I don't remember how I heard about this book, but it was hilarious. Joel Stein, a writer for Time Magazine, wrote a book called Man Made, chronicling his quest to find masculinity when his son was born. The self-effacing, brutally honest stories in the book made laugh as much as they made me think.

It's been interesting to compare and contrast some of the books I've read recently on the topic, like Iron John. In Joel's book, I found myself finding many parallels and similarities between my own life and his, so a lot of what he described resonated with me. There were many times though where I was shocked at just how scared and dainty Joel seemed; in that sense, just reading the book makes you feel manly (compared to Joel). But in other senses, you definitely feel respect for him (like fighting for 5 minutes with a UFC champ).

I've made some of my own steps towards doing "manly" things, and I've done them in my own way, which I'm proud of -- like scuba diving, learning to fly, and martial arts. His take-home message -- that you learn by doing and push your comfort zone -- made a lot of sense to me.

I'm curious if others out there have gone on similar quests and what they experienced.

Below are my notes and takeaways from the book (sorry for any name misspellings).

Intro

• Father to a boy
  
• Freaks out
  
• How to find own masculinity
  
• There are gender differences and important different roles for both to play
  
• Too much feminism wrong
  
• Learn how to be a man
  
• Had a soft life, avoided guy activities
  
• List of tasks to turn into man
  
• Fears are just list of things to do
  
• Not old style man tasks, not über modern
  

Ch 1: surviving outdoors

• Start out as 11 year old boy
  
• Didn't join boy scouts
  
• Never was outside as kid
  
• Spend weekend as boy scout
  
• Without modern comforts
  
• Firestone Scout Reservation in Los Angeles
  
• Scout leader Rick Pierce
  
• Mom didn't let him join boy scouts
  
• Goes for weekend
  
• Mom liberal feminist therapist
  
• Snipes are fake birds hunted
  
• Boyish delight, being born happy
  
• List of life advice for kid
  
• Experience of birth of child
  
• Cries more after son born
  

Boy scout weekend

• Wants to learn man skills so doesn't pass on inadequacies to kid
  
• Don't need so much clothing or niceties
  
• No pooping
  
• Peeing on trees
  
• No brushing teeth or changing underwear
  
• Learn to unbrush, unfloss
  
• Lose the baggage
  
• Barfing on each other
  
• Passed boy scout test
  
• Confrontation and fighting part of manhood
  
• Nerdiness is big part of manliness
  

Ch 2: helping the helpless

• Service projects 
  
• Learn from Firefighters
  
• Bravery
  
• Real men use military time
  
• Captain Buzz Smith of LA County Fire Dept No 27
  
• Go reading to kids
  
• Firefighters sleep at the station instead of like shifts
  
• Like frat house
  
• Like each other
  
• Visit hospital where they bring patients to
  
• Love donuts
  
• Men in fire house each have project they're building with their own money
  
• Lunch at In n Out
  
• Being a liberal isn't manly
  
• Most republicans
  
• Is manliness needed with technology?
  
