Category: personal AnGoL

n a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode from 2007, Larry David and his wife Cheryl and their friends attend a ceremony to celebrate his public donation to the National Resources Defense Council, a non-profit environmental advocacy group. Little does he know that the actor Ted Danson, his arch-frenemy, also donated money, but anonymously. “Now it looks like I just did mine for the credit as opposed to Mr. Wonderful Anonymous,” David tells Cheryl. David feels upstaged, as if his public donation has been transformed from a generous gesture to an egotistical one. Cheryl says, about Danson, “Isn’t that great? He donated the whole wing. Didn’t want anybody to know.” “I didn’t need the world to know either!” David says. “Nobody told me I could be ‘anonymous’ and tell people!” He would have done it Danson’s way, he says, but, realizing the contradiction, he fumes, “You can’t have it halfway! You’re either anonymous, or you’re not.” What Danson did, David concludes, is “fake philanthropy and faux anonymity!”

Source: Larry David and the Game Theory of Anonymous Donations

What is clearly needed is new legislation, not an attempt to misapply ancient regulation in a way that is trivially reversible. Moreover, AT&T has a point that online services like Google and Facebook are legitimate competitors, particularly for ad dollars; said regulation should address the entire sector. To that end I would focus on three key principles:

• First, ISPs should not purposely slow or block data on a discriminatory basis. I am not necessarily opposed to the concept of “fast lanes”, as I believe that offers significant potential for innovative services, although I recognize the arguments against them; it should be non-negotiable, though, that ISPs cannot purposely disfavor certain types of content.
• Second, and similarly, dominant internet platforms should not be allowed to block any legal content from their services. At the same time, services should have discretion in monetization and algorithms; that anyone should be able to put content on YouTube, for example, does not mean that one has a right to have Google monetize it on their behalf, or surface it to people not looking for it.
• Third, ISPs should not be allowed to zero-rate their own content, and platforms should not be allowed to prioritize their own content in their algorithms. Granted, this may be a bit extreme; at a minimum there should be strict rules and transparency around transfer pricing and a guarantee that the same rates are allowed to competitive services and content.

The reality of the Internet, as noted by Aggregation Theory, is increased centralization; meanwhile, the impact on the Internet on traditional media is an inexorable drive towards consolidation. Our current laws and antitrust jurisprudence are woefully unprepared to deal with this reality, and a new law guaranteeing neutrality is the best solution.

Source: AT&T, Time Warner, and the Need for Neutrality – Stratechery by Ben Thompson

If You Commit to Nothing, You’ll Be Distracted By Everything By James Clear    |    Grit, Minimalism, Motivation In the northeastern hills outside Kyoto, Japan there is a mountain known as Mount Hiei. That mountain is littered with unmarked graves. Those graves mark the final resting place of the Tendai Buddhist monks who have failed to complete a quest known as the Kaihogyo. What is this quest that kills so many of the monks? And what can you and I learn from it? Keep reading and I’ll tell you. Before

Source: Mental Toughness and the “Marathon Monks”

Very hard. Been living this the past few years.

When you’re a tech lead, you need to put your ego aside (something that, let’s be honest, might not be as easy as it sounds) because you’re basically working for others. You’re between a rock and a hard place, as they say, because you need to look out for your project’s well-being and at the same time, you need to look-out for your team’s well-being, which in certain occasions, are not the same thing.

Source: You’re the Tech Lead, Not the Tech Guru – DZone Agile

To see how much sleep you really need, my professor suggests that when you go on vacation, try to stick to your normal bedtime and then see what time you wake up. With no stressors or time to get up, you’ll just fall into a natural pattern, and that’s probably how much sleep you actually need.

Source: You should be sleeping more than eight hours a night. Here’s why — Quartz

The main mental model in this book is that there are a handful of Tribes. Tribes are loose or strong but connected through a defining belief or mantra. At work, we are all part of one of these tribes. These are our teams. Our co-workers. The people we spend ⅓ of our lives around. As such, our overall happiness and life satisfaction is heavily influenced by the tribes we belong to.

.

1. The victim tribe. These are the people that believe life sucks, and everything that happens is evidence of this fact. This is about 2% of groups.
2. The my life sucks tribe. This is when you feel disconnected from your work, its impact, or have a lot of meaningless relationships. This is about 25% of groups.
3. The I’m better than you tribe. These are cancerous people that infiltrate the lives of those in the other tribes. They are not team players; they think that credit is a finite resource they need to hoard. They believe that knowledge is power and do all they can to get a leg up on others. They create and thrive on malicious drama.. These people are the hardest to predict. This is about 49% of groups.
4. The we’re great but you’re not tribe. This is common and if harnessed can be a source of motivation. The bigger the enemy the more potential this tribe has. People in this tribe are externally driven. It’s about winning and beating some other tribe. People are still full of themselves, but everyone seems relatively happy because they are competing as a team. This is about 22% of groups.
5. The life is great tribe. As a team this is when you’re focused on intrinsic mission and customers. Think of the mindset as “How are we going to make history?” and not “how are we going to beat them?” People in this tribe are the most productive. This is about 2% of groups.

When you read the list, which group did you want to be in?

Source: The 5 Stages of Tribal Belonging – Sam Kyle – Medium

“(He) spread his influence across the country and around the world through a combination of religious conviction, commanding stage presence and shrewd use of radio, television and advanced communication technologies.” This could have been written about Jordan Peterson. The language echoes the tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of words, that have been devoted to the man — ranging from fawning adoration to critical dismissals — since his rise to public prominence starting in 2016 when he decla

Source: I was Jordan Peterson’s strongest supporter. Now I think he’s dangerous | The Star

If history is any guide, a dominant Netflix doesn’t automatically equal a TV landscape devoid of choice, for either makers or consumers of television. When NBC was at its Must-See TV peak in the 1980s and ’90s, the network crushed its rivals in the ratings and had its pick of top talent, all of whom wanted to be on the same channel as Cheers, Seinfeld, L.A. Law, and ER. But the other networks still managed to launch hits and make plenty of money even as NBC thrived. While Netflix has one advantage NBC never had — unlimited shelf space, since there are no time slots in streaming — even it can’t afford to hire every good development executive or do a deal with every smart writer with a good idea. Scale makes sense for Netflix, but there’s no reason to think a more boutique approach can’t continue to work for established brands such as FX and HBO — particularly since both of those networks are part of giant conglomerates.

Source: The Netflix Binge Factory

When genius is considered circumstantial, it becomes contingent — precarious, rare, and magical. Nothing becomes predictable: genius is a river, and to ride it, we must build a vessel specific to the circumstances we find it in. For me, this means I will not know if the conditions for Lohengrin truly came together until the production opens this coming summer. All I can do is endeavor to use everything I’ve learned and experienced to perceive how the circumstances are speaking, and to make the passage as fa

Source: Genius as Circumstance – Los Angeles Review of Books

We started by writing down values that we and our readers try to incorporate into our own lives and our own learning. In no time, we had several dozen listed in our notebook: “Live a meaningful life,” “make constant progress,” ”be open to change,” and “understand reality” were just a few. Next, we grouped together values that had a similar thread. Some fit together nicely, others could belong to multiple groups, and some stood alone. After some lively debate and deliberation, we narrowed them all down to f

Source: Farnam Street Principles