Welcome back to Erin for Tech, a newsletter about the ethics of tech things on the internet — written by me, Erin Fuss.
Erin for Tech is moving to a biweekly publishing schedule to better serve you more in-depth content, and more interviews with creative people.
If you were forwarded this newsletter, sign up for your own subscription here:
Send questions, comments, tips, and complaints to erin@erinfortech.com
Building to Recharge
We start our mornings fully charged, but as we find our energy levels running low as the day unfolds, we top up with coffee, energy drinks or drugs. On the weekend, we dedicate time and money to recharging: yoga, meditation, silent retreats – there’s a whole economy surrounding it. But the great irony is this: we recharge to avoid burning out … so that we can work longer and more efficiently in service of the very system that is draining our energy.
- the Correspondent
The older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve realized the importance of recharging. (Admittedly, hence the delay in the latest newsletter — between a nasty cold, and taking time to recharge and recover from that, I got behind 😞). And as I’ve gotten older, I’ve removed a few things from my plate, and truly enjoyed doing nothing.
And that’s okay. But, as this post called out, maybe we should spend time recharging for ourselves, not just for our work selves. And given the recent COVID-19 scares, this is more important than ever. In times of a pandemic, simply existing can be traumatizing.
Yet another scooter company? 🤔
Usain Bolt. Yes, that Usain Bolt, of Olympic lore AKA fastest man on the earth, cofounded a scooter company, named Bolt. And recently, they closed a Series A funding round, with a total investment of $30 million.
But do we really need another scooter company? Has this model officially been piloted to death yet? Have we learned absolutely nothing from Lime? Because I surely have.
Things I’ve learned
Coolness alone isn’t a business model.
Riding 30 mph on a scooter is scary, and also can bust someone’s head in.
It’s capitalism trying to be cool again.
Read more about Bolt, or order a Razor scooter here. IMHO, they’re way cooler.
Maybe journalists should kill their story more often?
It’s no question that I’m a fan of the Correspondent. I initially heard about this through my professor, Jay Rosen. (And for those of you shaking your heads saying I’m drinking the kool-aid, sometimes quite possibly, but there are plenty of things we disagree about as well). But the reason why is they’re so damn…. transparent!
Recently, journalist Irene Caselli wrote that she killed her story on male and female brains. And at first, I thought this was more of a gender binary thing. But in fact, its an even more important reason.
She shared this
graph originally created by researcher Simon Wardley, published in the Correspondent
And explained about where she’s at as a journalist, and what she’s learning, and who’s telling the story better than her. And its not because she’s a bad journalist, or even a bad researcher, it’s because she recognizes what is good.
It’s a beautiful piece, you should go read it.
But then take a moment, how many times have you read something and been like, “damn, that was stupid, XYZ does it better?” Or wished that they would have talked to an actual legitimate source rather than the loudest person in the room.
What if we all did that more often? Not just journalists, but everyone.
Quick Links
My new favorite newsletter is garbage day, because it shares the absolutely buckwild things that happen on the internet in a way no one else can.
COVID-19 is proving to have an impact on the tech industry - and I’m loving Coinbase’s transparency in their documentation.
Need a reason to be mad at facebook again? Read below
And where would we be without the TikTok king?
The Post has cancelled all non-essential business travel but what if being at SXSW to talk about TikTok is essential to my well-beingThat’s all for today, but thank you all so much for your patience in this brief hiatus. This newsletter will be migrating to an every-other week option to keep the content at a higher-level
See you on the internet my dudes 👋