Tag Archives: from:Drafts

Podcast listening down

The company also broke out podcasts by topic: news, sports, comedy, society and culture and true crime. Each topic saw a decrease in listeners since March 9, although the news category only saw a dip of 10 percent, making it by far still the most listened to subject. On the other end is true crime, once a growing subject for the sector. It’s audience has fallen by almost 30 percent since early March. The audience for sports has fallen far as well, by about 13 percent.

I guess. I must not be watching enough TV.

Original source: Coronavirus Causes Dip in Podcast Listening

Let’s hope so

Hopefully, this crisis will not only elevate the status of low-wage workers but spark a new wave of organizing to boost standards and build power across these “essential” industries. Because it’s low-wage workers — not bankers, landlords, or CEOs — who make our society run.

Original source: Just a moment…

Well, that’s one view of right-wing thinking

The right has an antimajoritarian, elitist agenda. Right-wing thought is essentially the belief that some people are destined to rule, and others are destined to be ruled over by their betters, and the world is best when the right people are atop the pyramid. Splits in the right are about who should rule: Dominionists want Christian men in charge; libertarians want bosses in charge, imperialists want America in charge, racists want white people in charge, etc.

Original source: Pluralistic: 24 Mar 2020, Cory Doctorow

You can never step in the same cash flow twice

The central thing to remember about an economy is that it is not an absolute value of something, but one that is really based on flow rates. We think of it like it is an ocean with a certain amount of water when it is really more like a water park with funky rides that looks and feels like a lot of water because it is in high motion in a much smaller closed system.
…
The flow never stops, and we all have to do our part to keep it moving. And I am not talking about what seems to have been the case through a lot of economic crises in the past, where we have been basically told to just keep shopping and taking our vacations. That is not sufficient, and it never was. What companies need to do is try to do as much business as they possibly can and keep as many people on the payroll as possible to keep as much flow going as possible.

Original source: Love – And Business – In The Time Of Coronavirus

Accountability is a threat

“Accountability” is a setup for blaming down the road. That it is only ever used in a negative context (when was the last time you were held accountable for something good happening?). Accountability, when said by others, is often a thinly veiled threat. It is extrinsic, rather than intrinsic. Accountability is very different to people taking responsibility for something.

Original source: Accountability vs Complexity

The koning of everyday life

I understand your distress at not being able to visit your loved ones, your mother, father, grandmother or grandfather in their care homes. Especially now when you only want one thing: to hold their hand and comfort them.

I'm an American so I fundamentally don't understand monarchy. Rejecting that concept is, like, our entire deal. From afar, though, it looks like monarchs in Western society become the sort of care-taker of something important in everyday life: both pride in country and culture, but also some kind of model of the ideal citizen. I don't know, again, that role is so foreign to me (literally – hahah) that I can't analyze it. I think US presidents and celebrities fill this role for Americans, which has mixed results.

Original source: Full Text in English of Dutch King's speech on the coronavirus pandemic

“Tea for dong!”

According to customers and vendors, pangolin scales and meat can be used as a form of medicine to cure a variety of ailments (it is said to nourish the kidneys), but primarily to invigorate men’s sexual performance and bolster female beauty. The exotic nature of the pangolin—and the illegal trading that is central to its distribution—has an obvious analogy in the masked palm civet cat, a small mammal native to India and Southeast Asia served as a delicacy in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, usually prepared with chrysanthemum petals and shreds of snake.

Original source: “Chinese Virus,” World Market

Learning leads to innovation

In fact, from a recent Forrester survey, we discovered that companies that adopt a culture of fast failure grow revenue four times faster than the industry average. This comes from a survey of over 500 executives, directors, and innovation leaders that allowed us to identify fast failure as one of three core capabilities of becoming an adaptive enterprise.

Original source: Fast Failure Is Not Dead

Find your own path productivity

Don’t ask: am I organized enough? Instead, you might ask: Am I shipping work in sufficient quality and quantity to cause the changes I seek to make? If not, what’s stopping me?

And:

Shipping has never been a problem for me. What has always been a problem for me is shipping work that is important enough. 

And targeting the audience and best medium to help them:

> So I’m asking, What is the change I’m trying to make? And, Who’s it for and what’s it for? And then I ask things like, What’s the medium that will help it get there? Is it a blog post, or a talk? Or is it a book? What box does it fit in?

And, using a mega–deck that you pick and choose slides from for each presentation:

> When I give a talk I have about 200 slides, and none of the slides have words on them. Each has a picture and the picture brings up a story that I want to talk about. Each story is associated with an image in the presentation.

Original source: Seth Godin Hates Being Organized