Marketing dysphoria is fascinating

Some businesses are competitive mainly because their product is fundamentally sound. Other businesses are competitive mainly because their self-promotion is fundamentally sound. Etc.

It is then excruciatingly cute when a business identifies or aspires to be something which it is not-exactly, or not-yet.

When a business with a sound product believes that it's success depends mainly on promotions ... or when a business with a hype-brand believes that it's success depends mainly on its products ... sometimes we see huge budgets sacrificed at the expense of formerly-core competencies before the error in value-chain alignment is apprehended.

Some business transformations are effective. Some are thoroughly misguided.

Progress Porn

I was reading about aborted attempts and lifesaving exercises on Everest. This stuff is just pornography - a civilisational exercise of assigning arbitarily high value to arbitrary lifestyle achievements, and then narrating the drama of success / failure.

There's no grand strategy about this - we only do this to help children manage their own development in a world that has no sense for optimisation. When the child is mature, they become a good soldier for the contemporary industrial complex. :)

Tofu Chips May Ultimately Kill Me

So my microwaved tofu game has been pushed to the point where the chips are straight-up crunchy. I guess it wasn't until recently that I realised you could execute browning reactions in a microwave because I was under the false conception at the microwaves only heated up water molecules. It turns out you can roast and crisp, furthermore without oil, if you can control the dehydration / steam-flow mechanics.