October 2024 Links
The outer ring, George R.R. Martin's procrastination, streaming services, Rings of Power, speed reading, and more. 9 links.
I’m republishing a premium edition of The Dragon and the Raven. Sign up to be notified when the Kickstarter campaign launches and you’ll secure a free bookmark. New illustrations. New map. Included study guide. You’ll love having this book on your shelf.
The existence of the “Inner Ring” means there is also an “Outer Ring.” Extrapolating on one of C.S. Lewis’ popular essays.
Without inner-ringism I honestly don’t know if things like X or Instagram could exist. The entire infrastructure of those digital platforms depends on the fact that people will do and say and approve of what they see others doing and saying and approving of. Further, social media’s effectiveness is directly dependent on how concentrated inner ringism can become in small doses: a hashtag here, a viral witticism there. The sum of social media is an ambient cry of millions of users saying, “See? I’m one of you!”
There’s a flip side to inner-ringism, though. Lewis’s address mentions it only by implication, but especially in American political discourse, this flip side has a powerful and resilient life of its own.
Why can’t GRRM finish A Song of Ice and Fire? Because he probably won’t. Don’t get your hopes up. While I think the post has some points, George could easily finish it as a grimdark fantasy if he really wanted to, subverting everything. We’re talking about finishing, not necessarily finishing well. I imagine the logistics are the bigger problem.
The Song of Ice and Fire isn't actually supposed to be dark, Machiavellian, hopeless, or a subversion of Tolkien at all. It's just supposed to start that way.
How managers run successful companies into the ground. Engineer companies like Intel, Sony, and Boeing have fallen prey to midwit consultants.
When executives, board members, and major investors manage companies by and for the bottom line, they operate on a theory of the company as a vehicle solely for capturing profit. When this happens, the difficult and holistic question of creating value in the first place—a question unique for every company—simply goes unaddressed.