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Cruel optimism
“The persistence of the American Dream, Berlant suggests, amounts to a cruel optimism, a condition ‘when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your own flourishing.’ … Berlant tuned in to a wider sense of disaffection—the feeling among average voters that neither of these visions for change was really about them, or for them.…
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5 sentences on Pharrell’s appointment as Louis Vuitton’s Men’s Creative Director
1. Two weeks ago, LVMH welcomed Pharrell as the creative director of menswear for its flagship brand, Louis Vuitton. 2. Louis Vuitton’s former artistic director of menswear, Virgil Abloh, has described his own approach as, “One big art project, just a canvas to show that fashion should have a brand which has someone behind it…
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Declassifying secrets
“Flip your 80:20 rule for keeping secrets. Instead of classifying 80% of your information, aim at classifying only 20%. Most of the secrets you keep no one would bother reading even if you delivered them with the morning newspaper.” via The Cluetrain Todo List
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Contentions: Content strategy, in action, at a very early startup
If you want to see a cool example of content strategy in action at a really early stage startup (pre-product, pre-seed, etc.), check out Aboard’s podcast. It’s just a podcast, accompanied by transcripts, which they launched after a launch party to keep people updated because the product was taking longer to develop than they’d estimated.…
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Blind Faith Heroic by Richard MacDonald
Richard MacDonald(American, b. 1946) SculptureBlind Faith Heroic, 2007.Limited Edition of 8 The cube is your life and we are balanced on the tip of life,So we can fall in any direction.We are poised in a pose that we can only hold for a split-second…So it is about being in that instant, in the moment.We are…
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Less mainstream, more premium
Fame is increasingly temporary, diverging away from actual influence, which means it also doesn’t generate business results like it used to. A lot of advice for creating online is built on fame and reach, almost analogous to mainstream cable. This line of advice is focused entirely on getting attention. Juice up your headlines with hooks!…
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“Art changes people and people change the world”
A great reminder, attributed to John Butler. I saw this on a brick wall in Tokyo; I’m glad that they posted it. As I previously wrote: “We can choose a responsibility, every day, to collect the best of what came before us, to embody it, and to preserve it by sharing its charms with other…
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On quitting, failing, and, “I find a lot of people who should quit don’t”
I recently posted my friend Vin’s blog post at Hacker News, where it sparked a lot of discussion. In particular, one comment by rcme stood out to me: I find a lot of people who should quit don’t. Their taste becomes compromised and they fall in love with their own work. I have high school…
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Contentions: If you really want to make an impact, tell a story
You may never own a pair of J’s, though there’s a chance you’ll know Michael Jordan’s story. You may not have heard one of Amanda Palmer songs, though you may know of her stories with crowdfunding. You may not watch Oprah, and you might still know her as a billionaire who started with nothing. Same…
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Contentions: Predictions drive great brands
A great brand is driven by a prediction. (That’s not the only starting point; a great brand can start as a lighthouse, too.) These visions of the future are the fuel for where the business goes. Ideas and people matter more than the product. Eventually, these ideas and people bear resemblance to religion; Apple, Soulcycle,…