Mitch Joel's Blog: Six Pixels of Separation, page 69

Six Links Worthy of Your Attention #647

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: 

The end of the system of the world – Noahpinion – Noah Smith. “Clearly I’m just full of fun and distraction today! Noah Smith has written a brillant, sweeping piece on how human society functions, and why that’s changing. I kicked off day two of FWD50 with a talk on tech and government — specifically, how the printing press caused the replacement of the monarchy with the republic, and how the Internet will replace the republic with something new. Nobody can predict the future, but this is as good a guess as any I’ve seen.” (Alistair for Hugh).100 years after his birth, Kurt Vonnegut is more relevant than ever to science – Science. “Seems timely, and it’s Kurt Vonnegut‘s anniversary. ‘Science,’ he said, ‘is magic that works.’ In this era of anti-science and fictional facts, it’s important to celebrate fiction writers who helped us think about technology and progress. His lessons on thoughtful progress can be applied not just to science, but to the technology industry, which — particularly in the last couple of weeks — has not been heeding the call.” (Alistair for Mitch). The Body of Thought: On Markus Gabriel’s “The Meaning of Thought” – Los Angeles Review of Books . “What if thinking is just a sense like sight and smell?” (Hugh for Alistair). Libraries Are Launching Their Own Local Music Streaming Platforms – Motherboard by Vice . “And they call it .. radio! Cool idea though, I’ve always thought local libraries should focus on surfacing the information (books, music) from and about their communities. First I’ve heard of local music streaming.” (Hugh for Mitch). They made a material that doesn’t exist on Earth. That’s only the start of the story – Planet Money – NPR . “The headline alone should capture your attention and imagination. I do love science stories like this. True innovation and deep thinking… and experimentation that leads down a whole bunch of unpaved roads… and all of that just opens things up to a million more questions about the universe around us. TLDR: ‘Two teams of scientists… recently announced that they managed to manufacture, in a lab, a material that does not exist naturally on Earth. It — until now — has only been found in meteorites.’ This is the amazing story.” (Mitch for Alistair). They Want to Kill Libraries – Cory Doctorow . “Candidly, I don’t even know where to start with this one. Every sentence into every paragraph is both quotable and jaw-dropping (and do follow the links as well). As you know, I’m the Chair of the Executive Council for my local public library… and I’ve always loved everything there is to love about the library. Sadly, most people still think that the library is a place to loan books (or various forms of physical media). They also think of libraries as the place that is quiet (instead of a vibrant town square that has everything from radio stations to cafes inside of them). Libraries truly are (or can be) the ultimate ‘third space.’ So… please… read this piece. Share this article. Visit your local library (check out what they offer in digital services as well). And, more importantly, when you think about all of this talk about book banning or trying to get a library shut down, just remember that those same people give their kids (who they claim to be protecting) unbridled access to the Internet. Oh, the irony… oh, the tragedy…” (Mitch for Hugh).

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

Disruption Is A Team Sport

Too many people are pointing to Twitter‘s roll-out of verified accounts (for all who are willing to pay) as the problem.

It’s not the problem.
We are the problem.
If you see a tweet, and it causes a collapse of a stock price, and think it’s because of Twitter… I have some news for you…

This is April Fool’s Day and we’re letting the trolls make us fools… again and again.

Look at the Twitter username on these accounts… look at the profile… look at the previous content that has been created by these spoof accounts.
If you’re not media literate, you can’t blame the media (or Twitter) for that.
True, Twitter has made the blue checkmark some kind of Pavlovian reaction for us to blindly trust these profiles, but still… in a world where everyone knows that anyone can buy verification, how embarrassingly dumb can we all be?
And, if that kind of troll tweet can crash the stock market… what does that say about investors… the stock market… capitalism… your investments (if you’re even lucky enough to have those), and our entire economy?
Don’t the investment “experts” do their own and thorough research?

This just proves one thing: We are bankrupt.