• Progress = enemy of masculinity
  
• Guy trips together on days off
  
• Two families each has
  
• Guys bond over pranks
  
• Affection masked as hostility
  
• Dinner called family time
  
• Game to decide who washes dishes
  
• And then everyone does the dishes anyways
  
• Stop thinking about stuff and start doing stuff
  
• Use the pole because more awesome than stairs
  
• Risking life for something as a team makes him happy and productive
  
• Sad when beaten by other trucks to fight fire
  
• Firemen clean up after fighting fire
  
• Woken up in middle of night
  
• More like social workers and chauffeurs for the poor than superheroes
  
• Great bonding
  
• Common purpose of sacrifice
  
• Made him glad he has a boy
  

Ch 3: engaging in competition

• Excitement of hanging out with the guys
  
• Need more entry points to convos with real men
  
• Shawn Green MLB all Star coached him on baseball
  
• Book: The Way of Baseball
  
• Shawn went to Stanford like Joel
  
• Likes meditation
  
• Girls have hotness
  
• Boys have quantifiable measure of value: athletic ability
  
• Not knowing about football kills convos with men
  
• Pro-Ball indoor baseball training facility
  
• pomade by crew or unite creamy paste
  
• Badass Jew
  
• His dad was very aggressive and conflict seeking
  
• Dealt with antisemitism
  
• Line cutting vigilantism
  
• Focusing on physical talent is invigorating
  
• Shawn took 2 Buddhism classes at Stanford. Philosophy of acceptance
  
• 20 min daily meditation and yoga
  
• Learns to throw baseball
  
• Swing on ball with tee
  
• Focus on present moment
  
• Drink tea and wine, no coffee or beer
  
• Non-Jewish wives
  
• Try chewing tobacco
  
• Can be wimp inside but just expand and try new things
  
• Hates football
  
• Tribal, warlike, anti intellectual football
  

Goes to friends to watch football

• Prepares with sports newscaster
  
• Tip 1 to watch game: shut the hell up
  
• When don't know how to act like a man then act like my dad
  
• Ass slapping 
  
• Arm slapping
  
• Group of guys experiencing something together
  
• Swimsuit calendar
  
• Only no perfect grade on report card was gym
  
• Family crest
  
• Wants to learn how to fight from UFC champion
  

Ch 4: bonding with men

• Learns to drink scorch from Macallan brand manager
  

Ch 5: making money

• learns from day trader
  
• Posts on dealbreaker blog for someone to give him 100k to trade for a day 
  
• Step in when no one's trading and scared
  
• Trading not about money but about quantification of competition and your pursuit to be the best u can
  
• just trade in first hour and don't trade rest of day
  
• A bit at end too
  
• Traders cursing
  
• Lights off
  
• No women
  
• Midday breaks
  
• Didn't avoid the big chances
  
• Like taking risks
  
• Matt doesn't drink alcohol
  
• After hours trading important
  
• Was afraid of change but now ok for danger and change
  
• Al the action is in taking risk
  
• Manage risk more actively
  

Ch 6: using machines

• Son loves cars
  
• Needs to learn about cars
  
• Takes Lamborghini to drive for 3 days
  

Ch 7: taming animals

• Owning a dog
  
• Get over fear of dogs
  
• Reduced uptightness
  
• Limited himself in past to maintain his identity and to belong to tribe
  
• Rescue dogs
  
• Playing with pit bull
  
• Feels present with dog
  
• Dog anal glands
  
• Learning to be fearless and gentle
  

Ch 8: building shelter

• Do things yourself and be proud of your results
  
• Build your own world and your own house
  
• Learn from father in law
  
• Self reliance
  
• Learns to fix up home
  
• Learns to see beauty everywhere
  
• Perfectionist who likes creating good work
  
• Being dad just requires being present
  
• Skills of new manhood
  
• Son a bit wimpy after all
  
• Stand the way you want your son to stand
  

Ch 9: providing food

• Need to practice destroying stuff
  
• Understand violence
  
• Learn hunting from Matt Stefina of Vermont trap fun tour company
  
• Have to really care about turkeys to want to kill
  
• Peaceful fishing
  
• Accept discomfort of loneliness and boredom
  
• Calm mental chatter
  
• Standing up for wife
  
• Doesn't regret not going over to beat other guy up and regrets not regretting it after all done
  

