A Personalish Post
Life is busy time to grind and write. Context Collapse #156
Hello there newsletter friends. This week’s edition is going to be short and sweet.
You see, there was a great article I was planning on publishing Tuesday. But there were client needs over at Ungerleider Works and some unexpected scheduling snafus (car in the repair shop, the toddler’s preschool closing early, LOL IRL and being a responsible adult stuff) that mean the newsletter is running behind.
My clients pay me to do complicated writing and strategy projects for them that are delivered in a timely manner. I like making them happy. I also like spending non-work hours doing non-work things because holy fuck I did a decade of 80 hour workweeks and living for work and hahahahahahaha I’m not doing that sadness again.
Anyway…
I started mentoring at Techstars Los Angeles and Techstars Space Accelerator this week for the second year in a row. I’m helping a great cohort of early stage startups with public relations, marketing and communication mentorship. This includes everything from teaching founders how to pitch media outlets to figuring out what sections on a website will help attract smart engineers to improving pitch decks for investors and partners… Very excited to be there and to work with these companies.
So that is keeping me busy as well. Now let’s get to what you were really waiting for—the links.
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Here’s what I’ve been thinking about…
The internet is the most disruptive technology since the printing press and all the weird stuff in our lives directly emanates from that.
Art Garfunkel lists every book he’s read since 1968. I really, really dig this.
Warning signs you’re living in a society without a counterculture. This list is from Ted Gioia, who comes from a very specific cultural background (alt weeklies! private equity buying decades-old pop catalogs!) but who is on very on point about how the internet transformed countercultures into subcultures.
HBO Max is rewriting history in their key art for movies by digitally altering film poster art to remove cigarettes and cigars. I’m a former smoker whose health got 10,000% better after I quit smoking but damn if this isn’t some deeply creepy, uncomfortable stuff.
Anyway, Rosh Hashanah is coming up on Sunday night and ending on Tuesday so I’ll be offline for a bit. I’m not one for religion but spending time with loved ones and having large, extravagant holiday meals is something close to my heart.
We got a Rosh Hashanah package from Chicago’s mighty Jewish-Mexican bakery Masa Madre with amaranth challah, local honey and churro babka:
Excited about this. And also, because, again, epic holiday meal, planning to cook a beer-braised brisket with onion jam, lukshen kugel, roast vegetables, matzoh ball soup, apple cake with chocolate chunks and a bunch of other delicious things.
This is all to say that the next newsletter is going out next Friday. See you then.