Dennis's Serendipity Digest - something cooking up in Los Angeles

Hey,

just got back from Jonathan Courtney’s Master Mind in Los Angeles. Feeling inspired. Now happy to be back in my office writing to you.

The event took place at the Skool office in LA, never seen such a comprehensive book selection (I mean the guy had everything from Expert Secrets, to Soros, to Good to Great, Sapolsky… M&A Text books… you name it.)

You could feel there is something cooking up.

So let’s get into it.

📸 Photo of the Week

Two ideas

1. “The Wright Brothers created the single greatest cultural force since the invention of writing. The airplane became the first World Wide Web, bringing people, languages, ideas, and values together.” Bill Gates (seen at the Star Alliance lounge at LAX)
   

2. Ever heard of skaz?
   
   No it’s not a music genre.
   
   But if you haven’t heard of it before, don’t worry. Neither have I. Until I read Nikolai Gogol’s “The Nose” (1836) and George Saunder’s analysis of this absurd short-story.
   
   Honestly I didn’t enjoy the story, without wanting to spoil too much, it’s about a dude who looses his nose. But what brought it home for me was George’s analysis and introduction to skaz.
   
   Skaz is “a particular Russian form of unreliable narration.” And don’t we get unreliable narratives all the time? Isn’t every narrative unreliable to a certain degree. Yeah, that kinda resonates. Certainly every narrative is deeply subjective. What do I mention, do I present facts, talk about feelings, what do I leave out?
   
   Essentially it creates a distance between the writer and the narrator, the narrator is just another character (and often a silly one). A British version is Sacha Baron Cohen acting as Borat.
   
   By the way if you want to learn about Russian literature, story telling or human nature go checkout “A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life” by George Saunders.

Three cool links

1. “Become a Service AI Expert in 90 Days or Less” a live training I do on Thursday 22nd of August, 10:30am CET

2. Augmenting Long-term Memory for those who know me, you know I am obsessed with learning. I enjoyed this piece on multiple levels.
   
   Number 1: “That is, Anki makes memory a choice, rather than a haphazard event, to be left to chance” → wouldn’t that be amazing, if memory is a choice?
   
   Number 2: The author Michael is a quantum physicist and goes into detail how he dives into new topics like the Google Deep Mind paper. It’s humbling to see how much time and effort he put into getting a grasp of it. And it gives me hope, because even someone who seems very smart, takes quite a bit of time and effort to wrap his head around a new paper.
   
   Number 3: It’s a delight to read and very actionable. In fact halfway through the article, I couldn’t resist getting started with Anki.

3. The Network School if I was 21 and knew everything I know now, I would definitely check this out. Boy, I am even tempted to apply today.

Personal note

That was a blast. I hope you enjoyed it, if anything came up, do let me know and say hi.

Catch you next Sunday!

Best,
Dennis