Are we free; Useless futures; New religions

👋 Still the same Milk, No Sugar, but on a new platform

Something to consider when you start your new projects at work this week — when everyone is in charge, no one is in charge.

It’s common in “democratic” teams that the culture is more agreeable than challenging. This makes for great interpersonal relationships, but difficult professional ones, because no on is willing to go against the grain and innovate.

What I’ve found useful in the past is to do a few things:

Have a great first week back folks.

This is a brain bender for sure. It’s true though — if everything we do is being anticipated by an algorithm, why bother? There’s a side angle here that we’re really not that unique in the first place. How many of you received something coffee related for Christmas? I’d presume a lot. If you’ve watched Don’t Look Up this past week, the scene where the president dies is also a hilarious nod to this kid of thinking.

It feels like every time I open Twitter, there’s someone promoting a cartoon-like zombie for sale on the blockchain or whatever. This is the future, folks. And what’s more bizarre is that we have people like the son of John Lennon (yes, the Beatles’ John Lennon) trying to get us to buy them as well. This article is cynical, but I love it, as it jumps into analysing what has happened to our interest in art and the mashup we’ve had with fungi(ble).

I’m sure many of you were met with a conspiracy-theory wielding relative over the past few weeks, and although it can be fun to poke the bear, I’m sure we’re all aware that this kind of “I’m just saying!” mentality is growing in frequency. As you’re probably also aware, TikTok’s prominence in shoving bite-sized opinions down our throat probably has something significant to do with it. This is what the author of this article is calling a new religion, and that’s pretty weird.

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This is a short one, but very valuable. I’m sure we’ve all felt at some point in the past year a feeling that isn’t quite burnout, isn’t quite “I’m over it”, but is something we can’t quite describe. Adam Grant here gives us an out, in the form of “languishing”. It’s a fantastic way of describing, well…blurgh.

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