traditional employment unsteady, there’ s never been a better time for becoming a fempreneur.” There’s also never been a better time to support fempreneurs, and create a more equitable marketplace for all of us. Enjoy the conversation…

You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via iTunes): Six Pixels of Separation #770.

Before you go… if you enjoyed this, please subscribe (all new content arrives in your inbox). It’s easy, it’s free and it’s right here.

SPOS #770 – Charlene Walters On Launching Your Inner Entrepreneur

Welcome to episode #770 of Six Pixels of Separation.

Here it is: Six Pixels of Separation – Episode #770 – Host: Mitch Joel. Women and people of color are underfunded and under-index when it comes to entrepreneurship. There are both systemic and societal reasons for this (none of them are fair or reasonable). This needs to change. Charlene Walters is here to help. Charlene is an entrepreneurship coach, branding mentor, author and speaker. She developed a Digital Entrepreneurship MBA program, serves as a mentor to many, and is constantly fighting hard to get more diverse voices to start their own business. Her new book is titled, Launch Your Inner Entrepreneur – 10 Mindset Shifts for Women to Take Action, Unleash Creativity, and Achieve Financial Success. The truth is that the book’s content is valuable for all of us. According to Charlene, “36% of all small business or franchise owners are women, and there are 13 million female-owned businesses contributing to more than $1.8 trillion in revenue. Now, with a fast-changing economy making traditional employment unsteady, there’ s never been a better time for becoming a fempreneur.” There’s also never been a better time to support fempreneurs, and create a more equitable marketplace for all of us. Enjoy the conversation…

Running time: 49:02.Hello from beautiful Montreal.Subscribe over at Apple Podcasts.Please visit and leave comments on the blog – Six Pixels of Separation.Feel free to connect to me directly on Facebook here: Mitch Joel on Facebook.or you can connect on LinkedIn.…or on Twitter.Here is my conversation with Charlene Walters.Launch Your Inner Entrepreneur – 10 Mindset Shifts for Women to Take Action, Unleash Creativity, and Achieve Financial Success.Follow Charlene on Instagram.Follow Charlene on LinkedIn.Follow Charlene on Twitter.This week’s music: David Usher ‘St. Lawrence River’.

Download the Podcast here: Six Pixels of Separation – Episode #770 – Host: Mitch Joel.

Before you go… if you enjoyed this, please subscribe (all new content arrives in your inbox). It’s easy, it’s free and it’s right here.

Six Links Worthy of Your Attention #563

Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (Solve for Interesting, Tilt the Windmill, Interesting Bits, HBS, chair of Strata, Startupfest, FWD50, and Scaletechconf; author of Lean Analytics and some other books), Hugh McGuire (Rebus Foundation, PressBooks, LibriVox) and I decided that every week the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person “must see.”

Check out these six links that we’re recommending to one another: 

