Find a half-remembered link or follow a subject through years of Sunday notes.
7,487 posts
First came search engines. Then, came the profession of optimizing content for ranking in search engines. Then came the endless cat and mouse game of search engines updating algorithms, and optimizers updating content. This post on Hubspot Research discusses what they call Topic Clusters, which may be the latest…
Chicago’s very own Ezra Galston writes in TechCrunch analyzing managed marketplaces, with deep dives into OpenDoor, TheRealReal, Beepi and others. Ezra’s articles are always worth the read. | learn more
The 2017 Global Drug Survey of almost 120,000 people asked participants what drugs they took and how often they needed emergency services. | learn more
Sarah Chrisman and her husband love the 19th century Victorian era so much, that they are basically living in it. Right now. In Washington state. Clothing, high-wheel tricycle, oil lamps, and all. | learn more
I almost didn’t know which of my “categories” this fell into, because there for sure isn’t a self-help section. Tim Ferris uses the term lifestyle design, so I’ll consider this a topical deep-dive into that process. First, I hate the title. I hate that this book is an…
Written by Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit. This book is heavy on research studies, diving into the topics of motivation, focus, and goal setting, among others. Of note was the section on teams, with highlights from Google’s People Operations team and the founding of Saturday…
There have been many biographies written of Albert Einstein. This one by Walter Isaacson is notably great for the incorporation of science, emotion, storytelling, and details. It describes Einstein’s theories, his thought experiments, and his process. It also chronicles his personal life - including his first marriage, his…
The inventor of the cotton gin won a contract to manufacture 5,000 muskets per year for the U.S. in 1798. He had no gunmaking knowledge, and the best armories at the time could barely produce that much volume. What happened next? |learn more
“All things being equal, speed will determine whether your company succeeds or not. Here’s how to make it core to your culture.” | learn more
Bloomberg takes up the question, discussing the search for a sustainable model for modern food delivery. | learn more
David Rabie, founder of the cool new high-tech oven company Tovala, explains why he brought his company back to Chicago after completing their stint at Y Combinator in Silicon Valley. | learn more
Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comic, writes a very interesting post explaining how to convince skeptics that climate change is a problem. While he believes in climate change, he makes a bunch of valid points about how scientists have done a poor job of making their case. | learn…
Yival Noah Harari, author of Sapiens (which I recommended a few weeks ago), wrote a new book called Homo Deus: A brief history of tomorrow. This is an excerpt discussing how he believes AI will create a new class of society (the useless class) much like industrialization created…
Amy Webb makes an argument calling for the US to develop a “Biology Strategy” to address the rise of CRISPR gene editing. This is coincidentally the topic addressed in all-too-real science fiction author Daniel Suarez’s new book Change Agent, which I read recently. | learn more
Finally, research settles the dispute of how many autonomous vehicles it takes to alleviate traffic. One. | learn more
Wired magazine profiles Improbable, the UK company that’s building virtual worlds with its SpatialOS platform. | learn more
Oliver Cameron, the CEO of autonomous taxi upstart Voyage, does a great job of explaining what LIDAR (the technology used in most autonomous vehicles) is and how it works, it’s history, and its future. | learn more
Superstar VC firm Andreessen Horowitz (aka A16Z) has put together what they call an “AI Playbook”. If you’re the kind of person asking “How do I get started with artificial intelligence?” or “What can I do with AI in my own product or company?”, this is for you. |learn more
Holly Maniatty is a sign language interpreter. She has worked on-stage alongside the Wu-Tang Clan, Killer Mike, and the Beastie Boys. It’s quite a sight. | learn more
Can you guess how many times you would need to fold a paper in half before it’s thick enough to reach the moon? Remember from last week: humans are bad at non-linear thinking. | learn more
“Taking time to be totally, gloriously, proudly unproductive will ultimately make you better at your job…” | learn more
The bad news is you’re not always rational. The good news is Business Insider made a nice chart of 20 cognitive biases that you can keep by your desk to remind you. | learn more
Brad Stone (author of The Everything Store) details the battleground that these two giants are going to fight over. Wal-Mart has made major investments, but what happens next? | learn more
“Flexe finds spare warehouse space for e-commerce merchants, including mattress seller Casper, and is set to offer overnight delivery all over the U.S.” | learn more