The Friday Thing #678

I hope you found something to inspire you in the long reading list last week – thanks for all the notes you sent back, I really appreciate them.

The Friday Thing #678 is once again a collection of things I have bumped in to during the week – and by necessity, all digital links of course. But as the end of year approaches, my pile of physical things to read is stacking up nicely. This week I bought a book titled What Tech Calls Thinking: An Inquiry into the Intellectual Bedrock of Silicon Valley. I can’t wait to read this thing during my downtime over the next few weeks, especially given the many questions the tech industry is facing right now. Ben Thompson as always offer great perspective here, not least in his Privacy Labels and Lookalike Audiences essay this week. Back to physical storytelling though, I’m looking forward to listening to an exquisite Bill Evans Trio vinyl LP I bought over the next few weeks. This thing is insanely expensive as it was hand crafted on old machinery in the UK by a company called ERC….but it’s so good. I mean, I don’t know if it sounds any better to my ears than a CD or 320Kbps Spotify but the ceremony of laying a needle on the vinyl makes you have to sit back and enjoy it. And then half way you have to flip over of course….so your attention is captured whether you like it or not. That’s storytelling.

Back to some digital stuff for you though. I’ll start with a piece from Wired titled A Race Car Crash From Hell—and the Science That Saved Its Driver that delves in to the technology that saved Romain Grosjean’s life a few weeks ago. At the Sakhir Grand Prix, his F1 car slammed into a wall at 137 mph and burst into flames. I mean, literally burst in to flames. About 30 seconds later, Romain emerged from the car and calmly walked to the awaiting medical vehicle. His calm walk was an intentional message to reassure his family that he was okay – which is staggering to me that he had the presence of mind to think about this. Apart from some burns to his hands and feet he got out of the car unscathed. It looks like a miracle but it’s not – it’s the result of amazing innovation and dedication to safety by a small group of people. It’s a fascinating read about the creation of Nomex and a whole host of other innovations that make their way to us in consumer products. That’s innovation.

Next up is the annual year in photos from the New York Times. As you would expect, it’s dominated by Covid-19 and thus pretty harrowing in parts. But always worth looking at. Get your scroll wheel ready to check out A Year Like No Other. In another remarkable photo essay, the Times shows Hidden in Plain Sight: The Ghosts of Segregation including this image of the Moore Theater in Seattle. The copy alongside this image captured my thoughts completely – “The very existence of the door shocked me.” Sometimes, it’s the experience of shock that moves us to action and for me, it’s been a year of action and learning around racial inequity. The key of course, is that the action continues in 2021. 

Another thing I’ll be doing a bit over the next few week is writing more. I have done some writing this week, inspired by a quote I read from Bill Gates in Fortune. Back in his Microsoft days, Bill had this thing called “Think Week”. He would seclude himself in a cabin somewhere in the Pacific Northwest and read papers submitted by anyone at the company. Of course, many people took a shot at writing papers and they went through a vetting process before ultimately finding themselves chosen for Bill’s reading. I actually wrote a paper back in 2006 but am pretty sure it never made it to Bill (story for another day). In recounting this ritual to Fortune, Bill talked about how he read papers and wrote up his thoughts. I loved his part – “the act of writing — when you try to explain it to someone else— is where you really are forced to think things through and not be sloppy in your thinking.” It made me stop and think about how true this is and how much more I understand things when I write them down. And how my critical thinking improves. And how much more I remember. So over the next few weeks, and in 2021, I plan to write more. Because y'know, writing the Friday Thing isn't enough.

Writing wise, I’m inspired by Tom Whitehall’s 52 things I learned in 2020 which blew my mind when I found it this week. I learned that all of the ten best-selling books of the last decade had female protagonists. And that epidemiologists at Emory University in Atlanta believe that raising the minimum wage in the US by $1 would have prevented 27,550 suicides since 1990. I had no idea that we humans have a stereo sense of smell: our two nostrils work like two ears to subconsciously help us move towards the source of a smell. And try not to get sucked in to the story about posting a photo of your boarding pass on Instagram being a bad idea. Particularly if you’re the former PM of Australia. 

Okay.....that’s it for this week. Cocktail name? Nomex Boarding Pass.

Cheers! 

-Steve