Posts

I’m reading this book - a classic in the marketing world, apparently, called Positioning. Here’s a lil bit from the intro: from the book Positioning has changed the way the advertising game is being played today. “We’re the third largest-selling coffee in America,” say the Sanka radio commercials. The third largest? Whatever happened to those good old advertising words like “first” and “best” and “finest”? Well, the good old advertising days are gone forever and so are the words. Today you find comparatives, not superlatives. ...

Soooo this actor and writer Richard Ayoade wrote a book called The Unfinished Harauld Hughes which is about a writer of books and screenplays and other things. And as part of writing that book, Ayoade also wrote and published actual books by his fictional character Harauld Hughes!!! Here’s Wallace Shawn explaining what Ayoade did: _many writers have invented characters who are writers—but do you know any other writer who has not only invented a character who is a writer but who has then gone on to actually write and publish that imaginary writer’s complete works? Richard Ayoade has done that, and if you take out your Kindle and look up Harauld Hughes, Faber will be glad to send you Hughes’s collected plays, poems, prose pieces, and screenplays, all in fact written by Richard Ayoade. ...

Are you inside the work or outside the work? It’s basically another way of talking about status and mastery, but I think it’s a nice shortcut. Where are you? Are you in it—actually doing the thing—or are you outside, staring at the finished product, obsessing over how other people are going to receive it? My new theory is this: the only real home is inside. That’s the only place you can actually live. ...

As I venture forth into this new wilderness, I find myself returning again and again to influences and inspirations. Specifically, I want to write them down, for myself, and share them, for y’all. It’s way too easy to forget about them in the maelstrom of the day, the hubbub of the night. So, in no particular order, here are some people whose work inspires me and to whom I look when thinking about this next chapter: ...

Inspired by this I am starting a links page. What will I put here is to be determined of course. Update (09-20-25): I need multiple link pages. One is probably best for self-promo and BAT-promo.

https://www.ryanhemsworth.com/ I mean come on. Also this ‘submit a drawing thing’ (Note: Original had images that couldn’t be transferred - check out the site itself!) Here’s the one I did: (Drawing reference in original)

Check out this piece on rituals and members clubs: https://shindy.substack.com/p/rituals-members-clubs

I just want to give a big shout out to the word ‘blend.’ Coffee is a blend. I just made a blend when i took beans from two different bags and tossed it all into my grinder. That is a blend! The word blend is powerful. It is a marketing word. Imagine if you were paying for a ‘coffee mix’ - I would not pay top dollar for that. Blend though, now blend sounds good. ...

Love this line so much from “not always so” by Shunryu Suzuki. And the line he says a bit earlier: “if you go to the rest room, there is a chance for enlightenment.” But when you go to the restroom and seek shelter inside your phone, there is no chance for enlightenment. Of course there is, still, because the person who is looking in their phone is also enlightened but he does not know it to be so. ...

spec: ADD ideas: have a chat like this