Tuesday Dispatch: Issue #46

The Owl and The Beetle

This week we learn about oblique questions, the sound of gentrification, and how to evaluate information. As well as how to reuse silica gel packets and explain the unexplainable.

3 Droplets of Leadership

What would we do if we had 1/10th of the resources?

For example, suppose you're building an app for platform X, the tools for building apps for platform X aren't great, and someone suggests building a new programming language.

What would we do if we had 1/10th of the resources?

We'd look at what other people had done to succeed on that platform and use their approach instead.

Check out this article on Oblique Questions, suggested by Marco Fabbri, as a comment to last week's atom of reflection of this very newsletter.

Why Do Rich People Love Quiet?

The sound of gentrification is silence.

Don't miss this piece on The Atlantic.

Evaluating Information

We are drowning in information. Most of that information is irrelevant. If only we could sort what matters from what doesn’t.

The good news is that you can train your brain to evaluate the quality of information.

Check out this great article on FS.

2 Grains of Technology

Silica Gel Packets

If you’ve bought shoes, torn into beef jerky, or taken certain medication recently, you have likely pulled out at least one tiny silica gel packet.

After briefly wondering why your new backpack contained a warning-labeled squishy little pillow, you probably chucked it in the garbage with the rest of the packaging.

Yet those silica gel packets are as useful as they are ubiquitous, and you can give them a second, third, or fourth life instead of sending them directly to the landfill. But why are the tiny bags in so many products? And can you reuse them?

Check out a few good uses for them on Popular Science.

Unexplainable

Unexplainable is a science show about everything we don’t know.

Host Noam Hassenfeld is joined by an array of experts and Vox reporters each week to look at the fascinating unanswered questions in science and the mind-bending ways scientists are trying to answer them.

Check it out!

1 Atom of Reflection

Labeling is a great tool in communication. Since I started labeling my expectations as “Systems for Collective Benefit,” people around me have been less defensive in adopting new processes.