Ch 10: defending my country

• Get military to force him to change and grow
  
• Been anti military his whole life
  
• Joins marine bootcamp
  
• 54 hours of challenges
  
• Gets hair shaved
  
• Pain is weakness leaving your body
  
• Really bad at joining a group and submerging who
  
• Joins army bootcamp and fires a tank
  
• Happy and present at army bootcamp
  
• Honorable conduct
  
• Discipline
  
• Always looking fresh
  

Ch 11: protecting my family

• Got punched in face by reality show guy who lived with lions
  
• His brain skips anger entirely
  
• Anger deficient
  
• Works with fighter/boxer
  
• Goes through with fight with randy couture even when feels pain
  

Conclusion

• Didn't totally change himself
  
• Changed how he reacts to conflict
  
• Change not by deciding but by doing
  
• Taking punches makes you tough
  
• Change is possible
  
• Attitude to face fears and challenges
  
• Dad gives gift of making son feel safe
  
• Man needs to learn for himself

Two friends of mine almost simultaneously recommended the new book Trust me, I'm Lying by Ryan Holiday to me, so I decided to see what all the fuss was about. It turns out that the book focuses on the modern media and journalism landscape and how it can be effortlessly manipulated by individuals and companies to put out fake news or further their interests. The author is a very well-connected journalist and social media expert who has worked in marketing at a number of companies, including American Apparel, and he has written his book to confess his own media manipulation "sins" to expose the broken system to the world and cry for change.

I had heard about how various news aggregators and blogs can be manipulated, and how there is a lot of spam out there that aims to manipulate various advertising markets (for arbitrage), mostly through SEO techniques. But I always thought that the "credible" news sources were still more or less trustworthy; this book totally debunks that idea.

I enjoyed the tidbits of journalism history thrown in, as well as all the quotes from other authors and journalists. I felt like the book rambled a bit with SO many examples of blatant manipulation, but that did serve its purpose, I guess.

The biggest surprise for me was how easily fake news and fake controversy can be implanted in a blog, then "traded up the chain" to larger blogs and then eventually the national news sources, and then have such devastating effects on REAL LIFE that the fake becomes real. That's definitely scary.

This is obviously one author's viewpoint. I'm curious to hear what others have to say (and I'm scared for the author's life...).

Intro

• Media manipulator
  
• Lies to media to get them to lie to you
  
• News is driven and created by marketers
  
• Create ads and then create fake protests against them to make controversy, drama, and attention
  
• Tucker Max
  
• American apparel
  
• Not knowing what's real anymore
  
• Media manipulation as monster to be fed
  
• Nine tactics
  

Book 1: feeding the monster: how blogs work

• Blogs create memes and news
  
• Political blogs like Politico
  
• Change reality through news
  
• Fake political candidate generates page views and revenue
  
• Traffic more important than truth
  

Ch 2 how to turn nothing into something in 3 steps

• Ppl including reporters just do what's easiest
  
• Trading up the chain: place content on small blog with no standards then that becomes base for article at bigger blog and so on
  
• Ex: YouTube video, post on blog that huffpo likes, then make kick starter and put on reddit where have connections
  
• Email reporters from fake address
  
• Content trickles up
  
• Bloggers and reporters must write daily and scour web for content
  
• Twitter used for online research by reporters (ridiculous)
  
• Lack of fact checking
  
• Level 1: the entry point
  
• Local issues
  
• Expert sites
  
• Small and understaffed
  
• Level 2: legacy media
  
• Local media, smaller counterparts of big media sites
  
• Smartmoney
  
• Worse editorial standards
  
• Level 3: national press
  
• Sites who took your bait submit to larger ones themselves
  
• Get 3-4 small sites to write about some fake tip or event you seed yourself under fake name
  
• Then this can be basis of a trend piece
  
• Queue stories up on sites that larger media reporters read like gawker and mediabistro (specific sites mentioned throughout book)
  
