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The Power of Decision is easily one of the most scary and disturbing films I have ever watched.

I always used to think that Doctor Strangelove was a really funny movie, but after this, it was a lot less funny somehow (still a great movie, though).

Good starting point. If you want to go further you can watch Susan Cain's TED talk, "The power of introverts". As an introvert myself, I love this talk. It is good to hear for once someone saying that it is ok to be what we are.

As usual, The Onion has this covered (2012):

https://youtube.com/watch?v=w8c_m6U1f9o

"The Power Of Selling Out: Your Customers As Political Capital - Onion Talks"

Lead designer of Perplex City here! Perplex City was an ARG (alternate reality game) produced by Mind Candy in 2004. Unlike almost all ARGs at the time, it wasn’t promoting a movie or TV or associated product - instead, we sold packs of puzzle cards that tied into the game’s story.

Lots more on Wikipedia here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perplex_City

This is a puzzle card I thought would either be solved very quickly (within a year or two) or not at all. To have it solved after 14 years is very special.

Perplex City has had a lot of interesting alumni. It was made by Mind Candy, which was founded by Michael Acton Smith, who is also co-founder of Calm. The lead writer was Naomi Alderman, who became an award-winning novelist and whose novel The Power was one of Obama’s top books of the year and is being adapted into a $100m Amazon TV show.

I went on to co-found Six to Start with my brother Dan Hon (who you may know from his popular newsletter, and later left the company to do a lot of good work in the US government digital services realm and Code for America). Six to Start is best known for Zombies, Run!, which is the world’s most popular smartphone fitness game and is sort of like an ARG, if you squint at it.

I continue to do a lot of thinking and writing around ARGs (which are still fascinating) and gamification (which I mostly dislike). My blog post, What ARGs Can Teach Us About QAnon, went somewhat viral a few months ago: https://mssv.net/2020/08/02/what-args-can-teach-us-about-qan...

Edit: That blog post also gets into the confusion between the Perplex City Satoshi and the Bitcoin Satoshi (which conspiratorially-minded people DM me about regularly) along with my supposed involvement in Cicada 3301.

Robert Caro. The Power Broker.