Imagethief

Tag: Media

  • U R fired thx

    U R fired thx

    Fox News’ statement about Maria Bartiromo said a lot by saying very little

    Happy Labor Day, American readers! Let’s celebrate by talking about firings.

    Last week news broke that long-time Fox News personality Maria Bartiromo was leaving the broadcaster. This came just a couple of days after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt stepped down. Immediately, people started speculating on social media that Bartiromo was leaving Fox to take the podium in the White House press room.

    I don’t normally preoccupy myself with the professional fates of Fox News personalities. I don’t watch broadcast news unless I have to for work reasons or the shit is really going down somewhere. I don’t have cable, and endless panels of talking heads chortling at each other makes me want to die.1 Also, to put it politely, Fox News is not compatible with my politics. But the press secretary rumor was interesting, so I went and looked at Fox News’ statement:

    “We thank Maria for her work over the last 12 ½ years and wish her all the best on her next chapter.”

    I thought, this woman is not taking the press secretary gig. She has been fired.

    Here is the whole Fox News press release, minus the boilerplate at the end. I’ve highlighted the portion of the release that is about Ms. Bartiromo. Everything else is programming details:

    FOX NEWS PARTS WAYS WITH MARIA BARTIROMO

    NEW YORK – September 3, 2026 — Effective today, Maria Bartiromo is no longer with FOX News Media.

    In making the announcement, FOX News Media said, “We thank Maria for her work over the last 12 ½ years and wish her all the best on her next chapter.”

    The last episode of Mornings with Maria (6-9 AM/ET) aired this morning on FOX Business Network (FBN) and the show will transition to Mornings with FOX Business beginning tomorrow with rotating anchors. Maria Bartiromo’s Wall Street which also airs weekly on FBN (Fridays, 7-7:30 PM/ET) will shift to FBN’s Wall Street effective this week hosted by Cheryl Casone and helmed by rotating anchors thereafter. FBN will also launch a new weekday programming schedule which will be announced in the coming weeks.

    Additionally, FOX News Channel’s (FNC) Sunday Morning Futures (10-11 AM/ET) will be hosted by Jason Chaffetz this Sunday and a new host will be announced at a later date.

    That is the corporate version of kthxbye and moons-of-Jupiter cold for a twelve-year tenure.

    A statement doesn’t have to be long to set a tone, and there are recent examples of Fox News on-air personalities leaving for administration roles. They are vastly warmer than the Bartiromo statement:

    For Pete Hegseth:

    “Pete Hegseth has been an exceptional host on ‘FOX & Friends’ and FOX Nation and a bestselling author for FOX News Books for nearly a decade. His insights and analysis, especially about the military, resonated deeply with our viewers and made the program the major success that it is today. We are extremely proud of his work at FOX News and wish him the best of luck in Washington.”

    For Jeanine Pirro:

    “Jeanine Pirro has been a wonderful addition to The Five over the last three years and a longtime beloved host across FOX News Media who contributed greatly to our success throughout her 14-year tenure. We wish her all the best in her new role in Washington.”

    And for Neal Cavuto, who didn’t leave for an administration role, but did leave after a long tenure:

    “Neil Cavuto’s illustrious career has been a master class in journalism and we’re extremely proud of his incredible 28-year run with Fox News Media. His programs have defined business news and set the standard for the entire industry. We wish him a heartfelt farewell and all the best on his next chapter.”

    “Exceptional!” “Wonderful!” “Illustrious!” Words not appearing in the Bartiromo statement. But you know who did get a statement a lot like Bartiromo? Tucker Carlson:

    “FOX News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways. We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor. Mr. Carlson’s last program was Friday April 21st. Fox News Tonight will air live at 8 PM/ET starting this evening as an interim show helmed by rotating FOX News personalities until a new host is named.”

    Again, the highlighted part is about Carlson, and the rest is programming details. I wonder what Bartiromo and Carlson have in common? (We’ll get to it.)

