Essential

Must-reads from the Bubbler

Mask protection conversion

Our local grocery store recently changed it’s mask policy. If you have been vaccinated, you don’t need to wear a mask. I am not vaccinated, nor will I be. So naturally, I was excited to get back to entering the grocery store with no mask on. The residents of the Pacific Northwest did not disappoint. I’ve been in that grocery store five times since they changed their policy. Each time, I was the only person in the store without a mask on. There’s no way to know this, but given the anecdotal evidence and sensibilities (such as they are)…

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The racism of audience targeting

You can’t see a television show, streaming series, commercial, or nearly any cultural event without noticing how overtly everyone is trying to make up for their own racism. You can’t swing a dead cat without seeing an over-representation of black people in nearly everything you see in media. Movies. Television shows. Tik Tok clips. Award shows. Hallmark specials. Commercials. Advertising. No matter where you turn, you’d think America was 75% black people, based on current casting practices. Which is fine. If the content of the story or the successful sale is the point, who cares whether it’s a man,…

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Sperm bank promotion

In a recent conversation about Mormon’s, the conversation naturally turned to sperm banks. We were talking about having many kids with many wives, and we thought a sperm bank may be easier than juggling all of the personalities. Being marketers, the direction of the conversation evolved to how to encourage more men to donate to the sperm bank. Obviously, hiring prostitutes would be a great draw to get men to stop by. But in nearly all areas of the country, hiring prostitutes, and calling them prostitutes, would be illegal (although that’s not entirely clear, since you wouldn’t be paying…

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Things you shouldn’t do on social media

It’s no secret historians are going to identify social media as the key catalyst for the downfall of humanity (unless, of course, the historians are simply social media employees). One of the many reasons they’ll draw this conclusion is because social media has leveled the playing field between important friends and barely acquaintances. Similarly, our usage of social media has equated the death of a loved one with a poorly-photographed plate of food. People take to social media for to share thoughts or news ranging from waking up to a plate of eggs to the birth of a first…

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From duty to privilege to punishment

When COVID-19 first hit, and everyone was trying to figure out what to do, some started advocating for wearing masks. The idea varied from protecting the wearer to protecting everyone else, but we were told it was our civic duty. We were taking one for the team. This evolved in a privilege. As people started trying to find studies and precedent for the effectiveness of mass mask-wearing as protection against viruses, they started learning that all of the mask touching and breathing in of our own discarded, toxin-filled, carbon dioxide wasn’t necessarily healthy, either. The marketing changed accordingly and…

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Excuses vs reasons why

Last week, I was in a meeting in which one of the participants was particularly terse toward me. After the meeting, I learned from another participant that it was probably because I hadn’t responded to an email he had written earlier that week that ended with a plea to “respond today so I can sleep tonight.” The problem was that I had never seen the email. It turns out, it was written as a response to a meeting invite. My settings for meeting invites is that I get an email notification each time someone accepts or declines the meeting….

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Follow the signs

Fortunately, thanks to the egos and desire to be noticed of today’s Americans, it’s easier than ever before to figure out who’s responsible. Just look for people who: say “follow the science” proudly display an Obama or Biden sticker on their car stand in doorways having conversations wear masks in their cars make Tik Tok videos of themselves dancing slow down for green lights ask a lot of questions during a 4pm Friday work meeting just want people to vote (regardless of who they’re voting for) eat veggie burgers stand in the aisle and dink around with their personal…

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House flippers and scalpers

House flippers and scalpers are two sides of the same dirty coin. Both take something of value to a very limited audience, artificially insert themselves into the transaction, bump up the price, and take a cut they have no business taking. House flippers take a house with imperfections, in which they have no interest, so real house hunters can’t buy it at a legitimate price, and wallpaper over the imperfections to hide them to the buyer. Then they put it on the market and sell it to the highest and most unsuspecting buyer they can. Scalpers buy tickets to…

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Vaccination branding

Who here can tell me the maker of your last flu shot? Who knows which company produced their last flu shot? Who ever heard of any vaccinations being chosen by the maker? When did we ever start asking people if they’ve been vaccinated? For anything? Who can name a non-COVID vaccination you’ve had, either for yourself or your kids, where you knew who made it? There’s just something that seems off about there being so much social conversation about whether or not someone’s been vaccinated, which company made the vaccination, and how did they react to it. We’ve all…

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If I were a police officer…

If I were a police officer, and I liked killing unarmed black people, I’d cool it for now and start killing unarmed white people, just to stay in practice. The media would never cover it, and I could pretty much go about my killing of unarmed criminals unabated. Then, when the heat around killing unarmed black people inevitably dies down, I could resume killing hundreds of thousands of millions of unarmed black people without missing a beat.

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