Cate Hall: Crossing the cringe minefield. Say you want to improve your life - to become happier, more helpful to others, more desirable, whatever you want. Given that this is a big world, with many possibilities, there are lots of strategies for self-improvement available to you. Which strategies will you pick first? (more)

Patrick McKenzie: Stacking the odds: Cate Hall on agency and outlier success. This week, Patrick is joined by Cate Hall, CEO of Astera Institute and author of a forthcoming book on agency, to explore how individuals can systematically develop higher agency in their lives. They discuss the selection effects that draw agentic people to fields like poker and startups, the importance of being comfortable with ignorance and feedback, and practical strategies like asking "Is there a better way to do this?" ten times daily. (more)

Cate Hall: How to Be More Agentic. To succeed as a startup founder is, in many ways, to be a high-agency person. With artificial intelligence agents in the news, we felt it was high time to republish Cate Hall’s essay on human agency. Hall is a former professional poker player, lawyer, and medical startup cofounder who was able to do all of these things because of her own agency. Read her tips to learn how to be the master of your own fate (more)

Next Action to move a Pro Ject forward (more)

aka direct marketing

In business, particularly in United States corporate law, a benefit corporation (or in some states, a public benefit corporation (PBC)) is a type of for-profit corporate entity whose goals include making a positive impact on society. Laws concerning conventional corporations typically do not define the "best interest of society", which has led to the belief that increasing shareholder value (profits and/or share price) is the only overarching or compelling interest of a corporation.[1] Benefit corporations explicitly specify that profit is not their only goal.[2] An ordinary corporation may change to a benefit corporation merely by stating in its approved corporate bylaws that it is a benefit corporation. A company chooses to become a benefit corporation in order to operate as a traditional for-profit business while simultaneously addressing social, economic, and/or environmental needs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation

Project Crowd Funding site. A new way to Fund and Follow Creativity http://www.kickstarter.com/ (more)

Proudhon (/ˈpruːdɒ̃/,[1] also US: /pruːˈdoʊn/; French: [pjɛʁ ʒozɛf pʁudɔ̃]; 15 January 1809 – 19 January 1865) was a French anarchist, socialist, philosopher, and economist who founded mutualist philosophy and is considered by many to be the "father of anarchism".[2] He was the first person to call himself an anarchist,[3][4] and is widely regarded as one of anarchism's most influential theorists. Proudhon became a member of the French Parliament after the Revolution of 1848, whereafter he referred to himself as a federalist.[5] Proudhon described the liberty he pursued as the synthesis of community and individualism. Some consider his mutualism to be part of individualist anarchism[6][7] while others regard it to be part of social anarchism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Joseph_Proudhon

Markets Not Capitalism: individualist anarchism against bosses, inequality, corporate power, and structural poverty. https://store.c4ss.org/index.php/product/markets-not-capitalism/ (more)

Brian Clark: Why “Long Life” Learning May Be the Key to Your Powerful Midlife Business. Online education is about to explode. Again. And the time to start positioning yourself is now, so you’re not left behind. (more)

Brian Clark: How Generation X Lost Control of Both Work and Home. You made the trade, consciously or unconsciously, by surrendering daily autonomy in exchange for stability, benefits, and a predictable path to retirement. (more)

Brian Clark: Healthspan: Why Knowing What to Do Is Only Half the Battle. (more)

Fusion cuisine is cuisine that combines elements of different culinary traditions that originate from different countries, regions, or cultures. The term fusion cuisine, added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2002, is defined as "a style of cookery which blends ingredients and methods of preparation from different countries, regions, or ethnic groups; food cooked in this style." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_cuisine (more)

Disgust (Middle French: desgouster, from Latin gustus, 'taste') is an emotional response of rejection or revulsion to something potentially contagious[1] or something considered offensive, distasteful or unpleasant. In The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, Charles Darwin wrote that disgust is a sensation that refers to something revolting. Disgust is experienced primarily in relation to the sense of taste (either perceived or imagined), and secondarily to anything which causes a similar feeling by sense of smell, touch, or vision. Musically sensitive people may even be disgusted by the cacophony of inharmonious sounds. Research has continually proven a relationship between disgust and anxiety disorders such as arachnophobia, blood-injection-injury type phobias, and contamination fear related obsessive–compulsive disorder (also known as OCD).[2][3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disgust

Simon Wardley concept: (more)

The professional-managerial class (PMC) is a social class within capitalism that, by controlling production processes through occupying a superior management position, is neither proletarian nor bourgeoisie. Conceived as "The New Class" by social scientists and critics such as Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the 1970s, this group of middle class professionals is distinguished from other social classes by their training and education, typically business qualifications and university degrees,[1] with occupations thought to offer influence on society that would otherwise be available only to capital owners.[2] The professional-managerial class tend to have incomes above the average for their country, with major exceptions being academia and print journalism.[3] James Burnham had proposed the idea of a leading managerial class in his 1941 book The Managerial Revolution, but the term "professional-managerial class" was coined in 1977 by John and Barbara Ehrenreich.[4] The PMC hypothesis contributed to the Marxist debates on class in Fordism and was used as an analytical category in the examination of non-proletarian employees. However, orthodox Marxists consider the PMC hypothesis to be revisionism of the Marxist understanding of class.[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional%E2%80%93managerial_class

Private Military Corporation (or Private Military Contractor) (more)

see selection bias

a Patrick McKenzie frame for someone who gets things done.... cf reality hacking, high agency. (not quite accurate, have to find reference..) (more)

high agency - a personality trait (more)