David Perell: Monday Musings (12/3/18). Most people have goals. A list of questions helps too. If goals guide our actions, questions are the light of curiosity (more)

Venkatesh Rao notes that his interest in marginalized behaviors is in understanding-via-ModelBuilding the Boundary Conditions of Human Systems, which is where he thinks the meat is (as compared to Dynamics and Constraints). This is also why mathematicians are disappointed when they look at the dynamics and constraints in models built by historians. Toynbee’s monumental work seems, to a dynamics-focused mathematical thinker, much ado about an approximate 2nd order under-damped oscillator (the cycle of Golden and Dark ages typical in history). Hegel’s historicism and “End Of History” model appears to be a dull observation about an asymptotic state... This is part of the reason I don’t like traditional mathematical models at “how the world works” scale, like System Dynamics. They ignore or oversimplify what I think is the main raw material of interest: boundary conditions. A theory of unemployment, slum growth and housing development cycles in big cities that ignores distinctions among vandalism, beggary and back-alley crime is, in my opinion, not a theory worth much. If you could explain elegantly why some cities in decline turn to crime, while others turn to vandalism or beggary, then you’d have interesting, high-leverage insights to work with.

STELLA (short for Systems Thinking, Experimental Learning Laboratory with Animation; also marketed as iThink) is a visual programming language for system dynamics modeling introduced by Barry Richmond in 1985. The program, distributed by isee systems (formerly High Performance Systems) allows users to run models created as graphical representations of a system using four fundamental building blocks. STELLA has been used in academia as a teaching tool and has been utilized in a variety of research and business applications. The program has received positive reviews, being praised in particular for its ease of use and low cost. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STELLA_(programming_language) (more)

Wealthfront Inc. is an automated investment service firm based in Redwood City, California,[2][3][4][5] founded by Andy Rachleff and Dan Carroll in 2008.[6][7] As of March 2018, Wealthfront had more than $10 billion of assets under management.[1] Wealthfront is considered a "robo-advisor" investment service. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealthfront (more)

Martin Cagan: Common PM Problem Areas. Recently I was at a dinner with several product leaders, and I was asked what the most common areas of confusion I encounter in product teams today? (more)

Ben Elowitz's Wiki Sphere got $5.25M in VC money. Eek, they seem to be in Stealth Mode. More info. (more)

Widely recognized for its progressive politics, the Bay Area (California) is also home to the largest number of worker-owned (CoOp) businesses in the country. Though they receive little to no press, these models for 21st century business are still below the radar. Perhaps they are not dramatic enough (they are successful) or corrupt enough (no one is suing anyone), or exploitative enough (all worker-owners earn a living wage). Inspired by the Mondragon Cooperatives in the Basque region of Spain, many of these local businesses have flourished for years and have developed a template that works in the US... Worker-owned businesses even have a Support Group in the Bay Area, the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives.

Article on the Local Food/Artisanal Food/Slow Food movement in Brooklyn Ny. Bits of Barter, CoOp and Street Vendor elements. "We're not sure how a Micro Batch chocolate factory is supposed to run," Rick Mast said. "We're going take our time and let it evolve." As Michael Mast, 29, said, "SlowGrowth, Slow Design, Slow Food. Slow, but without being flaky." (more)

Renée DiResta is the Director of Research at New Knowledge, and Head of Policy at nonprofit Data for Democracy... Renée is a 2018 Mozilla Fellow in Media, Misinformation and Trust... Previously, Renée was part of the founding team and ran marketing and business development at Haven, the transportation management technology platform that’s transforming trade logistics for commodity, CPG, and food shippers. Before that, Renée was a Principal at seed-stage venture capital fund O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures (OATV)... http://www.reneediresta.com/ (more)

Byrne Hobart: Blitzscaling: Read It Before Your Competitors Do. A good bullet point for your bucket list is to write something that will change a lot of lives. There are a couple ways you could theoretically pull this off: you could come up with an amazing new idea, or at least a compelling sales pitch for an old one. But a good way to get a tactical advantage is to choose your audience well: write for a reader who is on the cusp of greatness, and nudge them in the right direction (more)

WebTorrent is a peer-to-peer (P2P) streaming torrent client written completely in JavaScript by Feross Aboukhadijeh (who also created YouTube Instant), John Hiesey, and the team at WebTorrent and on GitHub, for use in web browsers, as well as a WebTorrent Desktop stand alone version able to bridge WebTorrent and BitTorrent serverless networks... A goal of WebTorrent is to maintain compatibility with BitTorrent as much as possible. WebTorrent uses the same protocol as BitTorrent but uses a different transport. BitTorrent uses TCP connections and UDP packets that currently don't work on the web for security reasons, while WebTorrent uses WebRTC facilitating peer-to-peer connectivity and functions on the web as the only option to avoid using servers (ie. web sockets and middlemen servers, etc). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebTorrent

Open Standards for Social Networking (more)

see OpenGov

RendezVous/ZeroConf-based Collaborative Writing for MacOs X. So it's kinda like IRC but with editing not just streaming. (more)

John Cutler: Self-Inflicted Chaos. A certain amount of chaos suggests growth and learning. I’ve yet to experience a thriving startup environment that wasn’t a bit chaotic (more)

Allan Kelly: Why do devs hate Agile? I was inspired by Jim McCarthy’s book Dynamics of Software Development. Jim was a developer, albeit a developer who had started managing other developers. It was that book that made me think “alternative ways are valid. (more)

Mindfulness is the psychological process of bringing one's attention to experiences occurring in the present moment,[1][2][3] which one can develop through the practice of meditation and through other training.[2][4][5] Mindfulness is derived from sati, a significant element of Buddhist traditions,[6][7] and based on Zen, Vipassanā, and Tibetan meditation techniques.[8][9][note 1] Individuals who have contributed to the popularity of mindfulness in the modern Western context include Thích Nhất Hạnh (1926– ), Herbert Benson (1935– ), Jon Kabat-Zinn (1944– ), and Richard J. Davidson (1951– ). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindfulness

How Loneliness Is Tearing America Apart. According to a recent large-scale survey from the health care provider Cigna, most Americans suffer from strong feelings of loneliness and a lack of significance in their relationships. Nearly half say they sometimes or always feel alone or “left out.” (more)

Reputation Management metric (Trust Metric?) from Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom. (more)

Men won't talk about mental health and it's literally killing them. In Australia, 75 percent of suicide attempts involve men. In the US that number is 78 percent. (more)