Bidenomics, explained – Noah Smith – Noahpinion. “Noah Smith has an uncanny knack for unpacking complicated issues. While I’ve avoided breathless punditry for the last few years, I’ve found two amazing posts this week that compare the state of American and Chinese society. In this one, Smith speculates that the current presidency will lead to a two-track economy: Export powerhouses and domestic employers. It remains to be seen whether this shift from the Reaganomics philosophy of past administrations can survive cut-throat partisanship, and the efforts of adversaries to sow chaos in democracies.” (Alistair for Hugh). 2020 Letter – Dan Wang . “Dan Wang‘s job is to understand China’s technology industry, and how fast the country is changing. He avoids the usual oversimplifications and hot takes; if you want to understand where China’s headed in terms of tech, economics, and public policy, he writes one long letter a year on the state of things. Read this and Noah Smith’s piece (above), and you’ll have a decent perspective on how two rival superpowers are tackling digital expansion and infrastructure spending.” (Alistair for Mitch). Is the Standard Model of Physics Now Broken? – Scientific American . “The latest possibly huge discovery in particle physics.” (Hugh for Alistair). The Coal Plant Next Door – ProPublica . “Coal is dirty stuff.” (Hugh for Mitch). Herman Miller’s new office line is the anti-cubicle – Fast Company . “I have several (and self-admittedly, they are weird) interests. Comic book collecting (weird). Passion for music created on the electric bass (weird). Collecting Funko Pops of bass players (weirder). There are others. Fine, I will give you one more: offices. I like office supplies. I like office design. I even like office furniture. Now, for some context: I have an office that is about a ten minute walk from my house. It’s just my business partner and me. We haven’t been since the pandemic started (so, that’s over a year now). We pay attention to great work spaces. We want our space to look (and, more importantly, feel) great. If we’re going to be spending so much of our time at work, shouldn’t it feel great? Now, we need to think about spaces that look and feel great, while also being post-pandemic friendly (and realistic). So, take a look at this. How does it make you feel? For me? This is cold, scary and not too welcoming (it also feels like I have to rush to get work done and get out here). But, maybe, that’s what our work space will have to be for safety? So is the future of the office a space where we come together simply to make sure that we don’t get too close?” (Mitch for Alistair). Hemingway – A Film By Ken Burns and Lynne Novice – PBS . “The impact of one voice when it is put into words can change the world (or help us to see the world in another light). It’s hard for most of us to understand just how much the written word and books changed when Ernest Hemingway started publishing. His accomplishment and his life are this weird mixture of brilliance, challenges, and a look at when times were so very different. This is a new docu-series by PBS, and if you like writing, books, publishing, and the life of an artist, this is a series that you do not want to miss. I have become deeply enraptured by this series. I think that you will as well.” (Mitch for Hugh).

Feel free to share these links and add your picks on Twitter, Facebook, in the comments below or wherever you play.

Are you interested in what’s next? How to decode the future? I publish between 2-3 times per week and then the Six Pixels of Separation Podcast comes out every Sunday. Feel free to subscribe (and tell your friends ;): 

The Amazon That We Want – Tech Tuesday In Two Minutes

“How a society treats its most vulnerable is always the measure of its humanity.” – Ambassador Matthew Rycroft of the UK Mission to the UN at the Security Council Open Debate on Children and Armed Conflict.

I believe those words to be true.
Not just for society, but for the businesses that we run as well.
The bigger the business, the harder this may be to put into action.
Or is it?

Amazon’s growth creates issues.

This is nothing new.
There is some good…
Amazon did give all employees a $15 minimum wage when the rest of the world didn’t.
Amazon did give employees health care when the rest of the world didn’t.
“Amazon concedes some of its drivers ‘peeing in bottles’ to make quota,” is not the headline that a company wants to see.

But here we are. Employees have to pee in bottles?

Employees are working so hard that they don’t have time to go to the bathroom?
Drivers are struggling to find available bathrooms during a pandemic?
Drivers are contracted through a third-party company that wants to keep Amazon’s business by pushing their drivers to deliver more?
Amazon has more than 1700 delivery-service partners, according to the article above.
That’s more than 400,000 drivers who deliver goods to your door… faster and cheaper.

Amazon has apologized and will look for solutions.

This isn’t just an Amazon issue, but when you’re that big, you are an easy target.
I hope that Amazon does make changes.
I hope those changes get adopted across all industries.
I hope that we can do better and be better in this world.
I don’t want my package to be cheaper or faster if this means that employees don’t have time for bathroom breaks.
It’s just not worth it.
And, this issue could say more about us, than the actions of Amazon.

This is what Heather Backman and I discussed this morning over on Jack 103 FM for a couple of minutes.

What is Tech Tuesday?

If you ever find yourself wondering… What, exactly, is the point of TikTok? How can I make myself look better on a Zoom? Reddit? What’s that about? How do I help my kids be safer online? Who’s the latest creator and streamer that I should be checking out?

You are not alone.

Every Tuesday – for just a few minutes – I join Heather Backman (my old buddy from her days on CHOM FM) on the air at Jack 103 (Rogers Sports & Media) to give a quick blast about the current state of technology, media and Internet culture. We’re calling the segment Tech Tuesday (and we do it in just a few minutes).

Mitch Joel · Tech Tuesday – Jack 103 FM – Amazon Drivers Are Peeing In Bottles – April 6th 2021

Subscribe to get it free in your inbox right here.

Once the segment goes live on Jack 103, I will post it here for you to listen in, learn, share and engage….