We are media bankrupt.
We are research bankrupt.
We are trust bankrupt.
We are attention bankrupt.
We are intellectually bankrupt.
We are digitally bankrupt.

You would think that a global pandemic would give us a moment (or close to three years) to give pause.

You would think that a global pandemic might make us come together… and – gasp! – accept our differences and co-exist.
You would think that a global pandemic would give us more time and space to think – for ourselves and about others.
You would think that a global pandemic would make us more understanding of others (who don’t think or believe the same things that we do).

We are all just digital rubberneckers.

Slowing down on the information superhighway to look at the bloody digital car crashes.
We are celebrating individuals as great disruptors.
We believe that fame from a strong personal brand is the future (we call it “The Creator Economy” now).

Have we considered that fame through online influencers may be one of the worst indicators we’ve ever used to define “success”?

Beyond influencers, the “great disruptors” of our time now seem responsible for the biggest imbalance of wealth, power and innovation that the world has ever known.
And, this is saying a lot in a world where many of these disruptors are also giving away their wealth, or are more philanthropic than 99% of the population.
We are celebrating fake tweets that collapses our belief in others (individuals and businesses) as if it’s all just a funny meme.

This is not the path forward.

This is not the way we use technology to make us better – as a society.
We are way too focused on individuals and ourselves.
We are way too focused on how much volume, followers, likes and shares individuals have.

Here’s the newsflash:

Innovation and disruption is a team sport.
This team sport requires the highest level of inclusion (think diversity).
It’s not about who makes the loudest tweet.
It’s about how teams (re: people) come together to create something better than what we had before.
It’s not about new, disruptive or innovative.

It’s about “better”.

It’s about “better” for everyone… not just a small segment of our population.
If Web3, crypto and blockchain is the future, because it equalizes everyone and makes it easy to trace who has bought and shared something – including the ‘what’ and the ‘when’ – then why is it so hard to find billions of stolen dollars?
More importantly, if this decentralized system is better for all of society, why must we use all of our centralized systems (from banking to legal and beyond) to fix every decentralized issue?

We deserve better than this.

The problem is that we can’t demand better of others.
We need to demand better of ourselves first.
We need to create this future for ourselves…

For everyone.

Dr. Heidi K. Gardner On Smarter Collaboration At Work – This Week’s Six Pixels of Separation Podcast

Episode #853 of Six Pixels of Separation – The ThinkersOne Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to

If you’re studying the current (and future) state of work, there is no doubt that when we talk about “back to office,” the main reason to do this is for better collaboration. But what does that mean… and is that true? Well, let’s ask the expert on smarter collaboration, Dr. Heidi K. Gardner. Heidi is an advisor, keynote speaker, and facilitator for organizations. Named by Thinkers50 as a Next Generation Business Guru, she is a Distinguished Fellow at Harvard Law School and former professor at Harvard Business School. She is currently the faculty chair and instructor in multiple executive education programs at both institutions. She has authored (or co-authored) more than 100 books, chapters, case studies, and articles. This includes the Washington Post best-selling book, Smart Collaboration – How Professionals and Their Firms Succeed by Breaking Down Silos and the newly published, Smarter Collaboration – A New Approach to Breaking Down Barriers and Transforming Work. Her research has received the Academy of Management’s prize for Outstanding Practical Implications for Management and has been selected multiple times for Harvard Business Review’s “best of” collections. If you’re trying to figure out how to make the work flow better in your work, please take a listen. Enjoy the conversation…

You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via Apple Podcast or whatever platform you may choose):  #853 of Six Pixels of Separation – The ThinkersOne Podcast.

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 #853 – Dr. Heidi K. Gardner On Smarter Collaboration At Work

Welcome to episode #853 of Six Pixels of Separation – The ThinkersOne Podcast.

