Having an online persona called "TaxiCabJesus" led me to make an extra effort. Some of the company's other taxi drivers have gone the extra mile to do nice things for their passengers too. But it doesn't pay the bills. Or it gets complaints filed against you, when people take it the wrong way.
There are around 44 diaries, written over the course of about 4 years. So that's less than 1 a month. For most of my tenure, I drove 4 12-hour shifts a week. There was nothing special about most of my fares.
> In every story I read, you seem to offer sage advice which people are almost immediately receptive and responsive to
The early diaries were a little different in tone to the later ones. Very few passengers were receptive... they'd think something I said was "interesting", then they carried on as before, as I expected - free advice is usually worth what's charged. Every once-in-a-while I'd get someone who appreciated my efforts - these passengers made it all worthwhile. I haven't written about most of them.
> Also... Mitt Romney as a freedom fighter from the future who can help us stop Amazon's Skynet? Okay. Maybe I skimmed too quickly by this point, or I missed the metaphor, but this seems a little whack.
This was mostly written as a tongue-in-cheek exercise to apply the 'skynet' metaphor to Amazon, and to the political system we find ourselves subjected to. Corporations and the political establishment make more sense if you figure they're run by autonomous war machines.
(EDIT: I enjoyed writing 'Humanity's Second-Best Hope' more than anything else I've ever written.)
> But this smacks of self-promotion to me.
'Who Are Your Lifelines' is a public-service announcement that I hope helps people think about who they'd call if they needed to get bailed out. People who are stuck in jail are helpless to do anything to defend themselves.
'Electronic Taxi Dispatch v1.0' points out that the 50-bazillion dollar "ridesharing" company is only selling a reinvented wheel.
Right now this is just about pointing out the fallacies of the status quo / 'conventional thinking'. At the start of my little journey, all I knew was that some things weren't quite right in my understanding of the world. Because I spent three and a half years in a taxi, dealing with all sorts of people, I think I've figured a few things out. This is my effort to share my experiences. It's on Hacker News now because another user here said they'd appreciated what I'd written on Kuro5hin.
Thanks for your comment.