- The Remote Life OS Newsletter
- Posts
- The Connection Newsletter 48 - Life skills
The Connection Newsletter 48 - Life skills
The Connection Newsletter 48 - Life skills
Hello!
This is edition #48 of
The Connection
, the weekly email I send family, friends, and future friends (hello!) Glad you're here.
I recently finished Jill Abramson’s
Merchants of Truth. And
aside, it’s worth the read.
It’s a time investment (the book is long) but fascinating to learn how the four companies profiled (The New York Times, The Washington Post, Buzzfeed, and Vice) have dramatically altered the media today. Especially in light of the fact that via social media, newsletters, and live video, any individual can be a media company.
However, Ms. Abramson painted a very pessimist picture of the state of the world today. I’m not blind or naive to the dangers of Fake News and Russian trolls and echo chambers. But I suppose I’m just optimistic about the impact that individuals can have on the world if they choose to leverage these tools for positive change:
Like how the Parkland survivors pushed through 67 state laws on gun reform by taking to social media
Like how reporter David Fahrenthold mined Twitter to launch an inquiry into the Trump Foundation
Like how 16-year-old Greta Thunberg used sit-ins, Facebook, and Instagram to inspire thousands of students to march on the issue of climate change
Maybe I am wrong. Maybe I’m naive.
But I’m hopeful that if we can continue to hone these tools in the present, we’ll be in a better position to shape our future.
I hope you have a terrific week. Thanks as always for reading.
(Want less email? No problem, you can unsub at the bottom. We'll still be friends.)
Make sure to hit "Display Images" above to see puppy pics.
Really enjoyed this piece by Mark Manson. The skills are simple and I agree with all of them: Number one: Don’t take things personally. Number two: Learn to be persuaded. Number three: Learn to act without knowing the result ahead of time.
---
Come into my home at the wrong time (or right time, depending on how you look at it) and you will invariably find me in Uniqlo leggings and a Uniqlo V-neck long-sleeve. I love Uniqlo, and I especially loved this comparison to The Gap, and what the Japanese clothing company would have to do if they wanted to avoid a similar fate:
“In its 1990s heyday, the Gap revolutionized American retailing by making basics cool. But the company eventually became a victim of its own success.
“When [the Gap] tried to go from having a certain cachet to being in every single mall in every single town in America, the brand lost its edge,” Steve Rowen, a managing partner at Retail Systems Research, told me.
Gap clothing became the uniform of suburban moms and dads. Despite the company’s efforts to make its khakis less baggy and its shirts slimmer, no one wants to fall into the Gap anymore—especially when you can get cheaper basics with cleaner lines at Uniqlo.”
---
You know you’re in love with a movie when the story of how the movie came together is as dramatic and heartbreaking as the movie itself.
If you liked
Eternal Sunshine (love this movie, rewatched this weekend), highly recommend:
“We don’t end up together in Charlie’s version. I walk away,” Carrey said in a recent phone interview. Gondry—who was sitting next to Carrey—added that the screenwriter also considered flipping the narrative, revealing at the end that the story has been taking place in Clementine’s head the whole time.
---
I’m just inspired by the fact that Samuel L. Jackson is 70 years old and still gets to do what he loves on the regular.
“Quality movies are movies that make me happy, a movie I would’ve gone to see. I’m not trying to make people cry. I’m not trying to do the profound-storytelling thing. I was entertaining. I used to go to movies to forget my fucking troubles. I used to go to movies to enjoy myself, to get out of my segregated fucking life, to see what the world was like, to travel. I want people to come, smile, laugh, leave that movie going, ‘Man, that was awesome.’”
---
“My closet is in the cloud. I pay a subscription fee to wear them for a month, then I trade them in for a new batch when my time is up. According to Rent the Runway co-founder and CEO Jennifer Hyman, this model—where we rent clothing, accessories, and soft goods that we at one point would have outright purchased—is going to change everything in the future.”
---
---
Get sneak peeks on what’s trending.
---
I’ve been doing a lot of customer support emails lately. This text expander is saving me 30-60 minutes a day -- well worth the $5.
Thanks for reading!
Last thing: Is there anything I can help you with?
If there's any way I can help out, please let me know. Or if we just haven't chatted in a while, I'd love to hear from you. Just reply directly to this email.
Reply