a few threads to weave together in response. bear with me.

note this is my analysis based on currently-available information, and thus a little more speculative and less well-documented and resourced than I am typically comfortable being on here.

and a little harsh (sorry).

https://twitter.com/QuicksilverClay/status/1852037775421276217

similar to the immediate aftermath of Sputnik, the US has found itself on the backfoot with respect to China, with an adversary that appears heavily advantaged against them. they need to move in a fast and focused manner to compensate. this remains true no matter who wins in Nov.

July 6 UNOSAT data of Gaza City; every red dot is a building damaged or destroyed by Israel

there is a bright red dot off-centre in the circled area

that is the location of al-Tabi'in school

as you can see, it was one of the few standing buildings in a heavily-damaged area here's the zoomed-out map showing everywhere in the Strip that has been bombed as of July 6.

Ismail Haniyeh lived in Qatar and was principally responsible for hostage negotiations with Israel

He was the head of the political bureau of Hamas — not its military wing

His assassination by Israel serves to kill the negotiations and score a PR win to defuse domestic tension Haniyeh’s death has negative bearing on the war goals: organizing a hostage release will now be far more difficult, which is what Israeli leaders want

but his prominence allows Israelis to feel like they’ve scored a “win” against Hamas

so they can comfortably pivot to Lebanon

One of the more common replies is that Israel is a decolonized state — not a settler-colonial one.

I am never sure to what degree to engage, since the originators only care inasmuch as “colonizer bad, Israel not bad, therefore Israel not colonizer”

but for those curious…

https://twitter.com/provisionalidea/status/1803637410372129212

Early Zionists like Herzl were explicitly inspired by 19th century European nationalist and colonial movements. They saw — and frequently spoke of — Arabs as backwards savages who would benefit from the “civilizing force” of European Jews. (something echoed to a degree today)

https://twitter.com/provisionalidea/status/1803917977131057407

Contemporary Israel ultimately makes a lot more sense when you see it as a 19th Century colonial movement that got its legs a hundred years too late, only to find itself in a world where colonialism was no longer in vogue

Hence the, “you got to do it, why can’t we?” claims now There’s a certain set of Revisionist Zionists who see the Trail of Tears and other atrocities America conducted against its indigenous peoples until they were no longer a sizable enough population to resist

and considers it unfair they are not allowed to do the same today

I think one thing folks miss about the Apple sustainability spot

is that Tim Cook is an industrial engineer and supply chain specialist

and the spot is more about showing other mfgs that aggressive targets are not only attainable, but are now baseline

it is not entertainment if you’re an Apple superfan or heavily steeped in tech, it’s easy to forget that Apple events are *industry events*

and the target audience, by order of importance is:

1) Apple investors
2) Apple employees
3) members of the Apple supply chain
4) competitors
5) everyone else

sometimes I pull statistics for fun just to keep my mental models up-to-date

it's easy to get lost in a bubble and forget what most of the world is like

https://twitter.com/provisionalidea/status/1627172812774334466

I've been reading a lot of old Neurath for work, and it really strikes me as a failure of modern journalism that so much fundamental information about the world is collected but largely unknown

we pile story upon story but provide no context for people to anchor around

I've been finding the "we have the sum of all human knowledge at our fingertips" take increasingly anemic lately.

We have a very narrow subset of human knowledge recorded and digitally accessible. And a lot of opinions and marketing material. So much else is routinely lost. Every time a team collapses, a company folds, or a person passes, knowledge is lost. And not easily-recorded knowledge, either!

Specific, embodied knowledge of how a thing works "in the real world", stored experientially in the liminal space between individuals.

There's a thread of history that goes something like this:

In the late 70s/early 80s, authoritarian management styles were on their way out. They were ineffective, particularly for knowledge work and innovation, and needed to be replaced with more modern approaches. But the computer revolution (which happened around that time) provided an easy out for managers who refused to change their ways. Instead of providing more autonomy and flexibility, the computers could be used to crack down harder, and exert even more surveillance and control.

Org structure is a ridiculously powerful tool, but you typically don't have to think too hard about it beyond basic division-of-labour stuff until you reach ~8 people.

Because math.

https://twitter.com/yashevde/status/1559931506361090049

in an ad-hoc system, information transfer happens informally on a one-to-one basis.

we can model this with the handshake formula,

n(n+1)/2

this is called communication complexity.

simply put, it's the likelihood that information will reach the right destination in one hop.