Here it is: Six Pixels of Separation – The ThinkersOne Podcast – Episode #853. If you’re studying the current (and future) state of work, there is no doubt that when we talk about “back to office,” the main reason to do this is for better collaboration. But what does that mean… and is that true? Well, let’s ask the expert on smarter collaboration, Dr. Heidi K. Gardner. Heidi is an advisor, keynote speaker, and facilitator for organizations. Named by Thinkers50 as a Next Generation Business Guru, she is a Distinguished Fellow at Harvard Law School and former professor at Harvard Business School. She is currently the faculty chair and instructor in multiple executive education programs at both institutions. She has authored (or co-authored) more than 100 books, chapters, case studies, and articles. This includes the Washington Post best-selling book, Smart Collaboration – How Professionals and Their Firms Succeed by Breaking Down Silos and the newly published, Smarter Collaboration – A New Approach to Breaking Down Barriers and Transforming Work. Her research has received the Academy of Management’s prize for Outstanding Practical Implications for Management and has been selected multiple times for Harvard Business Review’s “best of” collections. If you’re trying to figure out how to make the work flow better in your work, please take a listen. Enjoy the conversation…

Running time: 52:46.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.Check out ThinkersOne.or you can connect on LinkedIn.…or on Twitter.Here is my conversation with Dr. Heidi K. Gardner.Smarter Collaboration – A New Approach to Breaking Down Barriers and Transforming Work.Smart Collaboration – How Professionals and Their Firms Succeed by Breaking Down Silos.Gardner & Co.Follow Heidi on LinkedIn.Follow Heidi on Twitter.This week’s music: David Usher ‘St. Lawrence River’.

Download the Podcast here: Six Pixels of Separation – The ThinkersOne Podcast – Episode #853.

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 #646

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: 

Hummingbird Clock. “Easily the most annoying website I’ve experienced lately. Alternating Current power fluctuates around a particular frequency, but it ‘hums’ tiny variations. And this can be used to pinpoint time, which makes it possible to learn when something was recorded. Dystopian? Sure. Science? Yes! Here’s a site that explains and demonstrates it all.” (Alistair for Hugh). When Everything Happened So Much – Slate . “Bring back Weird Twitter. It was a fun time, before we used it to score points. The mass stampede to Mastodon may be a move to a federated web — Web 3 by way of Web 1 — or it may be yet another button to tap. But maybe it’ll give us a taste of the weird performance art that heralded the dawn of microblogging, a day we didn’t measure our worth in likes, followers, or subscribes. Bring back horse_ebooks!” (Alistair for Mitch). Remembering an “effervescently affable man” – Kurt Vonnegut at 100 – The Critic . “It’s a bit surprising to think of it this way, but I would guess that no writer has been more influential on me than Kurt Vonnegut. I say that with a little bit of embarrassment: Vonnegut is (was?) tailor-made for left-leaning, book-loving 15-year-olds who like to mix their sense of teen-aged despair with a good dose of wry (often potty( humour. Breakfast of Champions was the first book of his I read, which included his delightful drawing of an asshole (get the t-shirt here). I read his war novel, Slaughterhouse 5, probably ten times from ages 15 to 25, and each time, as I got older, I understood better the trauma that underpinned the book. His essays, particularly those collected in Palm Sunday, shaped much of thoughts on writing, and, frankly, life. In addition to being funny and sharp and amazingly irreverent, Vonnegut was always deeply kind in his writing. Something we should all try to be. This year Vonnegut turned 100.” (Hugh for Alistair). The Case Against the Twitter Apology – The New Yorker . “Twitter surely is the best document — maybe cause? — of how we’ve all gone bananas. Long, insightful essay on the fraught world of the apology in the Age of Twitter.” (Hugh for Mitch). Twitter tells advertisers that user growth is at ‘all-time highs’ under Elon Musk – The Verge . “Lots of Twitter talk this week… that’s for sure. This is an interesting take, with a slight slant. I’ve already stated my case for Twitter, but I found this fascinating. On one side you have major mass media and certain ‘influencers’ calling this ’Twexit’, on the other hand, there is independent data that is suggesting Twitter is growing by new users and usage – at an all-time high. The real questions are this: Who is leaving? Who is joining? Who is ramping up their usage? And, the answer to those questions will dictate the future of Twitter… a united social media or a deeply polarized and divisive platform. All of this is very concerning… especially as Elon dances with the thought of bankrupcy.” (Mitch for Alistair). Social Media Is Dead – Motherboard by Vice . “Oh… don’t get me started on any article with the title, ‘XYZ is dead.’ I know where this is headed… and, yes, it goes there. Frustrating? Absolutely! But still, an interesting read. It reminds me of how purist and precious we can be with our words and the buckets that we put ideas into. Social media is changing… and will change… that’s for sure. Social media is dead? Pa-lease. The ability for individuals to use technology as a means to both connect and share ideas is a concept that will always be a part of our social fabric. Whether we like the new way of doing it in comparison to the past or not.” (Mitch for Hugh).

