PicoBlog

There’s a general consensus, amongst bourgeois women that I know, that paying for a housecleaner is a relationship saver. Let me add a caveat there: amongst bourgeois women who also work full-time. Without a housecleaner, house cleaning usually goes something like this: both people are working full time, so no one’s doing it during the week. At some point, usually about once a month, someone (almost always the woman) gets fed up with it and decides they should clean.

There’s something inherently nostalgic about summer: memories of summer vacation, childhood freedom, first jobs, first loves, family trips, late nights, and endless other experiences with people and places we learned from and loved. As I write this, I have Jonathan Richman's 6-minute ode to summer nostalgia stuck in my head. In it, Richman reflects on childhood summer memories – uncomplicated friendships, cool water, the smell of grass – always concluding, “that summer feeling is gonna haunt you one day in your life.

I don’t often find myself sitting across the table from an Academy Award winner. Sure, I’ve interviewed plenty of celebrities and notable folks, but an Oscar winner? I can’t say I ever have. That is until acclaimed director Steven Soderbergh pulled up a chair and we started chatting. We didn’t get together to talk about his upcoming projects. Or him wor… ncG1vNJzZmiZop6vprrDnqmso6ljwLau0q2YnKNemLyue89oqq2dppq7br%2FOnZyrmpWntKk%3D

Attention: As of January 2024, We have moved to counting-stuff.com. Subscribe there, not here on Substack, if you want to receive weekly posts. World still continues to be madness for the foreseeable future. Be safe everyone. Many years ago, around 2018ish, I had been randomly chosen to be part of the famous(?) Nielsen TV ratings sampling thing. The odds of getting picked can be pretty low so I guess it's a pretty unique experience, especially for us data folk.

[Photo by Karen Swallow Prior] "Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.” – Simone Weil This is probably my favorite sonnet to teach. I think it is one of the Bard’s most touching and most “romantic” poems, too. (My idea of romance is not typical, I suppose.) This is, after all, a poem about death. That time of year thou mayst in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

If you are a regular reader of this newsletter then you have probably read my post almost a year ago on January 26, 2023 about Kobe Bryant. I have a deep and profound affinity for him, even before his death, actually before he became the Black Mamba and prolific basketball player and superstar that we know him as… It only grew as time went on, as our ages and lives matured side-by-side, contemporaries that did not know each other personally, but at least on my end, I’ve always felt intimately connected to the person and man for some inexplicable reason that I’ve just accepted and known.

Apologies for the C&C drought the last few weeks. After the last big issue on the Hanky Pankyand The Unbearable Lightness of MQs and Waves, I promptly boarded a plane for Europe the same day for an extended “workation”. OK, OK, it was mostly vacation, but in this issue I hope you can benefit from at least part of the trip… a veritable buddy-movie road trip Bill and I took to explore the wonderful world of amari in Italy - and of course we managed to invent a cocktail or two along the way as well.

Dulma Altan (DA) is a popular business commentator sharing analyses on DTC, creator economy & tech startups. She is also the host of Due Diligence, a podcast interviewing investors, operators & creators. We cited her in a recent WITI on the no-alc business and are happy to have her with us today. -Colin (CJN) Tell us about yourself. I am an accidental TikTok creator who makes a living creating content about business & branding.

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” You’ve probably heard this quote and it was probably attributed to Albert Einstein. First of all, the actual definition of insanity is this: the state of being seriously mentally ill; madness. extreme foolishness or irrationality. But that’s not my real problem with the quote. Second of all, there’s no evidence that Albert Einstein said it.