Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1530
Prime Day cart analysis, DashCon 2, Walmart run, Sydney Sweeney soap logistics, Ford Foundation leadership turnover, Spotify Release Radar gripes
Hi hello good morning what what. Sorry I’m late, just back from Walmart. Boy, been a while since a solid Walmart run. Went last week but it was off-schedule and I went with the fam so, you know. Very different experience. Prior to that, well, before our Alaska trip.
So I guess we will start with, dum dum, daaaaah: Walmart report!
There are two new flavors of Icebreakers (the mints, not the gum): one is Pineapple Mango Seltzer and the other is watermelon thing. I am very excited. We need more Icebreakers new flavors. There was a real explosion of flavors in, like, 2021, 2022, but I guess all the product people got excited after lockdown ended and they stopped doing their jobs or something — remember when everyone was going to quit their jobs? Silent leaving or whatever they called it? That was a good year.
Coca-Cola has ended their most recent “people’s names on the bottles and cans” campaign and I, for one, already miss it.
They were, as they are half the time, out of the organic peanut butter I buy. I did note, however, that the organic is only a buck more than the normal. I started rambling off a theory in my head that maybe Walmart is single-handedly responsible for driving down the cost of organic alternatives, but I don’t think I will be investigating this half-baked theory further in my life. Got stuff to do.
We were there during reduced stimulus hours, so that was nice. No music. I have, thusly, nothing to report on Walmart radio.
They are now carrying the hot new Zevia flavor, Strawberry-Lemon Burst, so that is exciting. It’s all the rage in our family these days. And Zevia is overpriced at Harris Teeter, you gotta wait for it to be on sale, grumble grumble, Byron Sharp rules on discounting grumble grumble Walmart always low prices.
That dude soap that did that deal with Sydney Sweeney for Sydney Sweeney Bathwater Soap lost their endcap in the last six weeks. There is no Sydney Sweeney Bathwater soap. They also no longer have all those Star Wars-related flavors of soap. They’re back to their base four flavors, in the middle of the soap aisle, no special marketing.
Flew too close to the sun, Dr. Squatch.
I spent some time thinking about the day Sydney delivered her bathwater for the soap. Wondered if she was allowed to use, you know, bath soap, or if that could give rise to some copyright or IP infringement complications from, like, Calgon or whomever people use in actual baths these days. I wonder if she just laughed the whole time. Did she do this at home and scoop the water herself? No, probably not, right? Assistants were involved. So the whole thing probably had the vibe of a film set, lots of people around. Which means she probably took this bath in a swimsuit, which, fine, but also I suspect not what the clientele of this soap was imagining.
One day in the future when the entire planet is run by dude bro crypto AI edgelord children of Elon, there will be audit trails on such projects.
I bought the 4k Blu Ray of Sinners, because we finally watched it, for free, and it was so good I wanted to make a point to pay the creators also I want all the extra bonus footage, even though they put all that shit on Youtube these days. But the teenage dude who was working the self-checkout did not have the special magnetic tool to take the Blu Ray out of its case, so I had to go to another register to get it removed and someone had spilled a basket of blueberries everywhere and it was awesome. Just millions of blueberries all of the floor.
I did not run over any with my cart but I sure wanted to.
I would like to congratulate Heather Gerken for taking over the Ford Foundation. I recall reading an article on her predecessor, Daren Walker, the month he took the job, and boy howdy he sure did seem full of potential and I was very excited about his appointment. But then when I heard the news about Gerken I thought “huh I guess that Daren guy was never given a chance or it didn’t work out. It’s only been a hot minute. Shame.”
But then I did some Googling and, in fact, it has been twelve years that Walker ran the Ford Foundation and he did, in fact, have a transformative impact on it.
So good job, whatever reporter wrote that article twelve years ago. You called it.
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We are listening to our Spotify Release Radar this morning, the shitty Spotify playlist that comes out on Fridays and tells you about new music from bands you have listened to even though a) the playlist is crap because ai) it does not look far enough back, or include enough, of your listening history, therefore it is always missing new releases by people you actually care about even though you haven’t listened to them in a few onths, aii) it includes a shit ton — maybe 50% — of music from bands you have not listened to and I do not want that right now and b) Spotify is evil. I maintain my Spotify account, even though they suck and I am constantly trying to get over them. I am bummed. I rationalize because I still spend tons on music and merch directly — my Spotify is additive for artists. But this is a weak rationalization because Spotify sucks.
