Weekly LoL • W28 • 2025

Weekly Link out Louds - are links that I found fascinating and took notes on. Sharing so that you might enjoy / find them valuable too

• 10 technologies that won't exist in 5 years: Why won’t we have more of these tools in 5 years? I’ve worked in science funding for the last 5 years. I now have a sense of where the money goes, and how long things take on a default development path even when they do get funded. We are not on track.
• Why Your Brain Gets High on Uncertainty: Some researchers think our love of uncertainty might be why we enjoy music. We anticipate patterns in the melody, and when the song does something slightly unexpected - boom, dopamine city.
• Why You Should Stop Complaining: Complaints are a poor way to express an idea
• How to like everything more: enjoyment is a skill. you can learn to enjoy more - not only by practicing mindfulness but by cultivating a sense of acceptance and curiosity
• Flounder Mode: Hollywood style of working. Different ways to be successful. But the critical thing is for you to define what success is yourself. And never let an external system be the adjudicator.
• Old Computer Challenge: Home of the divine machines.
• People don’t keep secrets: Incentives need to be designed for secrets. But it also limits upsides and options. In the end, everything is a trade off. Control versus optionality and opportunity.
• Reasonably unreasonable: Only 20% of startups survive 5 years. Here's what it takes to be reasonably unreasonable and beat the entrepreneurial odds. So one has to be reasonably unreasonable and relentless to make it happen
• WWDC 2025: What does that change for me? Nothing, really. Apple continues to produce best in class products, which I will continue to rely on. But I do feel an increasing appetite for competition. If someone were to come along with a certain degree of audacity and the right philosophy around design/privacy/etc., I'd be a vulnerable customer for Apple. I expect the same holds true for a lot of my friends. The likelihood of that is, obviously, fairly low. And that, in turn, is why Apple has been enabled to skip out of community events and produce these glossy, over-rehearsed events. Which is a shame.
• 'The America I Loved is Gone': Stephen Marche on the decline of America.
• What I learned about decisions from a pancake: The truth about decisions is to just make them. They might be right. Then great. They might be wrong. If so, live them, learn from them, grow. But, the answer almost always is - make them. Like flipping a pancake. What a delightful rad.