    A portrait of Maria Bartiromo with a neutral expression. She is wearing glasses, a blue pinstripe blazer and a double string of pearls, and at a three-quarter angle to the camera, looking left. The background is a blurry, pastel blue.
    Literally cancelled.

    I have written and shipped lots of executive departure statements over the years. In general, assuming the executive is prominent enough to require a departure statement at all, there is a relationship between circumstances and word count. The better the circumstances of the departure, the longer and more fulsome the statement. The worse the circumstances, the shorter.

    The exception to this rule is when a departure is so acrimonious or material that the company needs to preemptively publish a bunch of receipts on the way out. The curve looks something like this:

    A graph showing the relationship between word count and circumstances, with a smiley face at high word count indicating good outcomes, a skull at low word count indicating bad outcomes, and a woman’s photo in the middle representing a neutral point.
    Fig. 1: The shit-fan – wordcount curve.

    On the far left of the curve is a typical feel-good departure. A respected senior executive retiring after a successful run, or leaving to take on a prestigious role at an organization that doesn’t compete with the prior employer. Look at Wal-Mart’s announcement of Doug McMillon’s retirement and succession by John Furner. 631 words, a quote from McMillon, a laudatory quote from the chairman of the board, not to mention some buddy photos of McMillon and Furner together. A variation on this is giving a departing executive space to publish their own communication, as Tim Cook did last week, when he handed over the Apple CEO role. Or, since I mentioned it above, look at the White House’s laudatory statement about Karoline Leavitt.

    On the far right of the curve, things are bad and risk is high. The company has had to fire an executive in a situation so scandalous or material (say, removing a CEO) that broader messaging is required. Often in these situations the departing executive still gets brief treatment, and most of the text is dedicated to the path forward and the qualifications of the replacement. Some examples are Tony Hayward’s departure from BP in the wake of the Macondo oil well disaster, Laurent Friexe’s departure from Nestlé for ethical lapses and Brian Krzanich’s departure from Intel (which I worked on) for similar lapses. In all of these examples there is brief paragraph on the departing exec, and most of the text is devoted to the qualifications of the incoming exec, remedial actions and statements of principle.

    In very bottom of the curve is what happened to Maria Bartiromo. She was visible enough that her departure needed to be acknowledged. And…that is all. No praise. For an on-air celebrity with twelve years of tenure, that told me the circumstances were bad. It’s not material, and there aren’t operational concerns, so you don’t need a bunch of continuity and safe-hands messaging to soothe customers and investors. Just, so long and don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

    This is all a giant oversimplification. Many factors can influence an executive departure statement. There might be litigation risk to account for. The details of an exit statement might be negotiated as part of a separation, a thing I’ve dealt with a few times in cooperation with HR and legal teams. A corporate officer’s departure will require an SEC filing. Sometimes you’ll ship a departure statement proactively, sometimes you’ll hold it in reserve and hope no one notices, though this doesn’t work with highly visible execs—or on-air talent—whose absence will be noticed. In a potentially acrimonious departure, we might prepare all sorts of stuff, but keep it in reserve in case we have to go to war. But the word count curve is a reasonable rule of thumb.

    Speaking of litigation risk…

    Why the unceremonious departure and minimalist statement for Ms. Bartiromo? It took a day or two to emerge, but the story was colorful. From the New York Times:2

    In July, as President Trump was preparing a prime-time speech on election security, word went out from executives at Fox News: The network would avoid covering his stock claims about a stolen election.

    Fox had landed in serious legal trouble in 2021 after amplifying false assertions by Mr. Trump’s allies about vote-stealing election machines, culminating in an extraordinary $787 million defamation settlement.

    In 2020, Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo had made her show a central stop for proponents of the president’s election theories. And this summer, too, she was preparing to interview the presidential adviser Peter Navarro the morning after the speech.

    But after she received a text message written by a Fox Business executive warning against post-speech coverage, she canceled Mr. Navarro’s appearance.

    As she did so, she shared the executive’s text with Mr. Navarro, who promptly sent it “up the chain” to the White House, he said in an interview Friday. It was his duty, he said, to relay “yet another example of Fox personnel censoring the Trump administration.”

