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Barnacles

Personal Renewal [A talk by John Gardner given at McKinsey & Company, published on PBS.orgt] – “Not long ago, I read a splendid article on barnacles. I don’t want to give the wrong impression of the focus of my reading interests. Sometimes days go by without my reading about barnacles, much less remembering what I read. But this article had an unforgettable opening paragraph. “The barnacle” the author explained “is confronted with an existential decision about where it’s going to live. Once it decides… it spends the rest of its life with its head cemented to a rock..” End of quote. For a good many of us, it comes to that.” This talk will make you think. If it doesn’t, read it again.

I am fortunate in that I was never poor. Growing up, we wore sweaters in the winter and used fans in the summer so we wouldn’t have to spend as much on heating and cooling the house but we never worried that we wouldn’t have heat or A/C. It was there, we simply chose not to use it to save money. I never went to bed hungry because we didn’t have food.

So it comes as no surprise to me that rich people attribute outcomes more to choice than circumstances. You only know what you’ve experienced and it’s common to think everyone else shares those same experiences. To this day, I pause before I turn on the A/C and wonder if “we really need it” and I’m 40 and can easily afford it.

Rich people actually do have trouble understanding what it’s like to be poor [Salon] – “But a recent study in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science shows he might have been on to something. The study identifies one area in which those with power, such as the wealthy, are different — they’re more likely to employ a “choice mindset,” which causes them to be equally critical of decisions made by those with fewer resources and choices.” There’s also a cognitive bias associated with this known as the fundamental attribution error. “It’s when you attribute someone’s actions or outcomes on the “type of person” they are versus the situations and circumstances that person was put in.” So there’s the aspect of choice but also this bias coming into play.

NFT, SPAC, and the Future of Money [New York Intelligencer] – “There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble Welcome to the non-fungible, memeified, cryptodenominated, degenerate future of finance.”

I like that my weird dreams are a feature and not a bug. 🙂

The Weirdness of Our Dreams Could Explain Their Function [Technology Networks] – “Falling from a great height, naked public speaking and simultaneously losing all your teeth. The content of our dreams is often quite weird. While extensive research has teased out some of the likely reasons why we sleep, why this ubiquitous activity should be peppered with strange and nonsensical imagery has remained mysterious. Now, a new theory that takes inspiration from artificial intelligence has suggested that the weirdness of dreams is essential to their purpose.” I have varying degrees of weird dreams. Some weird dreams are semi-mundane – everyday life except people from different worlds are colliding (Seinfeld, anyone?). Sometimes they’re super weird – like a green slime chasing me. Turns out my brain is operating normally (in theory).

Have a great weekend!