“I know engineers, they love to change things.” (Dr. Leonard McCoy – Star Trek: The Motion Picture) If you’re seeing this it’s because all the things this engineer changed, worked. It’s no secret that I enjoy playing with technology. For no other reason than that, I moved 7takeaways.com to a new webserver. The old was … Read more

1. “I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hate so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.” James Baldwin – Quoted in Mark Manson’s Mindf*ck Monday – (email newsletter) Not much to comment here, other than to remind that one of my … Read more

(Whoops. Tagline didn’t make it to the email. Or did I catch in time? Oh well. No matter. More practice needed. ) 1. “Stimulus eventually causes inflation” Your Stimulus Check Is Creating Wealth Inequality – Tim Denning – (Medium) I have to admit, the stimulus portion of the economic recovery plan(s) being implemented throughout the … Read more

1. “…retained the curiosity of childhood into adulthood.” Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Life Advice Will Leave You SPEECHLESS – One of the Most Eye Opening Interviews – Neil deGrasse Tyson – (YouTube) The title does not overpromise. This is one of the most inspirational videos I’ve seen in a long, long time. School should as a … Read more

1. “The truth needs to be free and universal.” The Truth Is Paywalled But The Lies Are Free – Nathan J. Robinson – (Current Affairs magazine/website) This was an incredibly valuable perspective on how news and information are distributed. How content creators get compensated is anything but fair, and quite literally at odds with truly … Read more

As with almost everything I do, 7TakeAways remains an experiment. I’m definitely getting value out of it, but I know there’s room for improvement. There are questions I ask myself like: This project is for me to force better reading habits, but should the takeaways be for me or for my hypothetical audience? The former … Read more

After finishing my write-up of tools I use last week, I encountered a problem with using Evernote to save full articles. The issue is that there’s no simple way to highlight and annotate or take notes on what you’ve saved. As a result, I re-activated my Instapaper account and have started using that to fill … Read more

A couple of quick recommendations from my approach to reading/saving/note-taking: Even though I stopped using it for time-management, Evernote remains a great way to save both notes and complete articles that I want to refer to later without worrying that they’ll disappear online. It also saves “simplified” (i.e., no ads, no fluff) versions if it … Read more

I hope the week is treating you well. It’s been a challenging one here at “Castle Notenboom”, for a variety of reasons. Much like Not All News Is Bad, I’m finding so many good sources of information and takeaways that sometimes the challenge is to whittle them down to just one a day. It’s a … Read more

Isn’t that the way? Moments after completing last week’s 7 Takeaways, I’m watching a video and — boom — the first takeaway of the next week. A few minutes later — boom — number two. Put yourself in front of good content. And pay attention. 1. “Repetition is [indistinguishable] from truth” Marketing Lessons with Jack … Read more