Tag: rss_source

In my head, I still hear you. When things go well, you gently mock the swelling of my ego. When things go wrong, I feel how you would have held my hand. I flirt, and hear your comments on my choices. I smile at the joy you’d have taken from a news story, remember how you always had the inside track, imagine what you’d say about some drama among our friends.

I almost grab a newspaper so we can do the crossword. For half a second I wonder what you might need from the shops. On the edge of sleep, the world where you’re still here feels so close I can almost smell your perfume. 

And several times a day, when I know no one will hear, I say your name. I’ve no idea why.

https://jonn.substack.com/p/295-days-gone

“Spiro had initially hoped to monetize the old bikes it collected from riders by retrofitting them with EV technology — but that hasn’t worked out. Around 40% of the bikes Spiro collects are converted to scrap metal and sold for less than $20 per unit, Samain said. Rest of Worldvisited four of the company’s branches in Togo and Benin, and saw hundreds of abandoned bikes waiting to be scrapped.

Any bike owner can go to a Spiro exchange center, request a swap, get their credentials verified, and pick up a new EV within a week. Riders then pay a daily fee of 3,200 CFA francs ($5.32) for up to seven battery swaps, and each additional swap costs 500 CFA francs (83 cents). The daily fee also covers insurance and maintenance, and riders can take the bikes for check-ups anytime for free. After 150,000 kilometers, a rider takes full ownership of the bike and is not required to pay the daily swap fee”

https://restofworld.org/2024/spiro-ebikes-africa/

“It is eminently doable to buy or lease a Xerox or similar machine that prints perfect bound books and use it to do short runs and galley printings. One of these machines could print books for a lot of SPD clients, I expect. I kinda wish I had tried harder to raise the funds for one back then. I even took a meeting with a guy from Xerox! And had some convos with the folks at CMLP! If there is money anywhere in the publishing ecosystem, it might be in printing (or sprayed edges!). And if there is power to be had in publishing—well, the means of production and all that. Fuck superstructure: focus on structure”

https://notesfromasmallpress.substack.com/p/spd-authors-equity-and-distribution

“In 1978, Congress passed and then-President Jimmy Carter signed into law the Airline Deregulation Act, which was part of a deregulatory zeal that grabbed national lawmakers in the 70s and 80s, and led to the deregulation of vast swathes of the economy, from trucking to railroads to telecoms to, perhaps most famously, banking and finance.

A provision in that law wiped away the ability of anyone in state government to make rules or do any enforcement “related to a price, route, or service of an air carrier.”

https://boondoggle.substack.com/p/how-airlines-fly-away-from-accountability

“Publishers believe—and to be fair I see no reason to think they’re wrong—that having a few years between books is useful for everyone involved. It gives the publishers more time to launch books properly, gives readers time to catch up and build excitement, and those both help the author actually sell copies”

https://countercraft.substack.com/p/on-productivity

“When I returned to the state in September, she invited me over, and for several hours at her kitchen counter, where she showed me the semiautomatic rifle she keeps in a drawer, she explained how a former precinct captain for Teddy Kennedy’s 1980 presidential campaign became the kind of woman who bulldozed through a crowd of protesters outside a MAGA rally with both middle fingers raised in the air”

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/donald-trump-2024-republican-presidential-primary-voters.html

“Similar to the importance of sequencing and order, you almost always want to start by clearly and simply stating your conclusion, or declaring your request or question. Very often, people feel a lot of anxiety about the need to preface their big dramatic point with lots of build-up. But you almost never want to be building dramatic tension in a professional context; this isn’t a thriller where you’re trying to surprise them with twists and turns”

https://anildash.com/2024/03/10/make-better-documents/

“I was expecting to poke around the interface for a while, and maybe ask a friend to take screenshots from the other side. Instead, within seconds, I was sitting in front of dozens of complete strangers who were waiting for me to talk. I ended the stream, adjusted my webcam, and started again. Within two minutes, I had hundreds of viewers. I asked them how they ended up there but nobody answered. I put on a face filter. I played carnival music. I showed them my dog. One informed me that the same pencil was much cheaper at the Dollar Tree”

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2024/01/what-i-learned-selling-a-used-pencil-on-tiktok-shop.html

“Sitting Senator Bob Menendez was indicted on a dozen more criminal charges this week. The party that claims to be in favor of prosecuting corrupt leaders hasn’t done anything to remove him from his position. He’s a free man, and one of the country’s most powerful politicians, while facing reams of evidence he’s been working on behalf of foreign governments in exchange for cash for years”

https://newsletter.scammerdarkly.com/archive/elite-impunity-politicians-tech-media-and-taxes/

“But leadership, oh baby, that’s what everyone wants to do. Managing is mundane and leadership is exciting. A manager handles trivialities, like hiring and firing. A leader has the privilege of serving as a shining moral beacon, soothing the trouble, reading the psychodynamic eddies (read: vibes) in the organization. At its best, it is a genuinely noble endeavor, not carried out by whoever happens to be at the top of an organizational chart, but whoever has the capacity to encourage other people to be their best selves at a given moment. The most inspiring person in my life yesterday was not anyone that gives talks about how amazing their own skills are, but the seven year old in the house next door who was drilling table tennis so determinedly that I guiltily got some piano practice in”

https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/leadership-is-a-hell-of-a-drug/