Some useful observaions from Clark Williams-Derry at WorldChanging about the current financial crises:

1. Unlikely events are common

2. Markets don’t know much

3. Unsustainable things stop

I especially like the last one.   It doesn’t really matter if people believe things are unsustainable or not.   If something is unsustainable it will stop, and that’s that.

Thought I would start regularly pointing to good stuff that copmes through my feed readers.   For the record I actually use two feed readers: Bloglines for my regular reads (you can see my feeds here) and Google Reader for everything else.   What I like about Google Reader is that they have a littel “Next” button that you can click to see the next post in your feed in its own context.   So that’s cool.

Anyway, after trolling the feeds this morning, here is what struck me:

• James Glave on where the real Green Shift will come from: the middle of the bell curve.
• Rob Paterson on how Obama can use his network for real change.
• Peter Rukavina has been trolling the New Yorker’s digital archives and has discovered some lovely bits about the Shelly Netherland hotel.
• Barack’s Obama photostream on flickr, which came by way of Euan Semple.
• A MetaFilter post about the shocking rise of tent cities in the USA (Update: with some excellent suggestions on what better off people can do to help)

The single greatest indication that the world has changed since Tuesday is the idea that Americans no longer have to sew a Canadian flag on their backpacks to get respect in Europe.   If you really want safe passge, sew an Obama logo on instead.

From Patrick Moberg

Oh hey it’s you!   Hey honey!   Look who’s back!   Man, we’ve missed you.

How have you been?   We’re okay…we’ve been thinking good things for you the whole time you’ve been away.   Looks like life’s had it’s way with you.   Ouch.   Where’d you pick up those scrapes?

It was hard when you first left. We were so there with you when you had your big shock.   It was hard to watch you get angry like that.   You hurt a lot of people you know.   I mean we knew we’d be safe, y’know we’ve known each other a long time, but it was really hard to watch you go through that.   We didn’t take personally all those things you said about us.   You were angry, acting rash.   And now look at you…tired, hungry, hurt and you look like you’re out of money too.

But look, it’s good to have you back.   We really have missed you.   Things haven’t been the same since you’ve been gone.   I knew if we kept the candles burning for you, you’d come back.

Come on in and take a load off.   Have something to eat.   Take a few days and then we can help you think about how to make things right again.   Lots of people are gunning for you right now.   You look like you could use a few friends.

I believe you when you say you want to change.   It’s not going to be easy, but if you need our help, we’ll give you a hand.   Who knows?   Maybe the tables will be turned someday!

Alright, take it easy now…you’ve had a long trek to get here.   Go slow.   Get some rest.   We’ll talk more in the morning

Man…it’s good to see you again.