    It appears that Ms. Bartiromo faced a test of whether her loyalty lay with her employer or the administration, and she chose the administration, forwarding an internal communication to the White House. This violated confidentiality and created immediate blowback for Fox News, which had already eaten a huge settlement on the issue of unsubstantiated election fraud allegations.

    That’s bad! Your employer can no longer trust you! You will be fired! The statement announcing your departure will be terse and sound like it is coming through clenched teeth!

    The defamation settlement was with Dominion Voting Systems, after Fox News accused the company of involvement with voter fraud. Tucker Carlson also left in the wake of the Dominion settlement, apparently because the legal discovery process disclosed embarrassing emails he had sent, many criticizing his Fox colleagues and the Trump administration. He was also being sued by a former producer over alleged sex discrimination. He was Fox’s most popular host, but he had become a liability. Corporations are cold that way.

    In neither Ms. Bartiromo’s nor Mr. Carlson’s case did Fox News say they were “fired.” Instead, the company used the conveniently vague formulation, “parted ways.” Bartiromo has lawyered up and her counsel said this to Variety on Friday:

    “The irresponsible reports that have been published stating that Maria Bartiromo was fired or is no longer an employee of Fox are absolutely and unequivocally false. Make no mistake, we have the receipts and witnesses and they will come out whether through the courthouse or otherwise. Those reporting her firing or the incredulous facts supporting that fiction have exhibited a complete and utter reckless disregard for the truth. “

    I don’t know, man. “Parted ways,” may be vague, but it’s not that vague. The lawyer’s statement may be angling to get Bartiromo released from her Fox News contract, which the New York Times says is still in force, so she can seek work elsewhere. But by all means, bring forth the receipts and witnesses. The assembled media reporters of New York will enjoy every minute of it. Also, not the biggest thing, but wrong use of “incredulous.”

    I expect that Bartiromo is done at Fox. But One America News and Real America’s Voice are surely on the hunt for big-name MAGA talent. And there’s always the Tucker Carlson self-branded YouTube approach. Or, god help her, a newsletter.

    Meanwhile, “Mornings with Maria” is done and Fox News needs a new host for their morning slot. Not to start any rumors, but I hear Karoline Leavitt is available and her last employer thought very highly of her.

    1. I actually started my media career in local broadcast news, back in 1991, as an intern and later part-timer at KPIX TV News in San Francisco. They were a CBS affiliate and the key talent were Dave McElhatton and Kate Kelly. Gen-X San Franciscans may remember them. I worked the assignment desk on weekends, which was quite a bit of fun. TV newsrooms are exciting places. I left to move into radio because I hate myself. One of my outstanding memories of my time at PIX (as we called it) was the big cardboard box of little packets of pain pills bolted to one of the hallway walls. Over my year and a half tenure the level of packets ebbed and flowed like the tides, in sync with big news moments. ↩︎
    2. Oliver Darcy’s media-watching newsletter Status  actually broke the behind-the-scenes story, but I am guessing more people will be able to view the NY Times’ article. But you should subscribe to Status. ↩︎

  • How to Lose a War With the Press

    If you’re going to burn, at least burn for doing the right thing.

    At heart, PR is a simple trade. Figure out interesting stories and tell them. Build trust with reporters and others in positions of influence. Try to not screw up egregiously. There is craft and skill implied in those three points, but that’s the gist of it.

    Nevertheless, people continue to find ways to screw up egregiously. If your PR strategy ends with you and your former employer paying $57 million dollars in legal settlements, you have screwed up.

    A couple of weeks ago, e-commerce site Ebay settled a lawsuit with David and Ina Steiner, editors of EcommerceBytes, a trade news website, concluding a case that dates back to 2019. In 2020 the New York Times published a long a deeply reported piece on the scandal, and it’s worth a read if you want all the grisly details. If you don’t have that kind of time, a July 28th Times story on the settlement has a summary:

    In the spring of 2019, eBay was under pressure from an activist hedge fund. A handful of Ms. Steiner’s articles, including one about a bar [then Ebay CEO Devin Wenig] had built on eBay’s campus, infuriated company executives, according to texts revealed by prosecutors. Further details of the stalking operation were later revealed by journalists and the Steiners’ own lawsuit, which was filed in 2021.

