The outlets that welcome Turkle’s polemics are trading in the illusion of intelligence. They collect quotes from neuroscientists and quacks that call themselves things like “happiness experts”, package up half-thoughts into edgy-but-not-too-edgy counter-intuitive claims, and then overlay a narrative that assures their audience that they already knew how to live according to science but maybe they missed a few things. Turkle has expertly manipulated an already dishonest landscape of science journalism meant to provide fodder for condescending liberals.
Year: 2016
Make Conversation Great Again
How to Provide Great Customer Support. Solid podcast episode from Hiten Shah and Steli Efti about customer support. Filled with lots of practical tips and distinctions.
The Power of a Dollar
In little more than thirty years, the microcredit concept has gone from being equated with Zorro, the mythical Mexican hero and friend of the poor and exploited, to being widely referred to as a zombie policy, a dead and rotten idea that nevertheless keeps rising from the grave. How did it come to this?
Robert Caro Wonders What New York Is Going To Become
I gradually came to understand that because [Robert Moses] had done this thing, that no one else had ever done, gotten all this power without being elected, if I could find out how he did it and explain how he did it, I would be explaining something that no one else understood and I thought they really should understand, which is, how does power really work in cities? Not what we’re taught in textbooks, but what’s the raw, bottom, naked essence of real power?
Berlin
I was in Berlin last week with all of our WooCommerce teams for their meetup. Beyond having a very productive work week I wandered around the city a little bit. View the full gallery →
Questions for our first 1:1. Great advice from Lara Hogan on holding a meaningful first 1-1 with team members.
Sails
Courtyard of our co-working space in Berlin, Germany.
A couple weeks ago I did an interview with Helpshift about customer support and how we wrangle a distributed team at Automattic. They wrote everything up into a nice blog post that was published earlier this week.
Broken Promises: The Housing Market in San Francisco (And Ten Ideas to Fix It). Clear and thorough post about housing in San Francisco. One thing I’ve noticed in my own Portland neighborhood is how neighbors use objections to minor variations on the building code to mask their NIMBYism.
Ride Along with the Cow Police
Lawmen and rustlers now find themselves reenacting a centuries-old drama, one central to the creation myth of the American frontier. If the cowboy was the great American folk hero, the cattle rustler was his villainous twin.