0.0 Context Setting

It’s Tuesday, 28 July, 2026 in Portland, Oregon. My brain is mush.

0.1 Events: How People Work, Live!

How People Work, Live! is the live show about how to people. It’s based on my How People Work, my workshop that helps teams deliver better, faster, which itself is built on my last 20 years of working in tech.

Each show I’m joined by a very special guest and any number of interesting people (that’s you) to find out how to get hard results by learning and applying soft skills. Why? Well, because this marketing copy says that success isn’t just about what you do and whether you’re good at it -- it’s also about how well you work with other people.

Spoilers: other people are EVERYWHERE. I mean, come on.

The show page has got previous recorded episodes (you can see those on YouTube, too), as well as details of upcoming shows you can register for.

Coming up next is How People Work, Live! ... with Russell Davies. Who’s Russell? Why, let me tell you:

Russell Davies is a writer and strategist who has spent over 40 years thinking about what happens when marketing and services meet the internet. He's worked on communications and digital strategies for organisations like Honda, Nike, Microsoft, Apple, the Government Digital Service and the Co-op. He's currently Marketing and Product Director for The Modern House.

So come see Russell and me on Friday 31 July at 9am Pacific, 12pm New (“He’s Just Doing Things?”) York, and 5pm “Madchester”.

There’s lots more after that, too. Check out the show page for more.

1.0 Some Things That Caught My Attention

1.1 Just the Links

Hey, I can write a short thing. Five things that caught my attention and a brief explanation why. No rambling, no thinking-out-loud -- just what’s important.

HA. I wrote that! Not an LLM! Ugh, I feel gross.

FIRST.

Ars Technica: A missing underscore sent innocent man to prison for 18 months¹ is a story about a subpoena for user information that only had one underscore in it rather than two underscores.

Caught my attention because, uh, can someone please explain to me how using AI in policing would’ve helped prevent this.

SECOND

I recently learned about historical questions and found a PDF from Harvard’s Department of History on Writing a History Paper². History was one of my favorite subjects. Ish. Kind of. Also one of the ones where I could roll up and write the homework essay at like 11pm and get an A for it the next day. Anyway, I liked this on Common Problems in Question Posing:

1. The Deceptively Simple Question

   A question that demands a simple answer to a complex question.

   Example: When did women achieve equality?

2. The Fictional Question

   Example: If Hitler had been accepted to art school, would World War II have happened?

3. The Stacked Question, or, The Embedded Assumption

   Example: Why did the Carter presidency fail?

4. The Semantic Question A question that hinges on the definition of terms. Example: Are all radical revolutions violent?

5. The Impossible-to-Answer Question

   Example: Was World War I inevitable? 6. The Opinion or Ethical Question

   Example: Was Truman wrong to authorize the use of the atomic bomb? 7. The Anachronistic Question

   Example: How good was ancient Athens’ record on civil rights?

This scratches all my “oh right, critical thinking skills” itches.

Anyway, I thought the entire thing was worth reading.

THIRD

The Wrap had a piece analysing Star Trek’s fall from grace in Paramount’s streaming plans³. I mean sure, I read it because of the Star Trek but what really caught my attention was the attempt at breaking out the affect of Star Trek on the streamer’s revenue. I haven’t seen that before, but presumed that it must clearly exist otherwise how would you decide whether or not to invest in a show? I mean surely there must be data before Netflix decides to invest in a show and then, uh, cancel it after one season?

Anyway, it’s in that article, with a couple of charts; the first one showing (purporting to show?) global streaming revenue tied to Picard, Strange New Worlds, and Discovery, and the second chart titled “Legacy Star Trek Titles Global Revenue Contribution on Paramount+ Quarterly Actual vs. Estimated Without Spillover Impact from Strange New Worlds S2” which, you know. I love it.

FOURTH

ShittyRigs is an Instagram account⁴ that is fascinating. I mean it’s fascinating if you’re interested in how film and tv are made. It’s an account of all the shitty rigs used in, uh, film and tv production? But here “shitty” is “way that people figured out how to get the shot” and my gestalt understanding of “rigging” is “how you position everything and move it around to get the shot that you want” from moving the camera through to positioning the lights. Anyway, it’s great. I’ve been meaning to post this for ages. My TikToks and Reel FYPs are full of backstage production accounts, videos of people who do multi-cam live event/tv direction, and click tracks. Fantastic stuff.

FIFTH AND FINAL

Clive Thompson wrote The Joy of Typing⁵ TWELVE YEARS AGO and I can’t remember why it crossed my feed again recently. Maybe Clive posted it? Anyway, it caught my attention because:

• it talks about how handwriting is good for you, or rather how handwriting activates your brain
• but also importantly, how being able to type fast (hi! me! I can type over 120wpm!) is a way to get your thoughts out
• crucially it’s about being able to type fast, because it lets you see your thoughts...
• ... but at the same time, transcribing by listening to someone else and typing what they’re saying is something you can do without thinking, which trust me: not great for lectures. I mean, you get the notes, sure.

Look, here’s a pull quote:

In other words, by facilitating students’ ability to put letters and words on the page, they increased their ability to produce text that was creative and original, more technically accurate, more logically sequenced and better organized and showed greater pragmatic awareness and sensitivity to audience … These differences were not trivial.

Wonderful stuff.

That’s it. Five links! No mess, no fuss, not even any gross AI writing, just me pretending to be gross AI writing.

How are you doing?

Best,

Dan