    “Take her down,” Mr. Wenig told his communications chief, who in turn told the security team leader to do “whatever it takes.”

    The Steiners were bombarded with anonymous material including deliveries of live cockroaches and a bloody pig mask. They were threatened online. Much of the material they were sent, including a funeral wreath and a book on surviving the loss of a spouse, suggested imminent death. The security team was on the verge of breaking into the Steiners’ garage to put a tracker on their car when the plot was derailed.

    No! Wrong! Bad! If you are a communications chief and you get a request like this, you have two options:

    1. Counsel your executive on why this is a bad idea and offer alternatives.
    2. Resign on principle.

    You may have to do both of these things, in this order!

    Read the rest on Substack

    A sepia-toned scientific illustration of a coiled rattlesnake, labeled "Fig. 148 - Rattlesnake"
    Don’t be a snake!

  • The People v. McRib

    The People v. McRib

    The press bites on a sandwich lawsuit

    Here’s a possibly controversial theory: Lawyers are just specialized PR people.

    I can hear my lawyer friends clenching their jaws, but hear me out. Contracts are communication. Courtrooms and arbitration hearings are communication. Demand letters are communication. And class action lawsuits are definitely communication, often written both to advance a legal argument and to generate press attention.

    Here’s a fun example: “Le, Lynch, Baker and Wilson v. McDonalds Corporation.” The complaint is entertaining, and the first two paragraphs set things up better than any summary I could write:

    1. “The McRib is back!” is a phrase recognized across the United States, stirring excitement among McDonald’s customers eager for the limited-time sandwich offering. For decades, McDonald’s has cultivated a sense of anticipation around the McRib, leveraging its scarcity to drive sales across its many locations. Fans eagerly await each return, trusting that the sandwich they’re biting into is exactly what the name implies: a sandwich crafted using pork “rib” meat, which is prized by consumers for its high fat content and rich flavor.
    2. The reality, however, is far from what McDonald’s advertising and branding suggest. Despite its name and distinctive shape—its meat patty has been deliberately crafted to resemble a rack of pork ribs—the McRib does not contain any actual pork rib meat at all.

    The italics are in the original, just to make sure you get it.

    If the McRib isn’t rib meat, what is it? I’m glad you asked, and so are the lawyers who filed the suit!

    Instead, [the McRib’s] meat patty is reconstructed using ground-up portions of lower-grade pork products such as, interalia, pork shoulder, heart, tripe, and scalded stomach.

    “You sold people a sandwich marketed as a ‘McRib’ that contained no rib meat” isn’t Love Canal-level on the harm-o-meter, so the gross-out line is there as a lure for the press and social media posters. Did it work? You bet it did! Here’s the New York Post:

    The primary ingredient of the sandwich, which has found a cult following thanks in part to its on-again, off-again status on McDonald’s menu, is restructured pork composed of parts like shoulder, heart, tripe and scalded stomach, the complaint alleges.

    The alleged ingredients also get repeated by CBS Chicago, NBC Chicago, USA Today, MSN and Newsweek, among others. I love that the Newsweek article has a breathless, Axios-style “Why It Matters” section for a sandwich lawsuit. But why settle for that when you can read the actual Axios article? Naturally, someone on Bluesky invoked Upton Sinclair’s gross-out labor classic, The Jungle…

    Read the rest on Substack

  • The Kiss-Cam of Resurrection

    The Kiss-Cam of Resurrection

    Born Anew in the New York Times

    Remember the Coldplay concert kiss-cam disaster of last July?

    The CEO of software company Astronomer, Andy Byron, and the head of human resources, Kristin Cabot, were caught in a suggestive embrace by the “kiss cam” at a Coldplay concert. Both of them radiated such instantaneous and intense shame that the video became a TikTok sensation and both subsequently left the company.