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

The Trouble With Twitter (Has Little To Do With Elon Musk)

I like Twitter.

There, I said it.
I’ve been on the platform since 2007 (Elon joined in 2009).
I’ve met, engaged and connected with many people who are now friends (in our protein forms) after meeting on Twitter.
I have lists about areas of interest that guide my thinking and make me a better person.
I choose who I follow.
I don’t block anyone.
I simply don’t follow those who engage in troll escapades and don’t satiate my curiosity.

Social media is a choice.

Social media is not mass media.
Social media is millions of – to quote David Weinberger – “small pieces loosely joined.”
Social media is the ability for content to navigate these little connections (sometimes to scale).
In the second quarter of this year, Twitter had $1.17 billion in revenue with a market cap of $41 billion.
That’s nothing to sneeze at, but it pales in comparison to their competitors.
Twitter’s ad business (which is their main revenue line, unless they’re doing something more robust economically with everyone’s data) has been puttering along for many years.

Simply put, in a world of digital advertising giants, Twitter is not often the “must have” on the media mix budgets.

Twitter has failed (mostly) with their larger acquisitions (see: TweetDeck, Vine, Trendrr, Twitpic, Periscope, etc..)
Twitter has not had much evolution in terms of innovation (and that has not led to new markets being entered or a significant growth in user base or new revenue models).
Getting beyond the 280 character limit into audio, video, images, etc… has, for the most part, been a non-event for Twitter in a world where TikTok, Instagram, podcasting, newsletters, short-form text content (Axios, Morning Brew, Substack), have excelled.

There has been too much focus these days on content moderation, politics, and charging for profile verification.

It’s not like we’ve seen these sweeping and improved changes on any of the other/competitive social media platforms.
Not by a long shot.
So, is the current Twitter rage truly about Twitter or Elon?

The not-so-secret Twitter secret is this…

Twitter’s greatest success is the media attention that it generates.
Full stop.
This article is no exception.

And here’s my larger thought:

The only reason Twitter is in the media as much as it is, is because the media has chosen to focus on it and the content that comes from it.
Twitter is the lightbulb. Mass media is the bug.
What is the actual cultural impact, and value of Twitter?
Next to nothing compared to what it was in the past (think: Arab Spring).
It has allowed those with a voice to simply communicate to their audience in a direct way (without the need for mass media and intermediaries).
Because of this, it gets even more mass media attention.
It’s actually not a very large platform in comparison to others (when we discuss the FAANG companies – Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google – there is no “T” for Twitter… but there should be a “M” for Microsoft).
It has very limited reach in the purest way social networks would measure reach.

So…

Twitter is a media darling.
Twitter is like an “influencer” (or a culmination of many influencers?) – able to punch above its weight-class by simply making a spectacle of itself… because it’s easy to amplify a simplified statement in 280 characters.
Twitter is like a reality TV “celebrity.”
The mass media loves this kind of content (the premastication of content and thoughts).
Twitter has been languishing long before Elon made his initial investments in the company back in 2017.
You can choose to leave Twitter.
You can choose to stay on Twitter.