• Create multiple fake addresses and send collection of links to reporters
  
• Find a lead steer for your campaign
  
• The rest just gallop in herd
  
• Every single person in system under pressure to publish
  

Ch 3 the blog con: how media companies make money online

• Economics of news sites contorts all stories
  
• Traffic is ads is money
  
• Scoops are traffic
  
• TMZ
  
• Pretend they have scoops
  
• Make money by stealing scoops
  
• Using names to build a name
  
• Blogs meant to be eventually sold
  

Ch 4 tactic 1: bloggers are poor, help bloggers pay their bills

• Covert bribe
  
• Compensation per post, speed not quality
  
• Plus bonuses on page views
  
• Twitter accounts will tweet for you for money
  
• Give free swag and perks to bloggers and offer affiliate commissions
  
• No conflicts ever disclosed
  
• Digital sweatshop
  

Ch 5 tactic 2; tell them what they want to hear

• Identities never verified
  
• Press releases copied word for word
  
• Wikipedia wording changes what reporters write
  
• HARO help a reporter out
  
• Manufactures fake credibility

Ch 6 tactic 3: give them what spreads, not what's good

• Top stories Polarize ppl
  
• Threaten 3 b: behavior, beliefs, belongings
  
• Provocative slide shows get more views and more expensive ads
  
• Shared more
  
• Most powerful predictor of what viral is how much anger it creates
  
• Humiliation should not be suppressed, it should be monetized
  

Ch 7 tactic 4; help them trick their readers

• Headlines with questions effective
  
• Put entire story in headline but leave out 1 detail to make ppl click
  
• Answer is of course no but question is juicy
  
• Useful articles aren't shared
  
• Being fair or reasonable stops trolls from commenting (bad)
  
• Leaving comments requires registration and flow shows more ads and pages
  

Ch 8 tactic 5: sell them something they can sell, one off effect

• Newspapers get attention however they can
  
• Fakes and embellishments
  
• Yellow journalism lessons and tactics apply
  
• Pay per subscription which worked best dead; now back to one off selling which works by sensationalism
  
• Blogs constantly chasing other readers instead of loyal ones whereas subscriptions were about trust
  
• Industry killed rss to deceive readers more easily
  

Ch 9 tactic 6: make it all about the headline

• Headline must be appalling and catchy to sell and win fight for attention like yellow press
  
• desperate fight
  
• Give them fake news, they'll write the headline
  
• Write the headline and let them steal it
  

Ch 10 tactic 7 kill them with page view kindness

• Unshared or unliked article is bad
  
• Care about seo terms and cpm it could generate
  
• Only focus on what can be measured not quality
  
• Afraid of silence
  
• Leave fake comments to make ur company appear political
  

Ch 11 tactic 8 use the tech against itself

• Hard for ppl to know what's new
  
• So now use stacks to do reverse chronological order on homepage
  
• Publish short posts quickly because will sink off front page quickly
  
• 800 word limit
  
• Best 200 words max, 100 words even better
  

Ch 12 tactic 9 just make stuff up

• Bloggers will keep spreading fake news
  

Book 2 the monster attacks: what blogs mean

Ch 13 toxic blood

• Manipulation leads to lawsuits and money lost over fake news
  

Ch 14 manipulator hall of fame

• Ppl lost jobs over fake news
  

Ch 15 cupid evil: online tactics that drug u and me

• YouTube manipulates you
  
• Mass distraction
  
• Content optimized to get you to watch
  
• Thumbnail cheating with hot girl
  
• Genetically modified info
  
• Algorithmically created media
  
• Demand media optimizes seo and ad value
  

Ch 16 link economy, delusion of sourcing

• Trading up
  
• Companies dodging bullets
  
• No burden of proof
  
• Delegation of trust broken
  
• Link economy only confirms/supports and doesn't question or correct
  
• Fake wiki edit -> blog post -> news article -> wiki citation reference
  

Ch 17 extortion via the web

• Blackmail in viral videos
  
• Distracts companies
  
• Culture of fear
  
• Reputation mgmt service handles all these bs issues and counter manipulating
  
• Hundreds of millions of market value killed in a stock from fake blogs and leaks
  

Ch 18 online journalism bogus philosophy

• No one checks before spreading info
  
• Beta journalism: publish first then check
  
• Really bad
  
• Iterative journalism with no research
  
• Every correction is a new post and more traffic
  

Ch 19 myth of corrections

• Corrections online joke
  
• Cognitive dissonance
  
• No one consumes iteratively (no way to track back to users who've read something to give update)
  
