The Sunday Digest: Glassy is Here!
Everything we published this week + our new newsletter!
Happy Sunday!
Have you heard about our newest launch? After Taylor Majewski graced our pages with some fascinating writing on the gendered world of Death Tech, her newsletter, Glassy, has finally landed! As she writes in her fabulous introduction, Glassy is “a lens, not a ceiling”—a place to explore how the constant state of tech innovation refracts back onto the people the industry hasn’t always set out to serve. We couldn’t be more excited to publish this on Every.
If you’re not already following Glassy, consider this your rare invitation to click away from the Digest:
In the spirit of transparency and reflection (both very...Glassy qualities), here’s everything we published this week. There’s Taylor’s visit to Talk Therapy, a lesson from Nat Eliason in exponentially growing your productivity, a warning for investors looking at creator-led startups, and a rare look at the systems of Mr. Superorganizer himself. Enjoy!
What We Published
This week’s output: 3 articles + 1 podcast
📝 ARTICLES 📝
Welcome to Glassy
by Taylor Majewski in Glassy
Taylor's introductory entry to her new Every newsletter has a small dose of pretty much everything you can come to expect from Glassy in the future: Clear-eyed looks at large-scale industrial changes and their effects on people who are often left out of the conversations behind those shifts. A self-awareness that informs her perspective without drowning out others'. And an openness that extends to her invitation for new subscribers to reach out with comments, story suggestions or research items. This hint at things to come will cleanse your palate and whet your appetite all at once.
Read (4 minutes)
Dan Shipper: The Sultan of Superorganizers
by Kieran O'Hare in Superorganizers
It feels like a safe bet to imagine that many Superorganizers readers have been looking forward to this very entry: a look in the mirror from Dan Shipper himself. Well, not really a look in the mirror—Kieran O'Hare took a magnifying glass to Dan's organizational processes with eager wit, hoping against hope his subject would be "a hot friggin' mess." Of course, that wasn't what he found. To learn about Dan's typical day, how he got interested in the world of productivity, and the ingeniously customizable way he uses Roam, read on...then treat yourself with this outtake:
Read (17 minutes)
Unpacking The David Dobrik Controversy
by Li Jin & Nathan Baschez in Means of Creation
[Content warning: rape, sexual assault]
The MOC crew used this week's roundup to touch on multiple angles of events whose effects have rippled through the creator and startup worlds over the past few weeks: rape allegations against a member of David Dobrik's Vlog Squad. Digging into the reactions of fans, brands, and investors in Dobrik's photo-sharing app Dispo—all of whom cut ties with Dobrik's ventures by doing everything from unsubscribing to pulling investments—Li and Nathan discuss why investing in creator-led companies requires responsibility and research.
Read (9 minutes)
Personal Leverage: How to Truly 10x Your Productivity
by Nat Eliason in Almanack
An update on Nat's writing on the topic, this look at "Personal Leverage" defines the concept as "the ability to extend your productivity beyond yourself." How do you make that happen? It's a process of Defining, Refining, Delegating and figuring out just when human energy actually needs to be expended at all. Whether or not you're working with a large team, just a few others, or yourself and a computer, you'll find something actionable here.
Read (7 minutes)
🎧 PODCASTS 🎧
#65 - Introducing Glassy, with Special Guest Taylor Majewski
Talk Therapy with Dan Shipper & Nathan Baschez
Taylor joins the Talk Therapy duo to reflect on how Glassy came to be—both as a formal part of Every, and in her mind. The intersection of tech and gender is not a new space for her, from founding the wellness product-feedback hub Lemon Lab to her writing for everyone from the New York Times to OneZero. But the highlight of this episode is the honesty with which she, Nathan and Dan unpack how editors can—and should—be open to hearing about blind spots, and why they shouldn't be afraid of making mistakes and having the difficult conversations they necessitate.
Listen (25 minutes)
What’s Going On
News you might have caught or missed this week.
Medium Muddles
Casey Newton returned to The Verge this week to dig into the story behind Wednesday's news that Medium was offering its entire editorial staff buyouts as an alternative to a drastic stripping of editors' responsibilities. As CEO Ev Williams wrote, the company's pivot to bundled publications wasn't paying off as planned. But as Newton reveals, the story stretches back months—years, even—before this week's announcement, and is more complicated than a straight-up effort to rethink strategy. Unfolding "in the immediate aftermath of a bruising labor battle that had seen its workers fall one vote short of forming a union," he writes, the decision was unanticipated by employees who had "were told not to think about any of" the back-and-forth decision making happening at the platform. A new chapter in the recent spate of mass layoffs in media, Newton wonders if Medium's restructuring is another example of a "dysfunctional company built to celebrate writing only to become famous for its poor treatment of writers."
More News:
- Media Startups Axios and the Athletic Discuss Merger, Eyeing SPAC Deal
- Spark Capital burns down its Dispo deal
- OnlyFans launches "Creative Fund" to discover new musical talent
- WeWork Agrees to SPAC Deal That Would Take Startup Public
What We’re Reading
Our favorite writing from beyond Every
The NYT Wrestles with NFTs
Maybe you remember hearing about Li Jin's NFT sale of the artwork (by Annie Zhao) for her recent piece on the Creator Middle Class. We released a podcast about it, where she spoke with her buyer, James Young, who put up 13.37 Etherium (over $20K!) for the piece. Now, Charlie Warzel at the New York Times has written an Op-Ed which uses Li's sale as a springboard to cover an under-addressed angle of the NFT conversation: the bond created between the buyer and seller (not to mention the artist). "While NFTs as the ultimate form of patronage makes sense," he writes, "I’m still unconvinced that they help solve the problem of the internet’s class inequality." Still, Warzel makes room for Li's point that "the path to a creator middle class...is to democratize your income streams across a variety of digital platforms." It's a great dose of a few different opinions, no matter which of them you share.
More Reads:
- Sovereign Writers and Substack (Stratechery)
- Calculating Instruments (Real Life)
- The Revolution in Classic Tetris (The New Yorker)
Tweet of the Week
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