7 Oct 2017 • 2 min read

🔥 The Fireside #2

Hello beautiful human being 👋

how is life?

Probably no one has ever called you “beautiful human being”.

But we all need some nice words here and then. Last week 2 people sent me an email telling me nice words about my business and how it helped them with theirs. They made my day.

So here’s my advice: Tell people when you love their work.

Spend 2 minutes of your time to do it and you might make someone’s day.

On a lesser important note: I’ve found a name for this newsletter.

Drumroll….

🔥 The fireside.

Why??

Traditionally, a fireside is where people share their experiences and tell stories that don’t just have a temporary value but can be remembered for months and years. This is also the goal of this little experiment: to share something that will make you think for months and maybe years to come.

I can’t think of a better name for this newsletter (plus it’s got an emoji which is a HUGE plus).

What is making me think

🤔 Quincy Larson makes a strong case for NOT using biometric identification (such as Apple’s new FaceID technology or Apple’s TouchID). Oh.. a new machine learning technology has been announced that can create a 3D reconstruction of any face from a single photo.
🎯 “Decomplication” is a super interesting concept. As Nat Eliason puts it: “We’ve created and been sucked into a world of artificial complexity – one where topics are made more complex than they need to be in order to appeal to our biases and frustrations, and to help companies make more money.”
🔫 According to TheEconomist, Italy’s century-long experience with Mafia partially explains why it’s the only major European country that has never been hit by a terrorist attack.
😣 very long list of common misconceptions on Wikipedia. Visit it if you want to spend an afternoon realizing how many falsities you’ve propagated over the years (eg: Napoleone wasn’t actually short).
📱 Jean Twenge makes a case that smartphones have created a physically very safe, yet mentally very unstable generation.
🇵🇹 Portugal has virtually won the war on drugs by… not fighting it all.

What I'm reading

I’m now reading “Amusing ourselves to death” by Neil Postman. Despite being written over 30 years ago, this book is incredibly modern. As one of the reviews says: “The observations were made in a pre-internet era, and they’re 10x as relevant today. Nothing will do more to help cure your information addiction that the healthy dose of reality provided in these pages.”