Monday Cup Of Links #25 - Imprisoned maintainers, Cheetos Lip Balm, Panic-Buying Parrots, Comedy Club Shutdowns
I don’t know how long this is going to last
Happy Monday!
Now several countries are under lockdown, and all media is focusing on only one thing. Different aspects, sure, but the focus is so heavily on coronavirus and its effects, not that I feel very interested in reading anything more.
The lockdown seems to be having some lag effects - there’s fewer new cases. Which is hopeful, but I’m not sure how long this is all going to last. I’m glad for supply chain magic that keeps us all well-stocked. I’m also eager to see the kind of sociological/organizational research that comes out of this period.
Overall, I’m hoping for some certainty. Everyday seems to throw new challenges, and it’s hard to make or keep any plans.
In any case, onto our links!
Core-JS, an open-source JavaScript library that had 26 million downloads a week, was maintained mainly by one man. What happens to the library now, when he is in prison for the next 18 months?
KK Venugopal, the Attorney-General of India, has a huge collection of old books. He digitized them all and put them out on the Internet. You can access them here. Some of the books date back to the 17th century. Go through this collection, it’s really awesome. I found this old wedding album from the 1920s, and wasn’t that wonderful!
Are you a “Harbinger of Failure”? There’s some people with tastes that go completely against what the majority of the market likes, and if these customers like a product, it is most certainly doomed. I’m sorry, fans of Zune, New Coke, Google Plus, and Cheetos Lip Balm.
The Upright Citizens Brigade, a comedy collective (famously part-owned by Amy Poehler), had massive layoffs across its LA and NY theaters, and messed it up for everyone involved. I stumbled into my first improv theater in 2012, and entered a world of interesting models of creative funding. There’s at least four such theaters in NYC alone, including UCB. They have cheap shows ($5 to see Mike Myers live) and free open mics, which are all basically a feeder to their more expensive classes. If you can’t afford the classes, you can volunteer at the theater in exchange for free classes. And the big draw was the celebs who owned these places and frequented them, and often, you’d have Saturday Night Live auditions at these places. I thought this was a great way to keep the community going, because you had a cheap space to perform at, and a way to pay rent. But apparently the model isn’t working for UCB at least. They were teetering at the brink for a while, and now thanks to the virus and lockdown, they need to lay people off to survive. One issue was they weren’t run by people familiar with business and money. It strikes me that everyone needs to take an Intro to Business Finance course, because it’s very easy to get tied up in knots trying to balance creativity with money. Just look at CollegeHumor.
GIF of the week: Cockatoo panic-buying toilet paper.