91–100 of 191 posts
I know this is a tangent, but I just want to share this oddity. I am 38 years old, and I have been trying to buy Neuromancer since 1999. I have been in Santiago, Rome, London, Miami, Madrid, Bogota, live, in situ looking for the book on mainstream bookshops and I have never found a copy to buy. I know Neuromancer by heart but I have never been able to buy a copy of it. 38 Years.
> 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.
A museum in my city closed because they were very unprofitable and couldn’t continue attracting more and more donations to handle their costs. A lot of people were angry and upset that it was closing, but whenever you pressed someone about it they would admit they hadn’t visited in a decade or more. Of those who had, the experience wasn’t very good. The museum had become more interested in poor digital displays and o…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What I wonder is how this didn't also happen to the right.
Having a set of beliefs tethered to reality probably. Also as a general principle the right/centre don't believe the job of the government is to interfere in every aspect of peoples lives. This at least limits their ability to reproduce the empty gestures and moral lecturing of the left.
> 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.
kinda a weird headline for a store open less than a year in the end? Or am I misunderstanding something
> To Parker’s mind, for a project started with the aim of platforming sex workers [...] to have reached such a point was mortifying. How had things gotten so bad? I’m intentionally omitting all the objectives that actually make sense for a book store to have, in order to highlight what apparently was the main one... This was a remarkable story. I’m sensing a pattern. When people of certain ideologies band together un…
reading this story, it sounds like leadership was also just bad. The toilet story is just odd!
> Keen to thwart any further opportunistic toilet-users, Scarlett had a new policy. Staff were to personally escort anyone who asked to use the toilet to ensure they didn’t steal any stock or snoop around the staff area.
Like this just is weird, right?
A lot of these stories (and stories like what happened with DHH and basecamp a couple years back) seem to have an important crux: leadership who might be lacking certain management abilities. These fights end up getting framed as "about politics" but "management making me babysit people who go to the toilet" feels just like more basic of an issue.
To me a more competent manager would just say "toilet's not for customers" and be done with it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://old.reddit.com/r/glasgow/comments/142etak/heartbroke... > The owners of the Pink Peacock Cafe faced an uphill battle against prejudice, discrimination, and hatred, making it nearly impossible for them to continue their noble mission of creating a safe space for everyone. Top comment: > Your place was an absolute fucking disgrace. You displayed more hatred and bigotry than any of the folk you are accusing. You…
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It just seems on the surface that none of the parties here thought ahead more than one step ahead.
> They were simply too kind, too feminine, too British: “You are all extremely nice, assigned female at birth, in customer service, mostly British etc., and all of this sometimes doesn’t lend itself to ‘no,’” the WhatsApp message explained.
That's like throwing a molotov cocktail into a fireworks storage warehouse. What did they expect the response to that would be? It's just tremendous lack self-awareness at play here.
The shop is closing so we'll just ... occupy it? And then what, the owner will give them shares of ownership as a reward?
This randomly reminded me of Slavoj Žižek's when he said he would have liked to see "V for Vendeta -- The Sequel". This is probably what it would be -- the winners would be fighting over clogged toilets, starting campaigns on Instagram and occupying each other's offices and making deals with locksmiths to be there at 4am to break in to take back their space.
> 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've been running a retail business with similar inventory costs for a couple years. I have one employee and I pay them generously. I personally chip in about 20-30k annually to keep the whole thing afloat. It's definitely possible if you keep things small.
Edit to add: 10k in inventory just doesn't add up. In retail you need to turn over inventory multiple times annually to cover your fixed expenses like staff, rent, etc. if you only have 10k worth of inventory and you're burning >10k a month that means you're selling everything in the store every couple weeks. I don't think books move that quickly, although I could be corrected. Usually the retail standard is turning over inventory 4-5 times annually.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What I wonder is how this didn't also happen to the right.
Having a set of beliefs tethered to reality probably. Also as a general principle the right/centre don't believe the job of the government is to interfere in every aspect of peoples lives. This at least limits their ability to reproduce the empty gestures and moral lecturing of the left.