    I wrote about the PR implications in a post called “The Kiss-Cam of Annihilation.” This was about why the implied affair was a reputational problem for Astronomer, and also an opportunity to have a go at Coldplay because I am a hater. No regrets. I have my own musical shame.

    Five months later, Cabot has launched a rehabilitation tour with simultaneous profiles in the New York Times and the U.K. newspaper The Times.

    Once upon a time, if you’d been disgraced, you might have re-emerged with a soulful TED talk that you’d deliver right after Malcom Gladwell explained something counterintuitive about spaghetti sauce. Today, the New York Times, America’s sole surviving general-interest daily, is platform of choice for post-crisis reputation laundering. Wait a graceful interval, and then make yourself available for a (hopefully) soft-focus profile.

    Former New York Magazine political journalist Olivia Nuzzi took this approach last September, with a 3000 word Style section profile that was one part rehabilitation for her sexting affair with RFK, Jr. and one part memoir launch. Nuzzi’s campaign incinerated after jilted fiancé Ryan Lizza—2025 finalist for the Nobel prize for being That Fucking Guy—nuked her with a tell-all Substack on the eve of her book release. Lesson: for a rehabilitation campaign, there needs to be no more dirty laundry left to air. Especially if there is someone out there who is motivated to air it. Also, it helps if the memoir is not apparently 100,000 words of weapons-grade cringe.

    Read the rest on Substack

    Screenshot
  • In Space, No One Can Hear You Spin

    In Space, No One Can Hear You Spin

    Crisis PR for science fiction’s most evil company

    Note: Minor spoilers for the recent “Alien: Earth” series.

    I was eleven in 1979 when my dad took me to see Ridley Scott’s Alien at the Geneva Drive-In, in South San Francisco. I watched from the back seat of the car, peeking over the front seats and retreating to the safety of the footwell when things got too intense. I saw about half the movie, by which I mean about half of the screen at any given moment.

    46 years and endless sequels later, we forget how revolutionary the alien was as a cinema monster. The face hugger. The elongated head, ooze and dento-phallic jaws of the final form. It was a psychosexual nightmare rendered in latex and KY Jelly.

    Alien fucked up my head for years. Well into adulthood, if I was stressed out about something the alien would stalk my nightmares. At some point I started kicking its ass and it fucked off from my dreams, to be replaced by other stress proxies, like the nightmare I had last week where I couldn’t navigate Spotify. I preferred the monsters.

    Alien is my favorite movie of all time. I still have the complete set of trading cards, two copies of the Heavy Metal magazine comic adaptation of the movie, a vinyl of the original soundtrack, and the photo book of the film. Relics of me, age 11.

    Unstoppable Horror! (#76 in a series.)

    It is a truism that most science fiction is about the present, using fantasy and extrapolation to tell stories about contemporary society. Alien takes place on a spaceship, but it’s a 1970s labor movie from the cinematic era of Norma Rae, Blue Collar and F.I.S.T. Seven schlubby, grease-stained astronauts fly a grimy, long-haul space tug while dealing with contractual issues and an employer so cold and remote that it is only referred as “the Company.”1 The first intelligible dialogue in the movie is the engineers bitching about their poor pay relative to the other, whiter-collared crew members.

    Read the rest on Substack

  • Growing Popularity of Alien Brain Squids Fuels Controversy

    Growing Popularity of Alien Brain Squids Fuels Controversy

    Squid-wearers call for mankind’s extermination, but some say we should hear them out

    DES MOINES, Iowa—Aug 31, 2025—Debate raged today over the sudden popularity of head-worn squids in this normally sedate midwestern city.

    First noticed in social media posts from a handful of local residents demanding the immediate and unconditional surrender of humanity, the unconventional headwear has since become widespread. Students, professionals, and even the mayor have flaunted the oozing accessories.

    The appearance of the social posts and tentacular headgear was first reported in “Obvious Shit More People Should Be Talking About,” a newsletter written by Rachel Kaplan, a Des Moines-based independent journalist.

    At first confined to this historic agricultural capital, the trend has since spread to other cities in the region, with people in Cedar Rapids, Omaha and St. Louis sporting so-called “brain squids”.

