So in the beginning of the story, a google VP was mentioned, then no follow up. Why was that person there?
Maybe there were some rare books missing from their training set.
The death of east London's most radical bookshop
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Re: The death of east London's most radical bookshop
#62> Since opening, the Scarlett Letters hadn’t made a month-by-month profit, but had been kept afloat by savings and a monthly donation of £10,000 from an anonymous “angel investor”. Sounds like it wasn't so much a business as a piece of performance art.
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Re: The death of east London's most radical bookshop
#63This reminds of this discussion about the closure of a 'cooperative' bookshop in New York: https://x.com/narrenhut/status/1970884747833585690
Perhaps they just "didn't feel like being customer-servicey" often enough: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C8KoiQKPmXf/
These people have diverged from reality.
Re: The death of east London's most radical bookshop
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Re: The death of east London's most radical bookshop
#65Performative radicalism that freaks out wider society instead of slow steady progress has led to the near complete irrelevance of the left in the west, especially the anglosphere. I mean, UK Labor is a centrist pro-capital party now. It's over.
Not really. Don't know about what really happened here, but if a place is performative, and mostly unneeded and irrelevant, it tends to blow itself up, and then the problem clears itself away. Movements that stick around and achieve things have their vicissitudes as well, but they get through them.
Re: The death of east London's most radical bookshop
#66Re: The death of east London's most radical bookshop
#67Re: The death of east London's most radical bookshop
#68> Since opening, the Scarlett Letters hadn’t made a month-by-month profit, but had been kept afloat by savings and a monthly donation of £10,000 from an anonymous “angel investor”. Sounds like it wasn't so much a business as a piece of performance art.
So, a tech startup.
Re: The death of east London's most radical bookshop
#69> Since opening, the Scarlett Letters hadn’t made a month-by-month profit, but had been kept afloat by savings and a monthly donation of £10,000 from an anonymous “angel investor”. Sounds like it wasn't so much a business as a piece of performance art.
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Something tells me that a meeting at a Zizians Chapter will virtually be indistinguishable from those described in the article, or the average HN reader‘s Standup at work.
Either this or my brain is just too oppressively colonial.
Re: The death of east London's most radical bookshop
#70> Since opening, the Scarlett Letters hadn’t made a month-by-month profit, but had been kept afloat by savings and a monthly donation of £10,000 from an anonymous “angel investor”. Sounds like it wasn't so much a business as a piece of performance art.
I understand the dynamics of book stores and see how you could carry something like this for a long time with a not-crazy amount of money but what weirds me out are the people involved in the project who get mad at the "angel investors".