3rd Party Links
I must admit to being somewhat pained writing this page, due to leaving out 1000x more than I am including - that I know about that is, and 109x more that I don't...
I will be adding more, including extended summary text of existing and future entries, if/as I am able to find time. Additionally, note that for some of the references below, I am decently acquainted with the creator's work, and for others, have just read/watched a single engaging interview.
You may be wondering why I am posting this page at all, given everyone is already deluged with information, and given I am leaving out far far more than I am including. The reasons include one or more of:
- The listed resource has been of value to me, and I thus hope it may be of value to you as well.
- The referenced content is (to me) funny and entertaining.
- The links provide a starting point for your further exploration in a particular area.
- I made a committment to myself in 2021 to get more of what I have considered, aggregated, created, etc., out into the world, regardless of being certain of its value, and regardless of whether I consider it "complete and ready for prime time". I chose this path because what I am certain of is that if it all stays substantially private, any value it may have is substantially lost. This page is one small part of that process.
- In aggregate, the compendium provides a window onto some of what engages me personally (should such a thing be of interest, vs. something to flee... ;-).
TOC
- Engaging speakers/writers/bloggers(+) - Life, work, relationships, mental health, habits, and culture.
- Mark Manson (Author of the NYT Bestseller The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck.)
- Eric Barker (Author of the WSJ Bestseller Barking up the Wrong Tree: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong.)
- James Clear (Author of the NYT Bestseller Atomic Habits.)
- Stephen Guise (Author of several very popular books on habits and How to be an imperfectionist. Interview with Brian Johnson regarding latter book.)
- Blaz Kos (Creator of Agile Lean Life blog.)
- Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu (Excellent interviewer with fascinating array of speakers.)
- Jordan Peterson - an interview with him by Tom above. (Extremely articulate, interesting, highly controversial character. When I have time, I am going to write a blog post on this matter, where as several thoughtful people have said (though a tiny minority compared to those claiming he is either the 2nd coming of Christ, or the devil incarnate), the most interesting thing is not Peterson himself, but society's wildly polarized reaction to him - as well as the near incomprehensible shallowness and misrepresentation evidenced in some of his prominent interviews. (He deserves to be challenged for what he says and believes, not for what he does not - and as viewers we deserve that too.) In the meantime, regardless of what you may have heard-of/think-of him — benevolent, wise, common-sense, compassionate, loving, savior ... or ... misogynistic, racist, right wing, patriarchal, Christian, fascist — I encourage listing to the above interview.)
- Positive Thinking / Motivational Speakser/Writers etc. (And, for balance: Mark Manson (see above) Vigorously arguing against the entire Positive Thinking movement.)
- Mindfulness, Self Compassion, and Healing - Teachers, Writers, Support.
(Prior category includes element of this too but is typically more general in scope, including politics, business, athletics, and more.)
- Eckhart Tolle (Book: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment.)
- Jon Kabat Zinn (Early pioneer - MBSR and more. Lots of books.)
- Tara Brach
- Pema Chödrön
- Jack Kornfield (Nice interview in Tricycle magazine.)
- Kristin Neff (Self Compassion)
- Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
- More Specialized
- Jonice Webb, Childhood Emotional Neglect
- CMC Foundation For Change: Helping starts with science and kindness. (See Beyond Addiction: How Science and Kindness Help People Change by Jeffrey Foote & Carrie Wilkens.)
- Engaging TED talk on depression by Andrew Solomon: ("The opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality ...".
Offers striking study showing depressed people see the world "more accurately.") From presenter: "There was a study I particularly liked in which a group of depressed and a group of non-depressed people were asked to play a video game for an hour, and at the end of the hour, they were asked how many little monsters they thought they had killed. The depressive group was usually accurate to within about 10 percent, and the non-depressed people guessed between 15 and 20 times as many little monsters.
- See also Johann Hari reference along with his TED talk at top of Guiding Principles page. (“The opposite of addiction is not sobriety, the opposite of addiction is connection.”)