WHAT PATTERNS OF BEHAVIOUR KILL COMPANIES?

we set out to answer this question as part of our work a little while ago, did a few hundred interviews, and built out a network model --

which revealed seven interconnected loops!

(h/t to @visakanv who convinced me to share results!) we'll start with a familiar one:

teams stop talking to each other, create silos, and start repeating each other's work.

eventually, the communication environment gets so bad that more severe problems ensue.

"A business' only responsibility is to generate profit for shareholders" is a relatively new idea

it only emerged in the 80s

as a unique byproduct of a culture shift (Chicago school econ)

and

an economic shift (hostile takeovers by pension fund-backed corporate raiders) one of the first and biggest casualties of this shift was employee loyalty

when bosses no longer felt responsibility to employees as a distinct stakeholder class, lifelong employment disappeared and jobs were shifted wherever they could be completed for the lowest possible cost

there’s this idea that culture and technology are essentially the same thing — solutions to human problems. Tech is hard culture, culture is soft tech. I talk about it a lot; I’m a huge fan.

but we can build on this. the next step in this thinking is that we as humans create social/cultural solutions to solve problems we haven’t solved technologically (yet)

over time, we find ways to convert social practice into hard technology, and turn it into a building block for a more complex society.

Yo so you know how a bunch of scientists and theorists have been saying for years that tools are an extension of the human body?

A new study was just published in the Journal of Neuroscience and

Tools are *literally* interpreted by the brain as an extension of the human body. If you're using a tool you're familiar with, and using the tool properly (i.e. not grabbing a fork by the prongs), your brain will only say
"hey, you're using your hands"
and not
"hey, this is a tool"
or
"hey, this is an object"

When I was a Chief of Staff, I had a triage system for solving ops problems.

Here's how it works: A wild problem has appeared!

Ask yourself two questions:
1) How big is the business impact?
2) How quickly does it need to be solved?

There's often a lot of noise around ops problems, but these two questions matter the most.

We had a framework for picking board members at my last company that worked exceptionally well.

I realized today -- thanks to my cofounder -- that the same framework works brilliantly for picking strategic angel investors in the early days of a startup.

Here's how it works. Divide the business into strategic areas that are relevant to your business. They can be general at first (growth, finance, tech, etc) but you should know:

- your need in each area
- how the need could evolve
- the type, calibre, and specificity of advice you need
- who's good

Livetweeting thoughts on the Graeber v. Thiel debate. G:
“If you grew up in HG Wells’ time, there was a list of inventions you thought were coming. And you got all of them!

Growing up in the 60s, we had a list too. I never would have thought we’d get nothing! But when 2000 hit, people just pretended we were living in the future.”

I've mentioned before that I used to do ethnographic fieldwork, back when I was an anthropologist.

One thing I always taught my newer colleagues in the field -- which is also highly applicable to product + customer research -- goes as follows. There are three dimensions to behaviour:
1) What people say they do
2) What people think they do
3) What people actually do

(1) tells you about how a person wants to be perceived.
(2) tells you about how they perceive themselves.
(3) tells you about what actually happens.

There's a research paper on VCs' use of metaphors.

The idea is that understanding the metaphors lets you understand the culture -- and thinking -- of the venture community.

200 VCs were polled every quarter for 5 years.

Here are the main takeaways.

(h/t @npseaver) VC metaphors fall in 14 categories (Nick would argue 15 -- and he's probably right):

🧬Darwinism
⚛️Physics
🌊Water
🛐Religion/Mythology
💪Physiology
🏦Architecture
👅Human sensations
🏃Motion
🪖Warfare
🌦️Weather
🏅Sporting
⛵️Nautical
🚂Engines
✍️Writing
🖥️(+ computation?)

In the spirit of @Bosefina's thread, I want to talk about a tactic I've seen used over and over again to keep minority talent out of management and exec roles.

It's subtle, it's dangerous, and you need to stop using it.

It's called "not strategic enough". It's a commonly-accepted idea that managers need to be "strategic". But what does this mean?

Often, it's shorthand for a combination of:
- being able to manage personalities
- reflecting on how actions impact the overall business
- knowing some handwave-y jargon

I'm seeing a lot of tech folks engaging with racism and police brutality for the first time publicly.

Welcome!

Your expressions of outrage are a start, but there's a lot more we in tech can do to engage with the issues. I haven't seen much talk about that, so let's kick it off. First of all:
Listen to activists, researchers, and POC in tech who have been talking about this forever.

When people -- particularly POC -- come out and tell you how the technologies you build and finance adversely impact their communities, don't write them off as "anti-tech".