I wanted to share this piece of actionable information: High quality audio makes you sound smarter. Considering that lots of meetings will continue to be extremely online for the foreseeable future, It’s worth doing what you can to have quality audio!

Aesthetics

MOTOROiD - Yamaha Motor Design | Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd.

Apropos of nothing, here’s a cool looking electric motorcycle.

Appuccino, Please: How TikTok Is Permanently Changing Starbucks

The Starbucks app’s order customization features are getting stress-tested by Gen-Z influencers.

Remember When You Could See Inside a Gaming Console? | WIRED

I have a high level of nostalgia for translucent electronics. They’re still around, to an extent, in prisons!

FarmBot | Open-Source CNC Farming

A DIY planting robot that people are alread using and you can actually buy! 🤖🌱

7 Ghost Stations of Paris Metro and How to Get Into Illegaly - Urbex Tour

This urban exploration site combines photos of derelict train stations with history of the Paris Metro, which makes a wonderful combination!

Fakes & Copies

I did enjoy the film “Catch Me If You Can” but it turns out that the story is likely a fantasy. Great con on his part, though!

Another con of similar importance has come to my attention: Richard Montañez didn't actually invent Flamin' Hot Cheetos! This piece goes into detail about it—TL;DR he did work on related projects but did not “invent hot Cheetos”. People are really just out here claiming things and getting away with it, mostly.

I thought we’d take a moment to assess where we’re coming from here, culturally. What’s wrong with a copy? Does it matter? Some Asian cultures would argue it doesn’t. Food for thought. ⛩

Why, in China and Japan, a copy is just as good as an original

Last but not least in this section, something kind of creepy. What if you were taking an online course and it turned out the instructor had died after recording the course? Online courseware is strange in this way because, well, it doesn’t necessarily change anything! It would be weird, though. Would it matter to you?

If you’re starting an online class, check to make sure your professor is alive

American Problems

I am glad to see the beginnings of repairing our cities’ urban fabric. Rethinking how large roads interrupt the pedestrian experience is a step in the right direction IMHO!

Can Removing Highways Fix America’s Cities? - The New York Times

“Remote work inherently messes with the power dynamic of the worker and the boss, and it is going to make many, many brains malfunction.”

The Work-From-Home Future Is Destroying Bosses' Brains

Also, if we’re going to replace workers with AI/ML, why not start with the most highly-paid of all? I love this piece because it challenges a lot of assumptions about what CEOs really do. Try suggesting this to one if you can and watch them squirm.

CEOs are hugely expensive – why not automate them?

With a headline that should surprise exactly no one, this article claims that Drinking Too Much Is an American Problem. The piece itself gives an interesting history of alcohol consumption in the US and how it’s seesawed over the years. 🥴

On a lighter and punnier note, They Hacked McDonald’s Ice Cream Machines—and Started a Cold War! The rabbit hole of “Why is the McDonald’s ice cream machine seemingly always broken?” goes much deeper than you might expect. The piece is full of intrigue and suspense like a good spy thriller… about frozen treats. 🍦

This next blog is hard to explain, but TL;DR: Everyone has an opinion of how to do things best, often through a particular lens. The author generally argues against taking overly-simplistic advice when adding features to a project in a business context. I’m sharing it because I think this serves as a parable for decision-making in other situations as well: Don’t Feed the Thought Leaders

Astute readers may remember the cool, accessible, feel-good story of Nike’s sneakers designed with the help of disabled persons. And yet, “why aren’t we all wearing these dope futuristic kicks?” you would ask. Well… Resellers Ruined the Release of Nike's Accessible Go FlyEase. Sneaker bots strike again! 🤖