- SMART: Self-Management And Recovery Training. (Respectful, supportive, secular, and useful program, with free online resources and local meetings. Deals with addictive behavior of all kinds - alcohol, eating, work, shopping, sex, gambling, etc.)
- HumorI hope to soon be adding my own thread here. (In my youth, I did a bit of stand-up. :-)
- Delightful New Yorker cartoon by Robert Leighton.
- XKCD "A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language." See for example #162, #1022, #208, #688.
- Cartoonist Dave Coverly.
- Chuck Norris Jokes/Facts and yet another compilation (e.g., out of many greats: "Chuck Norris counted to infinity… twice.")
- Great snippet on man-woman relationships Recommend reading from "Let's say a guy named Roger ..." to "Norm, did Elaine ever own a horse?" by humorist Dave Barry
- The Little Bars of Soap by comedian Shelly Berman.
- Santa Physics (First main section is in my view by far the best.)
- Programming Sucks ("Most people don’t even know what sysadmins do, but trust me, if they all took a lunch break at the same time they wouldn’t make it to the deli before you ran out of bullets protecting your canned goods from roving bands of mutants.")
- Great BC Cartoon by John Hart Studios.
- Poets
- Visual Art - Primarily Techno/KineticPart of what I do falls in this vein - see TechnoFrolics and ChoreoV websites, as we as Vimeo portfolio.
- Education (& Calculation)
- TED talk "Do schools kill creativity?" by Sir Ken Robinson ("Mrs. Lynne, Gillian isn't sick. She's a dancer.")
- Grant Sanderson / 3blue1brown (Absolutely fantastic math education videos - friendly, clear, playful, supportive, connective, highly visual. For the calculus intro "... my goal is for you to come away feeling you could have invented calculus yourself." ~90 min interview of Grant by Dave Perell.)
- Khan Academy (Diverse, clear, blackboard-style explanations. (Have not personally reviewed any non-tech subjects.))
- Brilliant (Subscription-based website providing visually-engaging and educational interactive tools to help understand diverse technical subject.)
- Better Explained (The website of Kalid Azad, created to to help document and provide improved, intuitive explanations for various technical concepts.)
- Tibees / Toby Hendy (Need to think further how to characterize. Can say: a) "Environment" within which info presented, broadly speaking, very appealing. b) Idea of reviewing exams from major universities - which I have yet to have time to review, quite an interesting idea.)
- Vijart (Mesmerizing, fun, high-energy math doodles/stories.)
- Veritasium by Derek Muller (Engaging videos covering a wide range of math and science topics.)
- Noam Chomsky (Education For Whom and For What? Very interesting, and at times horrifying, historical perspective/info.)
- More Calculator / Seer Like
- Wolfram Alpha (Too comprehensive to explain here - see site. If using for calculus etc., be sure you understand the expected form of the answer sufficiently to filter out elements above/beyond/sidewise from what you are looking for.)
- Google (Yes, does calculations, multi-equation plots, and more - just type into search bar, for example, "plot y=2^x+5, y=x^2".)
- Business & Entrepreneurship
- Visionary
- Eric Drexler (Author of The Engines of Creation. Articulated much of what nano-technology might come to offer. Was involved in founding Foresight Institute.)
- Ray Kurzweil (Books include The Age of Spiritual Machines and The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. One core idea: People do not appreciate exponential growth.)
- Brett Victor (Focused on computer UI design (in its deepest sense), with significant math and physics background.)
- Software Utilities (that I find useful, and that are not so common everyone has heard of)
- The Journal by David Michael (Great Windows journaling program. Powerful enough to be almost a complete office management/organization app - at least in terms of note-taking, TODOs, archiving, etc. Features include: Arbitrary-depth tree-structured organization; clickable links to any content - within journal, within office, or on Internet; search; keyword and topic tagging; calendar, alarms, timers; image and doodle support; and more.)
- Tidy Tabs (Adds tabs like browsers have to any Windows application.)
- dtSearch (Powerful indexed search engine that can find things like one word near another but not near a third, within terabytes of data, in seconds. Allows quickly finding items decades old, and where one has only vague recollection of details.)
- Image Eye (No border image viewer.)
- More ...
