Month: September 2019
Being Successful Makes It Easy to Say: Don’t Collect Emails
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From DHH on Signal vs Noise If you have a mailing list that’s worth signing up for, you don’t need to trick, cajole, or bribe people in other to get them on board. You only need to do that when you know that most people wouldn’t voluntarily join. That’s a pretty weirdly coercive play. While…
I Can’t Break Into Your House and Take Back What I Sold You
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Cory Doctorow on DRM When I was a bookseller in Toronto, nothing that happened would ever result in me breaking into your house to take back the books I’d sold you, and if I did, the fact that I left you a refund wouldn’t have made up for the theft. Not all the books Microsoft…
The Impacts of Eating on Our Planet
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On eating the planet to death at Wired. So let’s start with meat. Raising livestock for slaughter is, of course, not particularly good for the planet. Animals demand lots of food and water: A single cow might consume 11,000 gallons of water a year. And that cow burps up methane, an extremely potent greenhouse gas.…
Austin Kleon on Kids These Days by Malcolm Harris
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I enjoy Austin Kleon’s thoughts about Kids These Days. On the one hand, we think of childhood as a place that should be free of labor — we’ve decided, collectively, that it’s inhumane for our children to slave in sweatshops or dig in a coal mine — and on the other hand, between the classroom,…
Women Couldn’t Do These Things
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A sad list of things women couldn’t do in America in 1971. While some of this is better, I just finished reading Invisible Women1 and in many ways we’re barely in a better spot for women now. We can and should be doing better people. I’ll edit the review later today and have it up…
How Do You Solve the Productivity Issue in Remote Working?
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Remote work has changed the way that businesses operate. More and more companies are downsizing their office space and having their employees work from home. It benefits the business because they save money and it’s better for employees as well because they can work on their own terms. This flexibility is something I love. It…
Freelance Friday 069 – Sept 6
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Kids are back in school. Cross-country practice has started. The house is not quieter because of the kids sort of being away. In fact, there is a staggered entry for Kindergarten, so we’re running back and forth between the school extra this week and next week to get my daughter in and out of school.…
“Real Work” on an iPad Means the Same Way I’ve Always Worked
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So many people say that you can’t do “real work” on an iPad, which usually means that they can’t do the work they’ve always done in the way they’ve learned to do it. In the minds of these people the fact that my wife uses her iPad to manage her job as the Program Director…
Silicon Valley “Disruption” Isn’t That Transformative
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Out of a longer piece on “disruption” in Silicon Valley. Because, let’s face it, Silicon Valley technology in nearly all cases isn’t so transformative that it would simply replace the existing systems on its merits. Uber isn’t better than a good mass-transit system; Facebook isn’t better than actual friendship; YouTube videos aren’t better than quality…
There Are No Notifications in a Notebook
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I also love paper and in addition to Om’s other reasons, this is a big one. Paper and pen allow you to focus, as there are no notifications in a notebook. When taking notes in a notebook, you are unlikely to be distracted with the latest tweet from your friend or the President. I even…
