Happy Friday! ☀️
Hello at the end of a satisfyingly productive week. I signed on another large new client assignment and had bursts of productive energy channeled into some internal work for ForChiefs. All enriched with good company, cold garden hose showers, and quality time with Leo the Swiss Shepard.
What I’m reading 📖
At a dinner earlier this year I got to meet and sit next to Dr. Max Roser. I was in for an exciting, inspiring, and interesting conversation. Max is a social historian and development economist and the founder and director of Our World in Data, an online scientific publication founded in 2011 whose charts you’ve surely come across at some point on the internet. It publishes data about some of the world’s largest problems like poverty, climate change, and diseases. A few weeks ago, Max published a short yet insightful article about the way we create and share narratives about the state of the world. The title: The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much better. In it, he suggests that it is wrong to think that these three statements contradict each other. I thought about it and like his thinking. I wish the media would embrace that thinking more when reporting on big issues. Read the article.
What I’m listening to 🎧
The conversation between Lex Fridman and former CIA agent Andrew Bustamante were four hours extremely well spent. What a fascinating journey into a world that’s usually hidden and protective and Bustamante provides a deep look into all things spying: how he got recruited, what a polygraph really is (spoiler: it’s not a lie detector), the three levels of disguise, his sober take on Ukraine, what the world’s intelligence agencies are know for, privacy, and so much more. I didn’t subscribe to everything he said (in particular his take on privacy) and had so many follow up questions I could have asked. I hope Fridman does a second round.
What I’m watching 📺
No major new series or movies to report here this week, I’m into season 8 of Game of Thrones and that has my full attention. That is, until House of Dragons begins on August 21, sounds like a seamless continuation of the saga (even though it’s set 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones). Watch the trailer.
What I’m thinking about 🧠
This is the ultimate trapdoor in the hall of fame; to become a prisoner of one's own persona.
– The Perils of Audience Capture - How influencers become brainwashed by their audiences
What else?! 💯
The women’s football Euro just ended with a resounding success in viewers and supporters in stadiums. I’ve watched a few games of the German team (fun fact: defender Kathy Hendrichs was born in the same city and is the sister of a hometown friend) and think they would have deserved the title. Women’s football will grow in profile in the coming years and that’s a good thing. Even better that a group around women I respect like Verena Pausder, Felicia Mutterer, and Katharina Kurz just acquired a football club in Berlin: FC Viktoria Berlin. I’m a fan.
Thanks for reading, have a great weekend!
David
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