Hello, Shill

Not a week goes by that I don’t get called a paid shill for some shadowy conspiracy of gentrification-mongers. But I was amused to get doxxed on a neighborhood discussion list this week. I made the mistake of joining a conversation about housing policy in the next town over, and someone looked me up, found out that I live in Somerville and work in marketing, and accused me of being a paid spokesman for the real estate lobby, posting my home address and LinkedIn profile to the list. Joke’s on him, though, I’m unemployed and now everyone in Arlington knows I’m available for new marketing projects.

God, if I could get paid to be a shill.

Business strategy rabbithole
Vox explores the shrinking razor market:

It’s a classic example of capitalism working not quite the way that was promised but the way it does when put into practice by humans. We see it time and again — with the hotel industry, with cable TV, now with razors: Shrinking markets are not allowed to simply shrink, but instead inspire aggressive pandering, bizarre advertising, and nichification of products that have no reason to be so differentiated.

Related: Why does Marriott have 30 different hotel brands?

Related: The Baffler explores the explosion of mattress companies:

[M]arketing data suggests you stand at the confluence of two powerful trends: high anxiety and lowered expectations. And that is the magic inflection point, apparently, for treating yourself to a CasperTM Essential…. Don’t think of this as a recession; think of it as the market correcting your standard of living.

Elsewhere
Bloomberg’s Pessimist’s Guide to 2019.

The Intercept on the absurdity of an Anti-BDS law in Texas, which led a speech pathologist to lose her job because she refused to take a pro-Israel oath.

Paul Ryan is pushing for extra visas for white people while refugees are teargassed at the border. Class act, that one.

Pushback Against Monopoly
Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft: Daniel Oberhaus author quit all five for a month. Apple is pretty easy, as is Facebook, even including subsidiaries Whatsapp and Instagram.

Amazon’s a little harder: It’s not just that it’s cheaper and more convenient to shop there, but that’s a big thing. And dropping Amazon subsidiary Whole Foods means it’s harder to find decent cheese. And then of course you can’t use its other subsidiaries like Twitch, IMDB, or Goodreads. And if you’re really trying to cut back, you should also drop two enormous Amazon Web Services customers, Netflix and Spotify.

Getting rid of Microsoft means switching to Linux, of course, but also giving up Github and all the other Microsoft web services.

And getting rid of Google is far harder than switching to Firefox from Chrome, or using the almost-as-good but more private DuckDuckGo search engine. It means going back six generations of Samsung phones to install a homebrew not-Android OS and app store on a jailbroken Galaxy S3. It means switching your email address and email provider. It means switching from Google Docs and Hangouts and Calendar, which can be especially hard if you use those for work. And of course you’re giving up YouTube, which means giving up the instructional videos you need to figure out your new phone and operating system. And of course Google Maps and Waze are right out, so you have a hard time getting places and don’t know how long it will take to arrive.

Twitter Curation

This thread, about a high school police officer who assumed a brown kid had stolen a missing calculator:

And this thread, about… corn:

Cultivating joy
Man plays piano while a cat vies for attention.
I did not expect these toads to be very cute. The sound is a little unnerving though.
Dogs dining in a busy restaurant.
Very sleepy kitty.
Terrible maps, including “Super Bowl Wins By Country” and “Roman Air Bases in Europe.”
Stack your cats neatly.
SMBC Comic: What’s the Most American Movie?

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