So Many Bulls**t Jobs
RIP David Graeber! Crazy California fires! Roku as the gatekeeper of everything!
Stuff’s weird in California right now. I’m a long way off in the Great Lakes empire, but… but…
Now THAT’s some dystopian stuff. Anyway…
Academic/writer/activist David Graeber passed away last week at the age of 59.
Graeber was that rarest of ducks: An academic who can actually write well. His books Debt: The First 5000 Years and Bullshit Jobs are two of the most genuinely worldview-changing pieces of literature I’ve ever seen.
Bullshit Jobs especially. Graeber’s thesis is simple: There are millions of people across the world—clerical workers, administrators, consultants, telemarketers, corporate lawyers, service personnel, and many others—who are toiling away in meaningless, unnecessary jobs, and they know it.
That’s a simple thesis! But one that hurts feelings in a world where many of our identities are defined by the jobs we do.
I mean, I’ll be the first one to raise my hand that I have a bullshit job. I run a business that is very good at helping my clients make more money. I get paid well to help my customers sell more widgets to their customers, and to help their CEOs say impressive things at impressive conferences. I’ll be the first person to agree that my job contributes less to the world than a firefighter, teacher or garbage collector. But owing to the weirdness of the society we live in, many bullshit jobs turn out to pay very well.
All this is to say that the below videos may give you some new perspectives on things. Watch them:
First time reading the newsletter? Keep the conversation going.
Give Money To:
Donate to the California Wildfire Relief Fund.
The Big Picture
Politico has put together a huge guide of treatments currently used for COVID-19. The difference between Remdesivir and Dexamethasone, and why Hydroxycloroquine isn’t used, etc. etc. Meanwhile, some scientists (Harvard geneticist George Church being one high profile name) are taking homemade COVID vaccines that might work, might be ineffective or might lead to complications. So it goes!
Historian Patrick Wyman discusses what Bidenism actually is, and argues that “It’s a harder sell to an audience that is, or at least ought to be, more cynical after a global recession, the Donald Trump Experience in all its varied manifestations, and now the pandemic.“
After hedge fund investor/podcaster James Altucher wrote that godawful “NYC is dead forever” op-ed in the New York Post, his sister Bonnie Altucher wrote a reply called City to Putz: Drop Dead (!). Come to celebrate NYC being a king among cities, stay for the settling of family scores.
Amazon is full-on embracing intelligence agency-style surveillance tactics against unionization efforts.
Marketing/Advertising/PR
David Griner at Adweek is running a massive interactive choose-your-own-adventure game on Twitter where you run your own advertising agency. As someone playing the IRL bootstrapped version of this where the decision tree is infinite but the moves are less dramatic, I approve!
Good news for the advertising world and adtech after The Bloodletting Year (TM): Programmatic ad spending is returning to pre-pandemic “normal” levels.
Owing to the whole pandemic thingamajob, again, cinematographers used their own babies as models for the latest Huggies Pull-Ups UK ad. The most adorable child labor!
Cindy Gallop’s Twitter thread on age discrimination at ad agencies is epic.
Media
Facebook’s testing a new feature (Disclosure: I’m a participant) that links Facebook accounts to users’ newspaper subscriptions. Participating publications get their content pushed to the top of the user’s news feed, links go directly to the newspaper’s website, and Facebook gets much more granular data on subscriber behavior than they would otherwise.
Authors like Melissa Faliveno and Christina Hammonds Reed discuss what it’s like publishing your first book in the middle of a pandemic. And how does a book tour work when it’s endless Zoom chats from your sofa anyway?
Streaming won, which is why the New York Times is discontinuing TV listings.
Todd Spangler at Variety has an epic look at how Roku became the Gatekeeper of Streaming and why Roku and HBO Max are in the middle of an epic game of chicken.
Tech
Amazon and Kohl’s are deepening their partnership and Amazon is testing opening grocery stores (!) attached to Kohl’s stores.
The ongoing war between Amazon and Microsoft for the massive, massive JEDI contract.
Verizon is buying $6.5 billion worth of 5G equipment from Samsung.
China is banning kids programming language Scratch because its website lists Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan as “countries.”
Fun
The new Joe Strummer Birthday Concert on YouTube = So so good.
Nerdy Jobs is a new newsletter dedicated to “jobs and gigs for nerds, geeks, artists, and creatives.”
Digging the WinAmp Skin Museum. It whips the llama’s ass and, man oh man… WinAmp gave SO MANY designers and UI/UX folks an amazing sandbox to experiment with.
Finally ready to share the Winamp Skin Museum skins.webamp.org Infinite scroll through 65k Winamp skins with instant search and in-browser interactive preview
That’s it for this issue. I’d love to hear what you think and please don’t hesitate to contact me if I can be of assistance.
Love and coffee,
Neal
And a genuine thank you for reading this newsletter.
It would make all the difference in the world if you could share this newsletter with five people you know who would enjoy it. Or, even better yet, sharing this newsletter on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter. Have a good one.
About This Newsletter: Neal Ungerleider is a strategic communications consultant who works with advertising/PR agencies and in-house clients. He worked as a journalist in a previous life. Neal’s newsletter focuses on marketing, media and communications news.
Follow Neal on Twitter, connect on LinkedIn and learn more about his services at nealungerleider.com. You can contact him at neal@nealungerleider.com.