Nathan A. Cunningham (NAC)

Connecting dots and people and "minding" the gaps. His glory is my good.

[Nathan A. Cunningham (NAC) @nandrewc]

"Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. ... Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday; joy is the uproarious labour by which all things live.
--GKC

[Nathan A. Cunningham (NAC) @nandrewc]

@marcuslemonis Marcus, you’re an inspiration!

[Nathan A. Cunningham (NAC) @nandrewc]

"Transformation requires sacrifice, dedication, and creativity, none of which usually comes with coercion."
—John P. Kotter, Leading Change

[Nathan A. Cunningham (NAC) @nandrewc]

@TaylinSimmonds I like to do my best thinking on the move
Ideally, in the mountains
Or beach
With elevated heart rate

[Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 @pmarca]

Kevin Kelly @kevin2kelly is neck and neck with Ray Kurzweil for the best technology forecaster of the last 40 years.

[Nathan A. Cunningham (NAC) @nandrewc]

Ego is the anesthesia that deadens the pain of stupidity.
—Unknown

[Nathan A. Cunningham (NAC) @nandrewc]

"What humans require in our ascent is purpose and realism. Purpose, you could say, is like passion with boundaries. Realism is detachment and perspective."

[Nathan A. Cunningham (NAC) @nandrewc]

"We run carelessly to the precipice, after we have put something before us to prevent us seeing it." —Blaise Pascal, Pascal's Pensées

[Nathan A. Cunningham (NAC) @nandrewc]

Trust and communication.
That’s basically the game.

[Brian Roemmele @BrianRoemmele]

Behold: the reality of our relativity in the solar system.

[Nathan A. Cunningham (NAC) @nandrewc]

"... the hero is also the bottleneck."
—Joe Minock (https://t.co/eiXiLJamAh)

[Nathan A. Cunningham (NAC) @nandrewc]

“Humans make random mistakes. AI makes consistent mistakes at scale.”
—ChatGPT

[Nathan A. Cunningham (NAC) @nandrewc]

“Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me…” —St. Patrick

[Nathan A. Cunningham (NAC) @nandrewc]

“So we never live, but we hope to live; and, as we are always preparing to be happy, it is inevitable we should never be so." —Blaise Pascal, (Pascal's Pensées) [2 of 2]

[Nathan A. Cunningham (NAC) @nandrewc]

we are "all occupied with the past and the future. We scarcely ever think of the present; and if we think of it, it is only to take light from it to arrange the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means; the future alone is our end.” [1 of 2]

[Nathan A. Cunningham (NAC) @nandrewc]

@noahvnct IMO was also best 2025, 2024, 2023, …

[Nathan A. Cunningham (NAC) @nandrewc]

overheard:

“man this AI!!”

“Yeah it’s gonna be destruction of us all”

“No, it’s going to allow us to be human again”

pretty much sums up the zeitgeist

[Ad Professor @The_AdProfessor]

24 lessons from David Ogilvy:

1. Search all the parks in all your cities; you'll find no statues of committees.

2. The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.

3. You are advertising to a moving parade, not a standing army.

4. Do not address your readers as though they were gathered together in a stadium. When people read your copy, they are alone.

5. Remember you are a human being writing to another human being. Neither of you is an institution

6. Tell your prospective client your weakness before they notice them. This will make you more credible when you boast about your strong points.

7. Avoiding excess in all things is a recipe for dullness and mediocrity.

8. A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself.

9. There is no need for advertisements to look like advertisements. If you make them look like editorial pages, you will attract about 50% more readers

10. Big ideas come from the unconscious. This is true in art, in science, and in advertising. But your unconscious has to be well-informed, or your idea will be irrelevant

11. People who think well, write well

12. The most important word in the vocabulary of advertising is 'test'.

13. On average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy.

14. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.

15. Tell the truth, but make the truth fascinating

16. Advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things.

17. Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals.

18. Raise your sights. Blaze new trails. Compete with the immortals.

19. I am a lousy copywriter, but I am a good editor. So I go to work editing my own draft.

20. If you're trying to persuade people to buy something, use the language in which they think.

21. Insist that due dates are kept even if it means working all night. Hard work never killed a man. People die of boredom

22. If you are lucky enough to write a good advertisement, repeat it until it stops selling.

23. At the start of your career in advertising, what you learn is more important than what you earn.

24. When Fortune published an article about me and titled it: 'Is David Ogilvy a Genius?', "I asked my lawyer to sue the editor for the question mark.”

[Nathan A. Cunningham (NAC) @nandrewc]

I wish the ads were also calm ⁦@Sonos⁩ ⁦@ClassicFM⁩

[Nathan A. Cunningham (NAC) @nandrewc]

"“By the lowliness of repentance the soul recovers her high estate”" (Augustine, The Confessions of St. Augustine)

[Nathan A. Cunningham (NAC) @nandrewc]

c. 2000s Excel, MapMyRun<dot>com
c. 2010s Garmin, Strava
c.2020 Coros, Strava, ChatGPT