• As soon as read it's fact
  
• Corrections amplify and support original even when refuted (psych study)
  

Ch 20 cheering on our own deception

• PR and blogs big deception self feeding
  
• Advertising is content
  
• Charts of popular video ads
  
• Bloggers at their conferences
  
• Ordinary pseudo event they pay to happen
  
• Coverage about coverage
  
• Email to blogger: here's an exclusive leak of our Upcoming video ad, and blogger immediately publishes
  

Ch 21 dark side of snark

• Make fun of lawsuits instead of serious discussion of fake claim
  
• Use snark to distract media
  
• Nothing you can do against it
  
• Snark about insecurity
  

Ch 22 21st century degradation ceremony

• Press is modern execution or punishment
  
• Tear up ppl after we build them up
  

Ch 23 welcome to unreality

• All news second hand opinions and rumors
  
• Fake and real can't be told apart
  
• Job of journalism to surprise joy instruct
  
• Normal parts of life hidden
  
• Tiny news funnel
  
• Trust blogs the more we use them
  
• Pseudo event: anything done just to get media
  
• Not real events, just staged
  
• Done to introduce info to media
  

Ch 24 how to read a blog

• Tipsters leaks reports all just stuff emailed in and not checked
  
• Sources not vetted
  
• Attributed quotes just stolen and not checked
  
• Exclusive not true
  
• What spreads and finds you is actually the worst stuff 
  

Conclusion

• Internet controls culture now
  
• All aspects of society suffer because of it
  
• Doesn't know how to fix it
  
• We are all feeding the monster

I've been getting deep into design thinking and heard the book Change by Design by Tim Brown mentioned repeatedly, so I figured I'd check it out. Tim Brown is the CEO of the design firm IDEO, which, along with the Stanford d.school, really spearheaded a lot of the design thinking movement.

I found the book to be a great overview of DT and recommend it to anyone unfamiliar with the subject. I personally would've wished for the book to spend more time on specific techniques and less on the broader trends and high-level concepts since most of those are already familiar. I suppose there wasn't a lot of depth on the techniques because this stuff is much better learned by doing rather than reading. I did find the copious number of real-world examples where DT made a difference to be interesting.

Below are my main takeaways from the book that go beyond what I learned before or present the material from a different perspective.

Intro

• Integrating human POV with technical
  
• Design as hub of wheel not link in chain
  
• Human centered not tech centered
  
• Design thinking applied to many new industries and problems
  
• Mind maps not tables of contents (linear)
  

Part 1 what is design thinking

Ch 1 dt is about more than style

• IDEO work for Shimano
  
• Interviewed many areas of bicycling customers
  
• Created coasting bikes and better retail strategy
  

3 spaces of innovation

• No one best way
  
• Overlapping spaces
  
• 1. Inspiration
  
• 2. Ideation
  
• 3. Implementation
  
• Iterative, nonlinear, exploratory
  
• Fail early to succeed sooner
  
• Feels chaotic but makes sense by end
  

• Willing embrace of constraints actually helps
  
• Sometimes constraints conflict; that's ok
  
• Evaluate constraints on 3 overlapping criteria 
  
• 1. Feasibility: functionally possible
  
• 2. Viability: sustainable as biz
  
• 3. Desirability: makes sense to ppl
  
• Find harmonious balance
  
• Businesses sometimes focus only on what fits in biz model (incremental improvement)
  
