Kickoff For October 4, 2021

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Monday Kickoff, a collection of what I’ve found interesting, informative, and insightful on the web over the last seven days.

Let’s get this Monday started with these links:

Arts and Literature

So You Thought You Didn’t Like Manga?, wherein we take a dive into an alternative world of Japanese illustrated storytelling, one which experiments with style of art, storytelling, and mature themes.

How NOT to Read: Learning from A Confederacy of Dunces, wherein Jessica Hooten Wilson argues that John Kennedy Toole’s novel is more than a comedy: it’s a cautionary tale against our penchant for misreading good books.

Walking Shadows, wherein we learn about the importance of actors to Elizabethan playwrights an how those actors influenced the work of the scribes.

Online Life

Is the Cookie Web Tracker Dying?, wherein we learn that while using cookies to track what you do on line might be in decline, more pervasive tracking technology is on the horizon.

Why every platform wants to be a super app, wherein we learn why platform tech companies in Africa are bundling multiple services into a single mobile app and the consequence it has for users.

How the cookie poisoned the Web, wherein Doc Searles outlines the (relatively benign) origin of the browser cookie and how it came to be a blight on the web.

Work

The five-day workweek is dead, wherein we discover how workers in the US are trying to follow the example of their counterparts overseas and get their employers to test drive a shorter work week.

Why worker loyalty is at a breaking point, wherein Josie Cox examines why, in a world still wracked with COVID-19, many workers are willing to quit their jobs rather than lose the flexibility of working remotely.

‘WE ALL QUIT’: How America’s Workers Are Taking Back Their Power, wherein Lauren Kaori Gurley looks at why low-wage workers in the US are quitting their jobs en masse (and it’s not because of laziness or government handouts).

And that’s it for this Monday. Come back in seven days for another set of links to start off your week.

Scott Nesbitt