    The new fashion is linked with an emerging set of beliefs based on the conquest of all human life and its subjugation to the demands of a mysterious authority figure sometimes referred to as “the supreme mollusk.”

    Read the rest on Substack

  • Red Packets in the USA!

    Evaluating a New York media scandal on the international beer metric

    Twenty years ago last March, I wrote my first blog post about PR in China. I had been living and blogging in China for nine months, but my early posts focused on daily life and had titles like, “I successfully speak Chinese to people,” and “I shop,” and so on. These are real titles, not jokes. I was delirious with culture shock.1

    When I finally wrote about work, I started with a post on a China PR practice that I found deeply weird. This was the “transportation claim,” the practice of giving every reporter who attended a press event an envelope of cash. Coming from obsessively Windexed Singapore, where I had started my PR career, this seemed sketchy. But my colleagues assured me that it was standard practice.

    In those days the going rate was 200RMB (then about US$25) for a Beijing print reporter who had come from in town. There were different rates for television crews and out-of-town reporters.

    Was giving a modest envelope of cash to a reporter who worked for state-owned media a violation of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act? I didn’t know! But the leadership of the Beijing office of the big U.S. PR firm I worked at didn’t seem concerned, so, 🤷.

    I jokingly titled that old post, “A scholarly analysis of the economics of PR in China.” In it, I used beer, the PR pro’s favorite commodity, as a unit to assess the value of the transportation claim on a purchasing-power parity basis. In 2005 you could get a tall Yanjing or a pint of Beijing Asahi for RMB3 if you knew where to drink. Deducting the average cost of two typical Beijing taxi rides from the transportation claim, I calculated you’d have about RMB150 left over, or enough for up to fifty beers.

    In Singapore, which was my frame of reference, I calculated you’d need an envelope with a minimum of SGD$270 (about USD$180 at the time) to achieve the same thing.2 Hand a lot of those out and you would be at real risk of a sweaty afternoon in the basement of the Corrupt Practices Bureau.

    Read the rest on Substack

  • Good PR People Don’t Lie

    Also, a dumb theory of lying in PR

    I stumbled into a PR career ass-backward. I say this with love and respect for those of you who dreamed of a PR career, went to PR school and diligently worked your way up. But that’s not how it happened for me.

    It was late 2001 and startup number two in Singapore had imploded following the collapse of the dot-com bubble and some poor management choices. Italian furniture isn’t cheap. Six years and two dead startups into my Singapore journey, it seemed like time for a change of vocation. Also, no one was hiring “Internet” people in 2001. Sitting in the oily puddle at the the bottom of the trough of disillusionment, we were best not touched with bare hands, like medical waste.

    Some of my beach football friends worked for the Singapore office of a small New Zealand-based PR firm. They had a problem in the form of Microsoft Singapore, one of their clients. Nobody at the agency knew much about technology, and the notoriously demanding Microsoft team was losing patience.

    On the beach, a ropey and affable New Zealander, who was amazingly fit and fast at the inconceivably geriatric age of 45, made the pitch. I had worked in radio and television in San Francisco and co-written two books about computer games, and I had just done several years of technology project management and had a good grasp of Microsoft’s products. Had I ever considered working in public relations?

    I had not. Not only that, but at startup number two I’d held our PR woman in cold contempt. I didn’t understand her job. Her requests seemed burdensome and trivial. I had important things to do!

    Karma is, as they say, a bitch. I owe her the hugest apology.

    I owe you an apology for this newsletter. But you should still subscribe.Subscribed

    I met the agency’s Singapore office leader, Kylie, a radiantly charismatic Australian woman who was the team rainmaker. “Ehhh,” she drawled when I pointed out that I had zero PR experience. “You can write and you understand tech. We can teach you the PR bit.” Also, she offered double what anyone would pay me to do Internet related work.

    I negotiated the final details of the job a week or two later, while in Laos with my father, standing ankle-deep in the Mekong in Vientiane so I could catch a Thai cell signal from across the river. And that is how, at the age of 34, I made a mid-career switch into comms. And probably also got some kind of hideous river-borne blood parasite.