Anyway they just played a Nick Drake demo, which is nice, I am happy about our little part at Arnold for reviving Nick Drake’s career. His mom wrote us a letter thanking us for reviving his career I tell this story too much and I was barely involved but I am still proud of it. Now they’re playing a new Lemonheads song and it sounds absolutely nothing like the Lemonheads and I am not sure why it exists but hey whatever. As far as I know Evan’s only ever been a druggie so more power to him. He’s never been, like, a rapist or a dude bro crypto AI edgelord children of Elon. I have low expectations these days.
Prime Day is here. It is four days long. I’m not gonna complain because Amazon is a big ad spender and our publisher clients at work are reaping benefits from it, and thus we are too. I am in a morally compromised spot. I heard it’s down 40% this year, but I don’t believe it, it’s four days this year instead of two so I suspect people are just plotting a bit, though of course they may have already blown their wad when the tariffs were coming. We will see.
However, I did do a little digging. I looked at my Amazon cart, which I use as a sort-of Pinterest for shopping: things I need to buy, might need to re-buy. Even if I don’t buy it from Amazon (as is ultimately ideally the case). So I went through it. Here are the results:
I have 148 items in my “save for later” cart
Of those, only 15 have any Prime Day deals at all, so 10% ish.
Of those, the average sale is 23% or so.
This is boosted by three large sales, amounting to 47%, 43% and a whopping 58%. However, some caveats there:
The 43% deal is actually pretty awesome and on something I need — specialized pressure washing equipment. So that, really, is the one good deal here.
The 47% is a good deal on a hand-cranked flour mill but I have postponed my “make all my own flour from growing wheat” project till 2027 or so. So, no go.
The 58% is awesome but, weirdly, it is on only one of the four box sets that comprise the “nice” editions of the History of Middle Earth books I recently read. Like each of the four boxes has three books. This is for the third box. NOT, weirdly, the other three. And weirdly, this makes the third box still more expensive than the first box, which is NOT on sale. I have no idea why they are priced randomly but, yeah. All told it’s really only like 20% off of the cost of all four boxes, so, meh.
All of this basically reinforces my theory that Prime Day sucks.
If you are Very Online you may be aware that DashCon 2 is happening this week. DashCon 1 was a famous debacle of a conference related to Tumblr. I will now relay a story involving my very small role in all of this. The founders of DashCon 1 were emailing everyone at Tumblr to try and convince us to sponsor or attend or participate or really anything. I guess I was the only one to answer their emails, though such a thing would have been in my department anyway.
So I duly brought it to David and the leadership, hey, a Tumblr conference would be a good thing for us, give us an air of legitimacy, etc. etc.
And Derek, my boss, was like “that thing is going to be a giant debacle, we should stay away end of story.”
I thought he was harsh but boy howdy did he turn out to be right.
Anyway by all accounts DashCon 2 — organized by the Tumblr community at large — seems to have been a success and I for one say congratulations.
Yeah, Tumblr still rules.
Jane was a total pain again last night. And I sorta leaned into it. Or, rather more accurately, I decided to attempt to do parenting instead of placate and calm her down. We had her signed up for a Cartwheel Clinic, which is pretty awesome, girl needs some cartwheel work (says the guy who can’t even bend over). But she was just being a holy terror of pouting and obstinacy and insanity because she was not getting any screens. She kept lying and shouting and all this not abormal stuff. Usually we just walk away and she gets over it. But this time I was like we are going to talk about it.
And boy that did not work at all. Barely made the clinic, she was resisting it right up till the moment we bodily hauled her through the doors of the gym.
Did she hear me? Did any of it get through? She she understand “The boy who cried wolf” or that we don’t like it when she lies? I do not know, man. It is so weird. Just utter resistance and unkindness, walks through that gym door, sees people who aren’t her parents, instant transformation into an angel.
I mean I guess we should be thankful she doesn’t do this to other people. But it sure would be nice if she were nice to us too.
Alas.
Was pretty good this morning, though. So that was nice.
Justa mix for you today, mostly new stuff, except for TV on the Radio. The new Haim turned out to have five new songs, which is pretty good! I just discovered this Hudson Bell fellow and I like him very much. New Soulwax so far is great, two tracks out now, I am so excited about that album. There is new Jay Som too. My Spotify Release Radar did not feel the urge to notify me of either of those, nor about the new Jens Leckman (also good) or the new Agriculture. Just useless.
Have a lovely weekend! Get some chores done! Maybe hit up a park or playground.
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Thanks for reading.
And hey! Maybe buy one of my books!
Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.