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Hi friends,

Greetings from Utrecht!

Vaccination efforts in the Netherlands are well underway, and yesterday it was finally my turn to be admitted into Bill's hivemind. One down, one to go!

Martijn van Zwieten @mvavz Installing 5G... 50% 🟦🟦🟦🟦🟦⏹️⏹️⏹️⏹️⏹️ pic.twitter.com/Dakav3Rjkf June 19th 2021 0 Retweets 7 Likes

Or, you know... many to go, if this turns out to be a seasonal thing, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

I had planned to have another essay ready today, but that's not how things played out. Between juggling a number of high priority projects at Global Talk and preparing to go on vacation tomorrow, I've had very little time to write in the last two weeks. I haven't even had time to prepare any new book notes for the website.

The good news is that I'll have plenty of time to catch up on vacation next week, so I'll have plenty to share in my next newsletter. As a sneak peek, I'm working on two essays right now. One deals with different ways to develop a business model, and one examines company meetings: practical handholds for meeting rhythms, content and form, to get the most out of meetings, as efficiently as possible. If you have a burning desire to see one before the other, let me know and I'll see if I can finish and share the most requested one first.

So, no new content from me this time, but I do have a couple of very cool Bits that genuinely excited me when I stumbled upon them.

The Best Bits

​Leverage points to intervene in a system: This is great long read on the various types of leverage points in a system, and how we can act upon them to influence the system. It's long, but it's also incredibly dense with information. So take your time, and I'm certain you'll find a bevy of new insights to approach complex problems with.

H/T to Rick Pastoor for putting this one on my radar.

​David Schmachtenberger on emergence: This might the most profound 25 minutes of YouTube I've ever watched. In a casual fireside talk, David Schachtenberger explains the concept of emergence, and how emergence manifests itself from the smallest systems all the way up to human society. I was genuinely amazed at the casual way in which he manages to summarize such a complex concept, and then go one step further to tie it into a practical philosophy on the future of humankind. Absolute must-watch.

H/T to David Perell for sharing this.

The Ames Window: Finally, I wanted to share one of the coolest optical illusions I've seen in a long time, the Ames Window. Roam founder Conor White-Sullivan shared a short clip of this last week. Digging a little deeper, I found this video by Veritasium with a more in-depth explanation of how it works, and a human-sized illusion to boot.

See you in two weeks!

Martijn