A Joke, 3 Links and Time Off
by Miki Saxon 
It’s the last day of June and I’m a bit burned out. So I’ve decided to do something I have done in the 12 years of this blog.
I’m going to take the entire next week, July 1-7 off. Call it a mental health week.
Rather leave you with nothing to do while I’m gone I thought I’d share a three valuable links and one excellent joke (or maybe it’s a meme)
A techie and his wife were having a conversation about their attitudes towards life and death.
The techie had very strong feelings about his end-of-life preferences. He said didn’t want his brain frozen or any other Silicon Valley ideas.
“Never let me live in a vegetative state, totally dependent on machines and liquids from a bottle. If you see me in that state I want you to disconnect all the connections that are keeping me alive, I’d much rather die.”
At that point, his wife got up from the sofa with a look of pure admiration on her face and came towards him.
She gave him a hug and proceeded to disconnect the Cable TV, DVD, computer, smart phone, iPod, Xbox, and Alexa.
Then she went to the bar and threw away all the whiskey, rum, gin, vodka, along with the beer from the fridge.
Then she held him tenderly and used mouth-to-mouth to help him breathe.
Because her husband almost died.
As to the links,
Obvious as it sound, watching experts does not improve your skills.
A pair of researchers from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business conducted six separate experiments in which people who watched an expert demonstration of a particular skill experienced a big surge in confidence in their own skill-doing ability, and zero increase in their actual ability.
A first person account of why you shouldn’t always believe websites, social media or reviews.
Freakin’ Awesome Karaoke Express (or F.A.K.E., for short). I made it up and paid strangers to pump up its online footprint to make it seem real. I didn’t do it to scam anyone or even for the LULZ. I wanted to see firsthand how the fake reputation economy operates. The investigation led me to an online marketplace where a good reputation comes cheap.
Impressive. John Perry Barlow founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation, contributed to the Grateful Dead as a lyricist and in figured out what it took to be a good adult.
According to his Reddit AMA four years ago: “I found myself so surprised to have reached an age of indisputable adult that I wrote up a set of “adult principles” that I’ve been trying to live up to for 35 years.” The rules below are concise, practical, and can be applied to nearly every aspect of life: from waiting in line at the market to having a difficult conversation with a loved one.
Have a fabulous Fourth of July and I’ll see you on the 9th.
Image credit: HikingArtist.com