Regardless…

Twitter needs to clean itself up.Twitter needs to find new (and more) users who care enough to keep using it.Twitter needs to leverage that to amp up its advertising revenue (attention = advertising dollars).Twitter needs to figure out new models of monetization. Twitter needs to figure out new models of innovation.

Now, remove the name “Twitter” from those last five points, and insert whatever social network you’re currently using to complain about Twitter.
The same could be said for all of them.
You can let the world know on other platforms – that have the same issues as Twitter – your disdain for Twitter.

I’m not sure how that solves much of anything…

For you…
And for Twitter.
And for other social media networks.
And for the betterment of how we use technology and, ultimately, treat one another.

I just launched a new business called, ThinkersOne . It’s a unique way for organizations to buy bite-sized and personalized thought leadership video content (live and pre-recorded) from the best Thinkers in the world. If you’re looking to add insight, excitement, and big smarts to your regularly scheduled meetings, corporate events, company off-sites, “lunch & learns” and beyond, I think you will love this. We have democratized access to the smartest people by providing a platform for these incredible and personalized “moments in time.” Will you check it out ?

Tom Peters On What Truly Matters At Work – This Week’s Six Pixels of Separation Podcast

Episode #852 of Six Pixels of Separation – The ThinkersOne Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to

There are few true business thinkers that have impacted my life – at every twist and turn – in the way that Tom Peters has. He is the patron saint of management strategy and business thinking. Full stop. When I think of Tom Peters, there is only one word that comes to mind: Legend. He is that. He is the “oracle of business” to me, personally (and for many others) when it comes to business, business book writing, public speaking, personal branding, and how to show up. If you want to know how much his work and thinking has impacted my life, you can click back about ten years to when I wrote a very public love letter to him (here it is: Dear Tom Peters). From the moment I first read The Project 50 – close to twenty years ago – to every book, program and article that he’s put out, I have been a fan. To say that I studied his public speaking style and adopted it for my own would not be a lie. A bio for Tom Peters? Where to begin? In 1982 he co-authored the seminal business book, In Search Of Excellence, which has been named one of the top three business books of the century by NPR. For my dollar, he’s changed almost everything I thought I knew about business through a series of books called, The Reinventing Work Series 50 List Books. In 2003, I devoured Re-Imagine! Business Excellence In A Disruptive Age, and it still sits within arm’s reach on my desk (one of the only books to do so). In 1987 he wrote the article, The Brand Called You, in Fast Company and it – literally – ushered in the era of individuals as brands (so, don’t believe those who think that they created the notion of a personal brand… it was Tom). His list of accolades and awards could fill a book. About a year ago, he claimed that, Excellence Now – Extreme Humanism, would be his (gasp!) last book. Thankfully, he just published another gem: Tom Peters’ Compact Guide to Excellence. This is another one of Tom’s small books that packs a massive pop. It is filled with exhilarating quotes that will inspire you to recognize what truly matters at work. Tom compiled these gems of wisdom from those down in the trenches creating extraordinary places to work. In this episode, we discuss everything from new work spaces to equity, and what really matters as we toil through our work. I am also very proud that Tom is active on ThinkersOne. Enjoy the conversation…

You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via Apple Podcast or whatever platform you may choose):  #852 of Six Pixels of Separation – The ThinkersOne Podcast.

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 #852 – Tom Peters On What Truly Matters At Work

Welcome to episode #852 of Six Pixels of Separation – The ThinkersOne Podcast.

