I have 8s in my handle and have always liked 8 because it’s a hail-fellow merry Falstaff kind of letter. Welcomes everyone. Where the 7s stand back and are captivating but I don’t have a chance of being friends with them — like mathematicians?
Maybe the US needs 53 states to make a real go of it.
13 worked. BUT 48 and 50 are just TOO DIVISIBLE.
Related: we’ll get into topics like this — The Sublimity of Primes — on my new podcast, This Is Critical @thiscriticalpod.
Premieres tomorrow…on the 23rd — a VERY auspicious prime!
Seems at least possible that the opinion page as a conceit has exposed itself as a finite game with only two strikeable positions, currently known as “woke” and “anti-woke.”
The problem with Theranos is the problem with every single startup: all marketing no product.
And I mean NO product. Nowhere near beta. Just nothing. Wizard of Ozzing for investor decks. nytimes.com/2021/09/15/opi…
Marketing is often known as the yin, right-brain part of a startup. CMOs are disproportionately women.
Holmes was an excellent marketer. And a truly abysmal engineer. Like just about every latter-day founder I have ever met.
I was so excited to meet Teslas, Edisons, Mrs Fieldses when I advised startups.
Instead I met lavishly funded people selling Twitter-linked headphones that were not just made in China, but designed & engineered there & they caused horrible headaches and didn’t connect to Twitter
Am I a bigger optimist than Max? It’s nearly 73% of those over 18, and those under 12 still aren’t eligible. Unlike the Grp of Seven, we are also home to the Bill of Rights & can’t just introduce statutes by fiat. Also home to all social media but TikTok so it’s disinfo central.
Imagine too if we had a national health service didn’t have this pervasive idea that we all are supposed to be swashbuckling mavericks with our own health decisions.
Once again as the Ned Flanders of vaccine proselytizing I urge everyone to hand-sell it to laggards. It’s still surprising how many people don’t know it’s free, don’t know “which one to get,” are scared of needles, etc.
In 2011 @DylanByers did a profile of me for Ad Week, which Wolff then run. I was told it was about my work at the NYT. It was, kind of. Also it was a way for Wolff to drag other writers at the NYT by praising me & also write about my non-sex life.
Dylan is not Wolff, & he was upfront. But the whole thing played to my vanity, with photo shoots & false eyelashes, & I learned my lesson when friends & colleagues thought the piece insulted them, & my friend @euanrellie got to have another laugh abt the URBAN MYTH in the piece.