The100: cyanide, underwriters and black hole moons

Glass half full, half empty, or laced with cyanide?

‘The world needs a dose of realism’ and I agree with Tim (and Hans) in this piece highlighting how the world is not as gloomy as people think.

In fact, our next event Oct 11th in London will be on Attention Tuning – helping people find the truth in a morass of false perceptions and information. Tickets on sale from mid-June – let me know if you want me to hold a few for you.

Noisy underwriters beware

I wrote about humans and (vs?) machines in the last edition of The100. So this was timely: an interview with Daniel Kahneman where he discusses AI decision making.

“An algorithm could really do better than humans, because it filters out noise. If you present an algorithm the same problem twice, you’ll get the same output. That’s just not true of people.”

A 4 min read, and well worth it – plus you’ll understand the underwriter reference 🙂

Black hole moon

As a father I’ve always tried to answer any questions my children ask me, no matter how crazy or impractical, usually with uncreative lies.

But NOW! Armed with proper science you have the answers to all sorts of absurd questions… I give you (drum roll) XKCD…

You (sorry, your kids) want to know what would happen if a black hole replaced the moon? Or if you had to escape said-moon, how long it would take to get to Earth via a fireman’s pole? I bet you have…

Boxes of nostalgia

As a Brit I sometimes find our slump into nostalgia a little painful, but I’ve always loved the red telephone boxes that the NYT now writes about. There was something strangely comforting about seeing them in the days before smartphones… was it the connection to the world? To safety? Or checking the return-slots for any change that people had left behind?

Gov does Good

This guide to agile communication from the UK Government’s farming and environment agency has some useful tips. Although there’s none on the legendary issues of working with animals we did find gems like this:

‘Editing [all your video] into 2-minutes of video is the hardest job of all, and is best done by someone with some experience’.

We agree. And we’ve got plenty of people with more than just ‘some’ experience.

A Twist on the Tweet

And finally, if you want to see what your Twitter feed would have looked like 10 years ago (based on who you follow now), just click here.