🔗Authoritarian Grift Meets the Grind of Justice
America (that country that promoted itself (past tense) as the beacon of democracy) continues to be the ONLY country in the world that does nothing to stop these kinds of people.
Why would anybody believe - ever - that America stands for democracy?
🔗 Pockets of Belfast - Gapingvoid
On 20th March, in celebration of the UN’s World Happiness day, the BBC’s Mark Easton conducted a little social experiment: dropping ten wallets (with money and his phone number inside) on the streets of Belfast, Northern Ireland.
He got them all back.
Makes me happy - and today isn’t even World Happiness Day!
🔗 The Mediocrity of Modern Google
But here’s the thing about tech – and I’ve been saying this for years – technology’s self-obsolescence is a more effective regulator than any government agency. Google, despite its trillion-dollar market cap and infrastructure advantages, risks becoming the first of the mega-caps to fade into irrelevance as the internet evolves beyond the “10 blue links” paradigm that made it a giant.
Me - never been overly into the land of Google. Yes - I have an account - and of course I have Google Drive - but it is not my ‘go to’ - unless I am forced into it because a business I am working with has decided it hates Microsoft and has enabled Google. I do think it is hard to beat their ‘office suite’ - for the collaboration part of it - BUT I would never consider writing a doc or knocking out a spreadsheet on Google if I wasn’t expecting somebody to be collaborating with me.
In my world …
GoogleSheets Airtable
GoogleDocs Craft
GMail AppleMail/Spark mainly running my own domains in some data center
Google Search Perplexity
GDrive iCloud/Dropbox
GooglePhotos et al. Apple
What else do people use Google for - I forget.
🔗 Were Your Managers Managing Your Decline?
This is “managed decline,” – the art of overseeing failure with exceptional documentation. Managed decline hides under terms like cost control, risk minimization, and streamlining, but it guarantees one thing: job security for managers. The EU and UK exemplify this, where managed economic entropy and decline have become a boon for the managerial class. Managers multiply like Gremlins in water.
🔗 Division is easier than connection - Seth Godin - just reminding us all of good behaviour.
It’s a Harlan Coban. It should have been great. It wasn’t. I am increasingly finding that his stuff falls into 2 star or 4 star. This is the former. I didn’t care about the people. The mystery …
Should it be 5 stars?
Probably because it is quite simply an absolute spectacular gem.
🎬 Cordelia Cupp is my new hero. Absolutely F A N T A S T I C stuff. The writer …
I don’t know - I share a lot of Om - but this one - this right here is in a class of its own - so beautiful. A delight to read. A level where you don’t just give up highlighing the best parts - but maybe even give up writing - because how can you even begin to achieve this.
Talking of 🖇️ Herb .. this is one of his iconic ones and it got me to wondering why Haight Ashbury wasn’t called Ashbury Haight. I now know the answer - BUT - now I’m wondering what rules the signage in SF follows .. I have my suspicions, but need to check - and if they are consistent.
Sitting and catching up with the world - and not one, not two but three Substacks all on a single theme;
🔗 Open Source and AI, FSF Edition - Dana F. Blankenhorn
🔗 The Mar-a-Lago Accord, or the Plan to Crash the US Economy - Umair Haque
🔗 State Of The (Super)Consumer: Why Government Cuts Are Spooking The Market
They are all different and come from different angles but the theme is not good. And planned?