• DT uses project not problem
  
• Project has specific goal and beginning, middle, and end and constraints
  

The brief

• Like scientific hypothesis not algorithm 
  
• Starting point
  
• Mental constraints by which to begin
  
• Benchmarks to measure progress
  
• Set of objectives to be realized, Price point, tech, mkt segment
  
• Need right balance between constraints and broadness in brief
  

• Interdisciplinary team
  
• T shaped people
  

Creative culture and environment

• Physical space giving permission
  
• Skunkworks
  
• Mattel
  
• Separate project rooms
  
• Visibility of project materials
  
• Wiki
  
• Flexibility in space
  
• DT needs to move upstream
  

Ch 2 converting needs into demand or putting ppl first

• Asking ppl what want doesn't work
  
• Articulate latent needs
  
• Insight, observation, empathy
  

Insight

• Learning from lives of others
  
• Myriad thoughtless acts of ppl
  
• Actual behaviors give clues
  
• Watch what ppl don't do or say
  

Observation

• Intense field work
  
• Find extreme users, OCD ppl
  
• Research sponsored by companies
  

Empathy

• translate observations into insights
  
• Hospital patient er experience
  
• Emotional understanding
  
• Video ethnography, computer logging
  
• Understand links between ppl
  

Consumers as part of design team

• Crowd-sourced design
  
• participatory design teams
  
• User generated content
  
• Collaboration between creators and consumers
  

Ch 3 a mental matrix or these ppl have no process

• Getting client to come backstage
  

Convergent and divergent thinking

• To have a good idea you must first have many ideas
  
• Methodical experimentation
  
• Ideas should not be favored based on who came up with them
  
• Let ideas create buzz and a following
  
• Bottom up experimentation
  
• Propagate ideas up
  
• Not just suggestion box
  
• Must gain org support
  

Brainstorming

• Rules
  
• Build on ideas of others
  
• Write rules on walls
  
• Dedicate rooms for it
  

Visual thinking

• Drawing practice
  
• Draw to express ideas and options
  
• Drawing forces decisions
  
• Post it notes best tools for convergent thinking
  
• Getting consensus through butterfly test
  
• Vote putting butterflies on post it's
  
• Deadlines turn options into decisions
  
• Exploring opposing ideas
  
• Complexity most reliable source of ideas
  

Ch 4 building to think or the power of prototyping

• Kids build
  
• Prototypes all over kids rooms
  
• Physical to abstract and back cycles
  
• Thinking with your hands
  

Quick and dirty

• Don't over invest in one prototype
  
• Goal is just learning and understanding
  
• Skits
  
• Foam core
  
• Storyboards in film
  
• Keeps ppl at the center
  
• Describing customer journey
  

 
Acting out

• Service innovation
  
• Kids are best role models
  
• Role-playing
  
• Tell users to add post it's to ur prototypes
  
• Improv acting techniques
  
• Takes some confidence and open-mindedness
  

Prototyping in the wild

DT for company reorg

• IDEO's own redesign through prototypes
  
• Prototypes slow us down to speed us up
  
• Must make own prototype instead of outsourcing
  
• Start with quick cycle like 1 day to first prototype
  

 
Ch 5 returning to the surface or the design of experiences

• Not just fulfilling function but having an experience
  
• Mayo Clinic Spark Lab design studio testing new provider experiences
  
• Changing behavior hard; offer new behavior
  

Experience blueprint

• Specs for interaction
  
• Described emotive elements of journey through time and space
  

Ch 6 spreading the message or the power of storytelling

• Cool Biz movement in Japan
  
• Used compelling story to spread word
  
• Stories give ideas meaning
  

Designing in fourth dimension

• Time
  
• Interaction design
  
• Designing verbs and stories
  

Stories as product

• Meme
  
• Turn audience into storytellers themselves
  

Design challenge

• Challenge between rival teams
  
• X-Prize
  

Part 2 where do we go from here

Ch 7 design thinking meets the corporation or teaching to fish

• Steelcase
  
• Dedicated spaces
  
• Workshops
  

Ch 8 new social contract or we're all In this together

• Convos with customers
  

Blurring between products and services

• All becoming experiences
  
• How might we... (HWM)
  
• TSA redesign
  

Sustainability

Ch 9 design activism or inspiring solutions with great potential

• Designing for extreme needs
  
• Acumen Fund
  
• Social enterprise
  
• Architecture for Humanity
  

Ch 10 designing tomorrow today

• Designing a life
  
• Observe the ordinary
  
• Carry a sketchpad and draw sketches