Here it is: Six Pixels of Separation – The ThinkersOne Podcast – Episode #852. There are few true business thinkers that have impacted my life – at every twist and turn – in the way that Tom Peters has. He is the patron saint of management strategy and business thinking. Full stop. When I think of Tom Peters, there is only one word that comes to mind: Legend. He is that. He is the “oracle of business” to me, personally (and for many others) when it comes to business, business book writing, public speaking, personal branding, and how to show up. If you want to know how much his work and thinking has impacted my life, you can click back about ten years to when I wrote a very public love letter to him (here it is: Dear Tom Peters). From the moment I first read The Project 50 – close to twenty years ago – to every book, program and article that he’s put out, I have been a fan. To say that I studied his public speaking style and adopted it for my own would not be a lie. A bio for Tom Peters? Where to begin? In 1982 he co-authored the seminal business book, In Search Of Excellence, which has been named one of the top three business books of the century by NPR. For my dollar, he’s changed almost everything I thought I knew about business through a series of books called, The Reinventing Work Series 50 List Books. In 2003, I devoured Re-Imagine! Business Excellence In A Disruptive Age, and it still sits within arm’s reach on my desk (one of the only books to do so). In 1987 he wrote the article, The Brand Called You, in Fast Company and it – literally – ushered in the era of individuals as brands (so, don’t believe those who think that they created the notion of a personal brand… it was Tom). His list of accolades and awards could fill a book. About a year ago, he claimed that, Excellence Now – Extreme Humanism, would be his (gasp!) last book. Thankfully, he just published another gem: Tom Peters’ Compact Guide to Excellence. This is another one of Tom’s small books that packs a massive pop. It is filled with exhilarating quotes that will inspire you to recognize what truly matters at work. Tom compiled these gems of wisdom from those down in the trenches creating extraordinary places to work. In this episode, we discuss everything from new work spaces to equity, and what really matters as we toil through our work. I am also very proud that Tom is active on ThinkersOne. Enjoy the conversation…

Running time: 53:56.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.Check out ThinkersOne.or you can connect on LinkedIn.…or on Twitter.Here is my conversation with Tom Peters.Tom Peters’ Compact Guide to Excellence.Excellence Now – Extreme Humanism.The Project 50.In Search Of Excellence.Re-Imagine! Business Excellence In A Disruptive Age.The Brand Called You.The Reinventing Work Series 50 List Books.Check out Tom on ThinkersOne.Follow Tom on Twitter.This week’s music: David Usher ‘St. Lawrence River’.

Download the Podcast here: Six Pixels of Separation – The ThinkersOne Podcast – Episode #852.

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 #645

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: 

The Commodordion. “A bit of a palate-cleanser this time: Linus Akesson likes to build weird instruments. Here’s an 8-bit accordion: When wind flows through the bellows, it measures wind speed (how he did this is a pretty interesting story in itself, included in this post). And that information is sent to a pair of computers that play the melody and accompaniment. Genius!” (Alistair for Hugh). What I learned as a hired consultant to autodidact physicists – Aeon . “If you want to do physics, there’s no way to avoid the math. But that doesn’t stop people from trying. Researcher, Sabine Hossenfelder, received so many quirky, uninformed, or just plain curious messages from amateurs claiming to have cracked physics’ hardest problems, she launched a business to listen to them.” (Alistair for Mitch). Huge Cameco deal makes it a nuclear giant, too – Saskatoon Star Phoenix . “The history of nuclear energy is fascinating, largely for what didn’t happen rather than what did. While nuclear promised emission free, inexpensive energy, public fear driven by disasters such as Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and more recently, Fukushima, has meant no new nuclear power plants were built in North America between ~1975 and 2010. This all despite very few actual deaths attributed to nuclear power including disasters. An executive at Electricite de France (still hugely committed to nuclear power) once told me that living within a 10km radius of coal-fired power plant is equivalent to smoking a pack a day of cigarettes in terms of health outcomes; whereas nuclear was the safest of all the power sources. Climate change, and more recently security concerns driven by Russia’s control of natural gas and oil supplies in Europe have revived nuclear as a viable option. Cameco, a Canadian uranium mining company, has decided to buy the whole supply chain, purchasing Westinghouse, a major nuclear services business (along with partner Brookfield Renewable Partners).” (Hugh for Alistair). Canadian CPI massively underestimates housing costs – Howe Street . “We’ve heard for the past 20 years that inflation was minimal, until suddenly in the past year it has exploded. One of the curiosities about the low inflation story we’ve been told and been telling ourselves for the past 20 years is that the calculations don’t account very well for cost of housing. Specifically, Statistics Canada (responsible for calculating inflation in Canada), doesn’t include house/building/apartment purchase prices in its inflation calculations. It takes a while for those higher purchase prices to work their way through the system, but renters in my neighbourhood have now pay 3x what I paid for rent in 2002. That’s started to work its way, far too late, into inflation calculations. As Groucho Marx said: ‘Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?'” (Hugh for Mitch). Mastodon gained 70,000 users after Musk’s Twitter takeover. I joined them – The Guardian . “The amount of people proclaiming that they’re leaving Twitter in the past few days (since Elon Musk took it private and became the self-declared ‘Chief Twit’) isn’t alarming to me. It makes me laugh (or cry… it depends). Meaning: It’s standard fare when a big change takes place in the world, that people choose sides and publicly announce their decision… as if leaving any particular platform has any true bearing on anyone else. How many times have you heard from an American that if so-and-so gets elected that they’re moving to Canada? With that, I had never heard of Mastodon. And, if it is truly home to a ‘devoted base of left-leaning communities,’ I’m not sure anyone’s feed is going to get that much better. I guess I am left wondering what our options truly are in a world where – quite frankly – I could live and move from any one platform, so long as there’s another one where I have some decent networks and connections?” (Mitch for Alistair). Campus.FM . “Where does culture develop and get transmitted? Obviously, campus and college radio plays a big part in creating the next generation of taste-makers. With that, I am loving this platform. It’s your chance to check out college radio stations throughout the US. Take a listen…” (Mitch for Hugh).

