Content for humans, selected by a human. Mass communications-focused with a universal lens. Mid-week is usually for the articles, weekend is usually for the links, but it’s a long holiday weekend here in the United States so we’re shaking things up a bit. Not your thing? Unsubscribe below.
New Futures:
A persuasive argument that we put too much trust in technology. (Chris Baraniuk/BBC)
Zeynep Tufekci on the possibility COVID was a lab leak and the “downfalls of creduility and group think—even among smart people.” (Zeynep Tufekci)
More of a new past than anything else, but David Graeber and David Wengrow’s revisionist history of pre-history is worth a read. (Guardian excerpt)
Social media works in unexpected ways, like turning indigenous Brazilians living in the Amazon with tenous internet access into TikTok celebrities. (Terrence McCoy/Washington Post)
Advertising/Marketing/PR:
Creatives on what they actually charge for projects1. (Ruby Boddington/It’s Nice That)
The Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute’s consumer aesthetic database2. (CARI)
Jane Friedman on what authors need to know about online and IRL communities when they’re marketing their books3. (Jane Friedman)
Tim Ferriss’ entirely sensible reasons not to become famous. (Tim Ferriss)
Love this stunt marketing: Fisher-Price makes a 60th anniversary edition of their iconic Chatter toddler telephone that actually makes calls. (Parker Herren/Ad Age)
Packy McCormick on stories, narratives and how to understand why people feel so damn strongly about NFTs. (Not Boring)
Media:
In the latest installment of shows-playing-musical-chairs-on-streaming-services, Comcast is considering taking a lot of NBC content off Hulu and on Peacock. (Lillian Rizzo and Joe Flint/WSJ)
What it’s like bringing India to Dungeons & Dragons. (Ajit George/Terribleminds)
Fresh from the nothing-bad-can-happen-of-this file, Netflix is testing a TikTok-style short video feed for children. (Jon Porter/The Verge)
How Twitter got internal research that yields awkward results right. (Casey Newton/Platformer)
Age of Empires IV and the “dad games” genre. (Dia Lacina/Paste)
Tech:
Cory Doctorow on Uber’s business model is… not optimistic. (Cory Doctorow/Pluralistic)
Evernote vs. Notion steel cage match, only one can win4. (Francesco D’Allessio/Geek Culture)
The Seattle inevitable happens, Starbucks and Amazon open joint concept store. (RetailWire)
Intuit acquires Mailchimp, promptly leaves Mailchimp employees with lapses in health insurance coverage. (Ben Bergman/Insider)
Adobe placing unvaccinated employees on unpaid leave5. (Sarah Roach/Protocol)
Tinder, the Israel/Palestine border and how US tech companies make sense of international geopolitics. (Yona Golding/Wired)
Oldie but goodie: Paul Graham on maker’s schedule vs. manager’s schedule and the culture wars inside tech companies. (Paul Graham)
Misc:
A guide to having better conversations (PDF). (On Being/Civil Conversations)
Letter writing tips from a Hallmark Card writer. (Andee Tagle/Janet W. Lee/NPR)
What Americans spend in a month. Fascinating article with comments full of secondhand judging that are pretty much worth ignoring. (Brenda Ann Kenneally/New York Times Magazine)
Argument: there is no such thing as “punching up” or “punching down.” (Freddie deBoer)
The work of Israeli sci-fi author Lavie Tidhar. (Dan Friedman/Forward)
Making a 2020s-style online oral history of The Great Chicago Fire of 1871. (Robert Loerzel/Chicago Magazine)
What happens when a photo of you becomes an iconic record cover and you never knew it? The Converge ‘Jane Doe’ story. (Andrew Sacher/Brooklyn Vegan)
Chris Low on rethinking the legacy of 1980s anarcho-punk zines. (Mittens XVX/DIY Conspiracy)
Muggsy Bogues as basketball icon. (Quinn Myers/Mel)
A persuasive argument for Joe Biden’s role in the birth of emo via Pete Wentz’s parents. (Kaitlyn Fehr/The Berkeley Beacon)
The Muslimness of Dune. (Haris Durrani/Tor)
Razib Khan on the first humans in the Americas. (Razib Khan’s Unsupervised Learning)
Genius’ annotated lyrics to Werewolf Bar Mitzvah. (Emily Burack/Alma)
Pandemic humor. (Kim Manis)
Supportive grandparents and careers they don’t understand. (Harjinder Singh Kukreja)
The Esoteric Field Guide to Twitter Accounts. (Cozy Kiwi)
The Onion as cultural barometer. (Grimm)
Plagues and pandemics in Jewish History. (Henry Abramson)
Physics for the rest of us. (Brian Greene)
Pricing for copywriting, artwork, design, etc is awkward to discuss. Folks will discuss their sex lives before they discuss how much they charge clients for creative work. Add to that the fact that a lot of creatives undervalue their own work and don’t charge the going rates their work deserves, and… it gets complicated! TLDR: Don’t undervalue the work you do.
Looking in retrospect HOLY HELL THERE ARE SO MANY STYLES OF ADVERTISING AND GRAPHIC DESIGN WE MISSED BECAUSE WE WERE TOO BUSY MAKING FUN OF THINGS THAT WERE LESS CENTERED IN VERY SPECIFIC PERIODS OF TIME! That is all.
Dirty little secret of the book publishing industry: With very rare exceptions (your a+++ authors of the world), authors are primarily responsible for marketing and promoting their books. As a result, a so-so writer with a large Twitter following has a considerable advantage in selling their book vs. a great writer with no online footprint. This creates dissonance as most writers specialize in, err, writing. People who are good at helping writers sell and promote their book can make lots of money as a result. So things go in our world.
I’m a frequent user of both Evernote and Notion, enjoy both and understand that much like a coffee and a Gatorade they’re both good at the different things they do. But both fall under the category of freemium-SaaS-services-self-employed-professionals-with-no-employees use, which has a lot of users but is—as I understand—frustratingly hard to monetize.
Expect to see more vaccine mandates, government-required and non-government-required, by US tech companies in the near future. Will probably write more about this later, TK.
Create your profile
Only paid subscribers can comment on this post
Check your email
For your security, we need to re-authenticate you.
Click the link we sent to , or click here to log in.