Some interesting and informative articles I came across this week. Delivered to you every now and then 🤗

Publishing Your Work Increases Your Luck

by Aaron Francis
Essence: Positive + Motivational + Discipline + Self-Belief + Encouragement

Increase Your Luck

“Whatever you’re excited about, be excited about it publicly. Whatever you’re curious about, be curious about it publicly. People will want to follow along and you’ll inspire people along the way.”

“People are drawn to other people in motion. People want to follow along, people want to learn things, people want to be a part of your journey.”

“You can “publish” anywhere[...]Anywhere that’s not your hard drive counts!” 😂

I love randomly stumbling upon guys speaking on the nature of “luck”. It’s such a widely applicable topic that effects everyone (yet isn’t talked about a ton). Especially those in the throws of creation. I love how it ends up being both motivational and inspiring without ever even seeming like that was the authors intention to begin with.

It’s just like they woke up one day and decided to speak on “The nature of luck,” and they did it...and because of how absolutely horrible these centralized social media platforms all purposely make their algorithms. It speaks to a feeling we can all relate to. Wondering if we are doing enough. Wondering if we should keep going in the direction we are headed. Wondering if “this thing is on” taps mic curiously.

If there’s one thing I’ve discovered in recent years it’s this. The amount of serendipity that will occur in your life, your Luck Surface Area, is directly proportional to the degree to which you do something you’re passionate about combined with the total number of people to whom this is effectively communicated. It’s a simple concept, but an extremely powerful one because what it implies is that you can directly control the amount of luck you receive. In other words, you make your own luck. – Codus Operandi

These kind of articles are also great because they remind you not to take it all so seriously. To just continue on your journey as you work to create the things you love in life. It’s a reminder that you can treat publishing your work like a journal (minus the spewing of your guts out onto the page i.e. sharing every single detail of your life).

You commit to doing it regularly and you enjoy the growth and progress that inevitably comes as a result. And to top it all off, you get to enjoy all the extraordinary opportunities that naturally flow your way.

Does The News Reflect What We Die From?

Essence: Highly Informative + Perspective Shifting + Worth Sharing

See Past The Lies

I enjoyed this one so much I wrote a +3444 word article on it.

Local Communities Are Fighting Back Against Big Tech’s Data Centers

Essence: Positive News + People Uniting + Fighting For Rights + Opposing Big Tech

People Unite To Stop The Spread Of Data Centers

Community opposition has grown so powerful that officials now fear losing office over project approvals, forcing developers to reconsider their aggressive expansion timelines.

Even with state and federal backing, developers are retreating and selling properties, signaling that grassroots activism is fundamentally reshaping Big Tech’s expansion strategy.

I recently touched on the harmful impact of data centers in A Nation Sold to the Highest Bidder so that made this even more exciting to hear about.

“Officials now fear losing office over project approvals”

THIS is exactly how it’s supposed to be!

Now ideally they would just have the sense to operate in the people’s best interest to begin with, but this is the next best thing for all those that don’t. That’s what happens when people make their voices heard on topics that actually matter.

“Even with state and federal backing”

Meaning, even when your government is working against you to make your life worse in every single way – when people unite we still prevail!

These kind of stories could and should be much more common.

I LOVE that people are finally fighting back against Big Tech and the untold amounts of harm they cause billions of people. The funny, yet sad thing is that people could do so much more and send an equally strong message if they were to just stop using the products from these companies entirely.

Delete your OpenAI account, leave Google entirely, never use these companies services signed in (if you still need to use them at all), delete Facebook, delete Instagram, stop supporting Amazon, stop giving them your time, energy, attention and money.

All these companies do is design their products to be as addictive and privacy invasive as possible to extract money out of you. By using their services you just make it easier for them to build even more data centers on top of the egregious harm these companies have already been causing billions of people for decades.

The group’s latest report found that developers either canceled or delayed 20 projects after facing pushback from locals, representing $98 billion in proposed investments in the second quarter of this year...That’s an increase compared to 16 blocked or postponed projects from 2023 through the first quarter of this year, the group notes.

“I’ve been doing this work for 16 years, worked on hundreds of campaigns I’d guess, and this by far is the biggest kind of local pushback I’ve ever seen here in Indiana,” said Bryce Gustafson of the Indianapolis-based Citizens Action Coalition.

Well isn’t that just an AMAZING thing to hear! Progress!

I originally saw this story on The Verge, but they are so greedy and pathetic they use cookies to track you and automatically paywall their articles after you revisit them. I’ll never support such scummy practices, so if any other company does similar upon revisits let me know and I’ll add them to the list of sites I never link to – The Verge being the first.

Microsoft Was Willing To Spend $30 Billion To Protect It’s Investment

Essence: Informative + Big Tech

Sunk Cost Fallacy

Not a favorite per se but this was an informative piece explaining why Microsoft was so eager to save OpenAI when their CEO was briefly fired in November 2023. These guys were willing to shell out figures in the ballpark of $30 billion to hire the entire OpenAI team.

At the time Microsoft had recently invested $13 billion in the company and on top of that they would go on to partner with OpenAI and endlessly throw billions into their closed circular loop of AI companies. So it’s no surprise (along with plenty of other reasons I did not mention) that Microsoft just wanted to protect their investment.

It wasn’t necessarily that they thought OpenAI and it’s CEO were doing some revolutionary work that know one else could accomplish. It’s not that anyone was irreplaceable, it was just a matter of “protecting your investment”, “a cost of doing business”. Ensuring a return on their $13 billion as well as the ability to inflate their stock at will.

Flashback Story:

Hospitals Received Extra Money for COVID-19 Patients

Essence: Informative + Government Policy + Corruption

Fact Check

Hospitals Were Paid to Lie

Jensen said, "Hospital administrators might well want to see COVID-19 attached to a discharge summary or a death certificate. Why? Because if it's a straightforward, garden-variety pneumonia that a person is admitted to the hospital for – if they're Medicare – typically, the diagnosis-related group lump sum payment would be $5,000. But if it's COVID-19 pneumonia, then it's $13,000, and if that COVID-19 pneumonia patient ends up on a ventilator, it goes up to $39,000.

I heard mentions of this prior, but after hearing about this topic again in a book I’m reading, I decided to see just how true this statement was. Turns out hospitals were heavily incentivized to misdiagnose and wrongfully attribute various cases of illness to the virus.

Much more could be said about this but I’ll table that for another time (or simply learn more of the information I need to on this corrupt government plan).