    Read the rest on Substack

    Don’t be a serpent.

  • Pitchwrap Supreme

    The art of getting your stoner snack into the New York Times

    The last time I remember being in a Taco Bell was in the late eighties, when I was a student at U.C. Santa Cruz. My buddy Darren and I had just completed a round of epic late-night bong rips at an off-campus house and the munchies had arrived as inevitably as the tide. The Taco Bell on Mission Street, around the corner, was open until the wee hours. As we waited in line, Darren slowly read the menu out loud:

    “Nachos.

    Nachos Bel Grande.

    Burrito.

    Burrito Supreme.

    Burrito Supreme…with hair.”

    I don’t remember if we actually ordered anything. Or, if we did, what it was. But it says something that the image of a Burrito Supreme with hair has been stuck in my head since 1989.

    A lot of my college experience lay at the intersection of my friendship with Darren, our youthful love of the herb, and snacks. There was the time we dried some leaves from the plant in Darren’s room in an electric kettle (not recommended!), smoked it all and then bought every cookie in Sluggo’s, the dorm coffee shop. After dividing the cookies, we slunk back to our respective dorm rooms to devour our prey in solitude, like stoned leopards.

    Read the rest on Substack

    For your munchies…

  • Decapitation!

    Doing comms when a leader is ousted. Also, travel fun!

    I just got home from a trip that took me around the world, from San Francisco to Amsterdam, from Amsterdam to Taiwan, and then back home.

    I arrived in Amsterdam at 6AM on a Monday morning with a full work day ahead. It’s always a treat to stay awake and productive after a sleepless flight and an early arrival. By the afternoon my eyeballs are vibrating like tuning forks. Finally going to sleep after one of these days is the purest bliss. It’s like rediscovering the whole idea of a bed. It’s so soft and welcoming and flat!

    This newsletter is soft and welcoming. Why not subscribe?Subscribed

    The hotel in Amsterdam was joined to the airport by a long corridor, which was convenient for everyone flying in for our event. But I stayed in a room with an inward-facing “atrium view” and for three days I saw little unfiltered daylight. This creates a space-station vibe that is bad for your body clock. Who cares what time it is when you’re unshackled from Earth’s natural rhythms like a Morlock?

    After a long-haul flight, the thing I want most is a shower to remove the film of plane-sweat and the lingering scent of disposable upholstery and economy class ravioli. The hot shower is one of the crowning creations of industrial civilization, something so pure and good it seems impossible that you could fuck it up. Unfortunately, some malignant tinkerer invented the “rain” style shower head, the kind mounted in the ceiling directly above you.

    I assume hotels install rain showers out of sadism. The shower cubicle is inevitably designed so you have to stand directly under the shower head to use the valves. These will be elaborate, like the controls of a steam locomotive, and nothing will be labeled. Just a collection of unmarked brass cranks and levers. I guess wrong 100% of the time and get blasted from above by the initial rush of cold water. What’s wrong with on/off, hot/cold? If I wanted horrifying Victorian plumbing, I’d live in London.1

    Then it was on to Taipei, a brutal 18-hour travel day. I had a three-hour layover in Munich, so I tried to talk my way into a Star Alliance lounge on the back of my outrageously expensive airline-affiliated credit card. According to my inexpert reading of the alchemical matrix on the credit card’s website, this should have worked, but the woman at the counter wasn’t having it. There is no walk of shame longer than the one after you’ve been tossed from the rope-line of a middlebrow airport lounge by a woman with a German accent. No cheese cubes for you!

    Flying from Europe to Taiwan is weird now due to the need to wind around various war zones and hot spots. The flight path looked like the pilots were slightly drunk and having trouble flying in a straight line. The world is troubled and unstable and everywhere there is strife and tension. If only there were something—some kind of Forum—where leaders from government, business and civil society could come together to discuss meaningful solutions and collaborate to make the world a better place…

    Hold that thought.

    Read the rest on Substack

    Let’s talk about your severance…