Startupy Issue #11: a laid back newsletter about very serious ideas

Welcome to the startupy newsletter. Every week, we curate the hottest links from our universe and share them with you here. As a reminder, startupy is a community-curated knowledge graph. Discover unobvious perspectives on tech, startups, and culture - mapped and indexed by the best and brightest curators. If you're feeling the vibe, consider becoming a member. For $20/month or $180/year you get unlimited access to our collective intelligence engine and community. 

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🥸 MOOD

🪐 HOT LINKS IN OUR UNIVERSE

Travel Is No Cure for the Mind by Lawrence Yeo

We tend to grossly overestimate the pleasure brought forth by new experiences and underestimate the power of finding meaning in current ones. While travel is a fantastic way to gain insight into unfamiliar cultures and illuminating ways of life, it is not a cure for discontentment of the mind. Who we are inside a venue matters far more than the venue itself. Instead of having the wanderlust of travel guide our search for meaning, we have to look within and embrace the only thing that is present now. The only thing that actually exists today.

🕺 Curated in Transformation, Gratitude, The Wellness Economy & Travel

Definite optimism as human capital by Dan Wang

I wonder if economists overrate the easier-to-observe policy factors and under-theorize the idea that positive visions of the future drive long-term growth. To put it in a different way, I wish that they would consider definite optimism as human capital. In addition to education levels, human capital models should consider factors like optimism, imagination, and hope for the future.

🕺 Curated in Economic Growth & Optimism

Barrels and Ammunition by Keith Rabois

Most people in most companies are ammunition, meaning they will do what they're told and they will try to do it to the best of their abilities, but they won't actually drive from inception and conception and take an entire organization with them… But turns out that any organization can only really do as many projects as it has barrels. Those are the people that can come up with original ideas can rally the team around them, and can fix things that don't look like they are working as promisingly as you had hoped.

🕺 Curated in Organization Design, Ideas & Organization Dynamics

and this week's just trust us👇

How to Understand Things by Nabeel Qureshi

Thinking hard takes effort, and it’s much easier to just stop at an answer that seems to make sense, than to pursue everything that you don’t quite get down an endless, and rapidly proliferating, series of rabbit holes. But it’s not just energy. You have to be able to motivate yourself to spend large quantities of energy on a problem, which means on some level that not understanding something — or having a bug in your thinking — bothers you a lot. You have the drive, the will to know. Related to this is honesty, or integrity: a sort of compulsive unwillingness, or inability, to lie to yourself. Feynman said that the first rule of science is that you do not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.

🕺 Curated in Sensemaking, Knowledge Management & Intelligence

🔥 POPULAR RABBIT HOLES ON STARTUPY

Humane Tech

13 connections → 7 content, 2 companies, 4 related topics

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261 connections → 170 content, 78 companies, 13 related topics

James Currier

Top Thinker → Network Effects & Marketplaces

Molly Mielke

Top Thinker → Ideas, Future of Funding & Creativity

Monetizing Personal Data

28 connections → 12 content, 14 companies, 2 related topics

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39 connections → 28 content, 5 companies, 6 related topics

Flywheels

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👆  Use the Startupy randomizer to get inspired ☝️

🌱 COMMUNITY HEALTH

Welcoming Ted Glasnow, Yang Zhou, Lucas Jackson, Nicolay Gerold, and Tom Critchlow to our curator community this week and virtual high-fiving Kassen Qian, Lien De Ruyck, and Gaye Soykok for their contributions.

688 contributions this week

1,254 connections this week

899 highlights this week

✨ CURATOR SPOTLIGHT

Find her Twitter | Newsletter | Community

Why is neurodiversity interesting?

People think, learn, behave, and experience the world around them in many different ways. Some of this diversity is due to neurological differences. Neurodiversity is the idea that these differences in the human brain should be seen as variations on a spectrum rather than deficits.

We all need to care about neurodiversity. By definition, all workplaces, classrooms, and audiences are neurodiverse. If you’re a founder, an educator, or a creator, you need to know about neurodiversity, and what it means for the way you design and deliver your projects. Beyond the basics (is your content inclusive?) you need to ask yourself: are you empowering everyone — really everyone — to achieve their full potential?

A podcast worth listening to?

Whether you’re a student or work in any kind of role where efficiently understanding, connecting, and using information is essential to your success, The Learning Scientists Podcast is packed with evidence-based strategies to learn better. They interview neuroscientists, applied linguists, and other researchers to discuss the practice of learning and education.

Things worth reading and watching?

How We Learn by Stanislas Dehaene is a fantastic book about the neuroscience of learning, at the intersection of neurobiology, cognitive psychology, and computer science. It talks about the future of education, artificial intelligence, child development, and much more.

I like to watch things that make me deeply feel and think. I have two good ones to share: Love, Death + Robots, a collection of animated short stories by world-class creators spanning science fiction and fantasy, and Everything Everywhere All at Once by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert — a masterpiece of acting and storytelling.

Projects worth following?

I stumbled on this project when looking for ways to convert brain waves into art: brainblots is an NFT collection of rorschach-inspired art from brainwaves of a hundred people doing what they love. Another really cool project is the Flourishing App, developed by researchers at Harvard University to help people with their mental health, meaning and purpose, social relationships, and more.

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Startupy Issue #11: a laid back newsletter about very serious ideas

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