Thieves Like Us

Digital product manager, business geek, and lover of design. Formerly at The Cools and Animoto in NYC. Dartmouth College. Born in Los Angeles. Now in London. The name Thieves Like Us was stolen from a New Order song, Robert Altman film, and Swedish indie band. Views my own or plagiarized. Definitely not my employer's.

[oquelinda-blog]

[colynmontgomery]

'Running Water Never Grows Stale' - Bruce Lee

[colynmontgomery]

innovation is the sum of change across the whole system, not a thing which causes a change in how people behave

From Stuart Butterfield, in an excellent memo to the team at Slack. 

[continuations]

In 1994 I was a student in Thomas Piketty’s first theory class at MIT. He was a young hotshot professor and I was a not so young student (in fact about 4 years older than Piketty). I still vividly remember the horror that was the first exam in this class. Piketty had vastly overestimated how...

[colynmontgomery]

Great review of a book now on my nightstand. Personal thoughts to follow. 

[colynmontgomery]

“The model will change and you won’t pay for the window of availability you’ll pay for the inch that you watch... on the 18th day [ a movie will ] be available everywhere and you’ll pay for it on the size of the device you watch it on... When that happens and it will happen, it will reinvent the enterprise of movies."

Jeffrey Katzenberg on the future of cinema. 

[colynmontgomery]

And 87% of respondents say #hunger leads to #eating that promotes satiety. 

[colynmontgomery]

Art at its most significant is a Distant Early Warning System that can always be relied on to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen to it.

Marshall McLuhan via MediaREDEF

[johndevore]

New York City Doesn’t Love You

Are you okay? Is New York getting to you? Are things not going according to plan?

Stop whining. For fuck’s sake. 

The plan you don’t plan for isn’t the plan you planned but it’s usually more original. Isn’t that why you moved to New York? To be original?

God, you didn’t move to play make-believe, did you?

Read More

[colynmontgomery]

The Motion Picture Camera: Past, Present and Future

[colynmontgomery]

Just saw Daniel Kahneman speak about his book "Thinking, Fast and Slow." He's great so I recommend catching him if you get the opportunity. 

A brief speech by Daniel transitioned into a chat with David Baddiel - a former comedian. The highlight was a discussion of experience-based v. memory-based identity and how an aging population, grappling with dementia, might open new perspectives to us as a memory-focused society. Could the loss of our remembered lives - the stories we create for ourselves - free us to enjoy our experiences? 

Read the book. 

[colynmontgomery]

I wonder if I had called “Portnoy’s Complaint” “The Orgasm Under Rapacious Capitalism,” if I would thereby have earned the favor of the Swedish Academy.

Philip Roth on the Nobel Prize, in the New York Times

A wonderful interview

[sequoiacapital]

WhatsApp Co-Founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton

Earlier today, Facebook announced its acquisition of WhatsApp for $16 billion. It’s a spectacular milestone for the company’s co-founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton, and their remarkable team.

From the moment they opened the doors of WhatsApp,...

[nevver]

[colynmontgomery]

Frequency, xkcd

The world we live in. 

[jh-001-deactivated20151203]

[fatherjohntwisty]

Jones vs. Coppola. There’s no way it’s just a theory.

[naomipierce]

The New Yorker pays tribute to Philip Seymour Hoffman

[nevver]

Every time you use waffle words, back off from a clear statement of values and priorities and most of all, think about what’s likely instead of what’s possible, you are selling yourself out. Not just selling yourself out, but doing it too cheaply. Own your dreams. There is no better way to make them happen.

Seth Godin, On owning it (via nevver)

[coffeeinthemountains]

(via Yvon Chouinard | Extreme Tivities)

[petervidani]

[colynmontgomery]

Something about this.