Kickoff For March 9, 2020
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:
Business
The uncertain future of your neighborhood dry cleaner, wherein we discover how startups have been trying to disrupt the drycleaning industry in New York City, and how those efforts are harming that industry as a whole.
Prime Mover: How Amazon Wove Itself Into the Life of an American City, wherein we take a deep dive into what Amazon and its business practices are doing to other business, and to workers, in Baltimore.
Indie booksellers persevere despite Amazon, rising costs, wherein we discover that in spite of a variety of challenges, small independent bookstores in the U.S. continue to survive and, in some cases, thrive.
The Dark Side of Technology
Cryptoqueen: How this woman scammed the world, then vanished, wherein we hear the tale of OneCoin, a highly-touted cryptocurrency that gained a massive amount of investment, and learn about what happened when OneCoin’s founder disappeared with all that money.
Waze Hijacked L.A. in the Name of Convenience. Can Anyone Put the Genie Back in the Bottle?, wherein we learn how the direction and mapping company, fuelled by the work of unpaid “editors” who have no experience or training in traffic management, is causing congestion and havoc on the streets of Los Angeles.
As a Facebook moderator I saw the worst of humanity. We need to be valued, wherein we get a brief glimpse into the world of the poorly-paid, highly-stressed, overworked, and underappreciated content moderators at the social media giant. And what we get to see isn’t pretty.
Productivity
How busyness leads to bad decisions, wherein we’re reminded that having too much on your plate means nothing gets done. And if it does get done, it won’t be to the quality it deserves.
A Guide to Managing Your Time When You’re Always Behind, wherein Leo Babauta shares a simple way to do just that, with solid advice on how to overcome obstacles that are in your way or which you put in your way.
How to conquer work paralysis like Ernest Hemingway, wherein we learn about the writer’s technique of useful interruption, how it can help us reach done, and how researchers are looking at how it applies to fields other than writing.
And that’s it for this Monday. Come back in seven days for another set of links to start off your week.