Don't Write the Tedious Thing An Article by Maud Newton maudnewton.medium.com Ugh, now I have to write this boring part, I would think. I would spend a few days in active rebellion against this directive that I imagined the book was imposing. Then I would realize: this is my book! There are no rules! I can write it however I want! Also, I would think, if I’m bored by something that I believe I need to write, the reader undoubtedly will be too, if not because the subject is inherently boring, then because I myself find it so unbearably tedious to imagine discussing it for five pages. Often as not, I would remember some aspect of the subject that deeply interested me, something a little outside the way it’s usually perceived or written about. Then I would meditate on that, and soon I would be scribbling notes from an increasingly excited place until I found a way forward. A form of beginner’s mind. Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind boredomwritinginterest
COVID and cascading collapses An Article by Benedict Evans www.ben-evans.com The Wile E. Coyote Effect
The Wile E. Coyote Effect I’ve been looking at this chart a lot over the past few weeks. It shows us that print ad budgets were doing just fine all the way though the first decade or more of the consumer internet. There was even a little spike upward for the Dotcom bubble. Then the financial crisis and recession of 2008/9 caused a step change down, but when the crisis was over the budgets didn’t come back. Instead, the market had been reset, and budgets have been falling steadily ever since. You might call this the Will E Coyote effect - you’ve run off the cliff, or the cliff has disappeared from under you, but there’s a brief moment while your legs windmill in the air before gravity kicks in. It can take a while for the inevitable to happen, but then, as Lenin pointed out, you get a decade of inevitable in a week. When decades happen business