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

Darryl Jones From The Rolling Stones On This Month’s Groove – The No Treble Podcast

Darryl Jones is this month’s conversation on Groove – The No Treble Podcast.

You can listen the new episode right here: Groove – The No Treble Podcast – Episode #95 – Darryl Jones.

Who is Darryl Jones ?

If you get the chance to watch the brand new documentary, Darryl Jones: In The Blood, there is a story about how Darryl Jones landed the gig as the bass player for The Rolling Stones… which is that the band loved the idea of having a bass player who had played with Miles Davis. Now, if you think that’s impressive, just take a listen to this show about how he landed the gig with Miles Davis. Darryl grew up in a musical family on the south side of Chicago. After several years gigging around the Chicago music scene, Darryl’s international recording and touring career took flight at age 21, with jazz icon Miles Davis. Gigs with Sting (Bring On The Night!!), Herbie Hancock, Peter Gabriel, Madonna, Eric Clapton, and others soon followed, and since 1993, he’s been the bassist for the Rolling Stones. When his schedule permits, he performs with other artists, co-leads a couple of bands, serves the legacy of The Chief with the Miles Electric Band; and in 2017 he debuted The Darryl Jones Project. Besides touring and recording, Darryl keeps busy writing music, including composing the score for an award-winning film. He continues his education, and was selected to participate in the Sundance Institute’s famed Music & Sound Design Lab at Skywalker Ranch in 2017. He teaches classes and conducts clinics around the world, and in 2014 he founded Jones Musical Instruments to craft custom basses and guitars. Darryl Jones is a national electric bass treasure, and he deserves to have this documentary made about his incredible journey. Enjoy the conversation…

What is Groove – The No Treble Podcast?

This is an ambitious effort. This will be a fascinating conversation. Our goal at Groove is to build the largest oral history of bass players. Why Groove? Most of the content about the bass revolves around gear, playing techniques, and more technical chatter. For us, bassists are creative artists with stories to tell. They are a force to be reckon with. These are the stories and conversation that we will capture. To create this oral history of why these artists chose the bass, what their creative lives are like, and where inspiration can be found.

Listen in:  Groove – The No Treble Podcast – Episode #95 – Darryl Jones.

Groove – Episode #95: Darryl Jones by No Treble

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