Thus the look back to 2016: the reason why I believe that the New York Times was more responsible than Facebook for the election outcome is rooted in a belief that making stories matter is far more important and impactful than making up stories.
Ben Thompson
Links
A running list of links I find worthwhile, RSS feed included. Previously these were saved to Pinboard but more recently they're saved directly to this site through a simple WordPress plugin. This section of the site is still a work-in-progress.
Twitter, Responsibility, and Accountability →
October 19, 2020 journalism, strategy
Our remote work future is going to suck →
Sean Blanda’s (well-written!) contrarian take on the trade offs of remote work, especially for companies making a rapid shift from a previously co-located environment.
September 18, 2020 work
Trust and safety is not a product edge case →
But abuse vectors are fundamentally different from bugs or feature requests in that “number of people affected” or “how much money they pay us” doesn’t properly capture the magnitude and nature of the risk it presents to both your customers and your business (or in the case of Kat, your employees). Unlike a bug that breaks an experience or a feature that enables new ones, a single exploitation of a single abuse vector can have profound real-world affects on its target.
Ben Balter
September 18, 2020 design, software
Digital gardens let you cultivate your own little bit of the internet →
Short overview of how many are turning to personal websites to create more scrapbook-like homes for themselves on the web. It’s fun to own your own small corner.
September 18, 2020 blogging
‘Fire is medicine’: the tribes burning California forests to save them →
For most of the last 100 years in California, however, government agencies have considered fire the enemy – a dangerous, destructive element to suppress and exclude from the land. Traditional ecological knowledge and landscape stewardship were sidelined in favor of wholesale firefighting, and a kind of land management that looked like natural conservation but left the ground choked with vegetation ready to burn.
September 13, 2020 climate
Lydia Davis on Making the Decision Not to Fly →
That’s what amazes me, that we could be perfectly happy with much less, including much less stuff, stuff shipped from all over the world and delivered the next day, and we might save so much pain and suffering.
September 12, 2020 society, travel
Time anxiety: is it too late? →
I have always struggled with one thought. The kind of recurring thought that never really leaves you: “It’s too late.” Too late to publish a book, too late to start a company, too late to learn a new language. This is called time anxiety.
Anne-Laure Le Cunff
September 12, 2020 philosophy
Andrew Wilkinson & Tiny Operating Manual →
Colin Keely summarizes Tiny Capital and how it operates both its business and that of its companies. Tiny’s co-founder, Andrew Wilkinson, is a great person to follow on Twitter.
September 12, 2020 investment
What do executives do, anyway? →
A clear summary and expansion on some of the core ideas in Andy Grove’s High Output Management.
June 21, 2020 management, work
When White Parents Won’t Integrate Public Schools →
More affluent white urbanites who’ve moved to gentrifying city neighborhoods often send their children to private or charter schools, because of fears about underperforming local public schools—and the predominantly non-white kids who attend them. “If you could just get white liberals to live their values,” Hannah-Jones said, “you could have a significant amount of integration.”
June 21, 2020 education