Six Links That Make You Think #778

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 (Just Evil Enough, 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 Wonder Of Modern Drywall – Yassine  Maskhout – The Works In Progress. “Hat tip to my Just Evil Enough co-author for this one. The humble drywall sheet sparked a revolution in construction, and not just because you could finally hang pictures. I had no clue what a bottleneck plastering was. A reminder that we take much of the world for granted.” (Alistair for Hugh). What I Learned Gathering Thousands Of Nootropic Ratings – Troof . “Michael Pollan‘s book How To Change Your Mind, and subsequent Netflix series, did a lot to legitimize the therapeutic use of psychoactive substances. But for every Schedule 1 drug that’s being fed to religious leaders on the sly, there are hundreds of unlisted, potentially mind-changing chemicals out there. These Nootropics are being field-tested by citizen scientists (and if I’m honest, I’m wondering why, if there are things that can help my brain function better, I’m not all over these). How close are we to an Ozempic-for-the-brain? Well, here’s a collection of research into these chemicals, including charts with tantalizing titles like ‘Probability of life-changing effect’. Spoiler alert: Weightlifting is pretty damned good. Sadly, it’s not addictive.” (Alistair for Mitch). Ubiquitous Objects Transform Into Ambient Soundscapes In Zimoun’s Installations – Grace Ebert – Colossal . “If you told me this was an art installation created by AI for AI I would believe you, and be terrified, but luckily it was created by a very human Swiss artist, and these are mesmerizing.” (Hugh for Alistair).  Why There Are So Many Star Ratings – Felix Salmon – Axios . “I remember long ago, Mitch told me that bad reviews helped sell products on Amazon. People read them and say, ‘well I’m not worried about that factor,’ and it moves (some of) them to a buying decision. Humans are funny. Here’s another funny thing: we read 2.5 stars as 2 stars, but when you see the image of 2.5 moons () you read it as 3.” (Hugh for Mitch). Debate: Will The Truth Survive Artificial Intelligence? – Honestly With Bari Weiss . “I thoroughly enjoyed this podcast debate (and you will as well). E.O. Wilson’s haunting warning – Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology – feels less like metaphor and more like everyday conversation because AI is shaping everything from truth to trust. In this debate thought leaders Jaron Lanier, Nicholas Carr, Fei-Fei Li, and Aravind Srinivas tackle the core question: will truth survive artificial intelligence? The tension isn’t about misinformation – it’s about what happens when we stop wrestling with truth and start receiving it from sleek, confident machines that reflect our biases back at us. AI doesn’t challenge us… it confirms us (I have been writing a lot about this on LinkedIn lately). Jaron and Nick argue this risks dissolving the messy friction that truth requires. On the other side, Aravind (from Perplexity) and Fei-Fei hold out hope that AI can be a tool to democratize information and expand understanding. But beneath the optimism is an unsettling truth: we’re not just building tools… we’re outsourcing meaning. And in a world where the ‘authoritative voice’ might be an LLM trained on Reddit, the future of truth may depend less on the tech and more on whether we still value disagreement enough to fight for it. There are countless gems and soundbytes in this debate… do it up.” (Mitch for Alistair). Media And Machines – Anu Atluru – Working Theorys . “I think I found this article via Patrick Tanguay’s incredible Sentiers (which happen often). This isn’t just an essay… it’s a flashing red light on the dashboard of our attention economy. Anu lays out, with unnerving clarity, how media and AI have collapsed into each other to form a self-learning loop that now feeds on our culture while simultaneously producing it. It’s not just feedback… it’s feed-forward, and we’re watching reality get overwritten in real-time. The punchline? Our cognitive environment is being engineered – not curated – by machines trained on our own noise. If you care about the future of creativity, brand, or even basic selfhood, you should read this. She is sounding the alarm on the disappearing line between human experience and machine-generated simulation. In a world where TikToks become training data and the models that generate content are indistinguishable from the ones that consume it, your next big idea may not even be yours. This isn’t the future of media… it could be the end of original thought (unless we intervene).” (Mitch for Hugh).

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

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