I didn’t read as much this week: I do most of my article reading during school via print-outs1 I bring from home2. It works out because it’s nowhere near as obvious as a book but still gives me back some of the time that’s being absolutely destroyed by whichever class I’m required to attend. Also, we had Monday off for Labor Day, and I have been super tired.
- Instacart is the Best and Worst Grocery Business Imaginable (thediff.co)
- I’ve been passively curious about Instacart and was excited when I saw the email from TheDiff.
- I’ve never used it, but I think it’s cool to understand a little more about the business.
- Byrne’s writing – at least for me – is tough to read the first time you pick it up. I’ve been reading him since early this year, though, and I’m finally able to be confident in my ability to follow his thoughts. He posts consistently, and those posts are consistently super interesting.
- Sidenote to the sidenote – I once pasted an article of his into a writing help tool, and it said the sentences were likely too complex for a general audience.
- This helped my ego. ;)
- Sidenote to the sidenote – I once pasted an article of his into a writing help tool, and it said the sentences were likely too complex for a general audience.
- I’ve been passively curious about Instacart and was excited when I saw the email from TheDiff.
- Hey tech folks: Vivek Ramaswamy is not the one (noahpinion.blog)
- I already was not a fan of Ramaswamey because most of what I’ve heard him say is a little crazy, and I’m not a fan of right-wing ideas generally, but this was a good takedown of just a few of his incoherent ideas.
- His speech is also annoying; Chris Christie was right.
- Also, it looks like YouTube is now tracking individual shares with a new “si” parameter. This must be pretty new because I’ve never seen it before, and I didn’t see much mention of it after some quick (admittedly imprecise) googling.
- The Rise and Fall of ESPN’s Leverage – Stratechery by Ben Thompson
- I’ve never watched sports, and have only tuned into ESPN a handful of times – most of which were five–seven years ago when I was testing connecting my TV directly to the coax outlet in the wall because my cable provider at the time didn’t encrypt the channels or require a set-top box – but I enjoyed this article and have found Ben’s continuing coverage of the collapse of ESPN on Sharp Tech and in his updates quite interesting.
- The quotes from Those Guys Have All the Fun worked well.
- According to Ben on a recent Sharp Tech podcast, he’s been wanting to quote this book in an article for a while.
- The prologue to Why Fish Don’t Exist by Lulu Miller
- I finish very few of the books I start, which is something I’m working on. That said, I don’t know if I’ll finish this book – one difficulty is that I have too many books, both printed and digital, and I subscribe to Kindle Unlimited – but I enjoyed the discussion of life as being a fight against entropy, disorder.
- The opening lines were captivating:
“Picture the person you love most […] eating cereal. […] Entropy will get them.”
- Our climate change debates are out of date - by Noah Smith (noahpinion.blog)
- My current biology teacher is more hopeless about climate change than I’d like, and this was a nice, interesting update to my (limited!) knowledge on climate change.
- I didn’t know how cheap solar and wind were getting!
- Amazon and Shopify, Shopify and Its Merchants, The Payments Question – Stratechery by Ben Thompson
- The AWS model for Amazon distribution!
- Ben has covered this on Sharp Tech.
- One of the many differences between the two, though, is that AWS is not branded; Buy with Prime is.
- This was a good update, but it left me curious about how exactly Amazon Pay is integrated with Shopify Checkout such that Shopify processes the payments.
- Maybe this was a bit of a miscommunication because the press release seems to imply that Amazon Pay is/will be a payment option but not a required one for Buy with Prime.
- I enjoyed the nuances about e.g., how Amazon might have wanted the deal with Shopify more than Shopify did.
- The AWS model for Amazon distribution!
- Credit card debt collection (bitsaboutmoney.com)
- I read this about a month ago when it came out, but it was featured in The Browser today, which, to me, was a validation both of the article – reading this very blog a few years ago sparked my (casual) interest in finance and economics! – and of The Browser, the editors of which consistently find excellent reads.
1four pages per sheet, double sided, flipped on the long edge!
2or, sometimes, when I’m desperate, print in the school library for $0.10/page
I wrote many of the entries in this post at once, but the goal is to write my reactions soon after I read an article – which is something I often do anyway, just on the paper on which I’ve printed the piece.
Week numbers! What’s the Current Week Number? (epochconverter.com)