Modest Operations | Newsletter Volume 22

Life got in the way this week (for lots of great reasons!), hence the late newsletter. It's shaping up to be an incredibly busy spring / summer, as much as I hate that "b-word", but I'm not complaining, really! 

There's something nice about feeling in-tune with things both personally and professionally. Lots of things are moving in the right direction just as it's starting to get warm here in LA.

Have a great week,

This Week's Links A list of things I've been reading & thinking about. "Influencers are everyone’s new favorite people to hate, and whenever I post an ad, it’s nerve-wracking because I just don’t feel like dealing with people’s negative reactions. It’s very trendy now to 'complain about ads,' like they are some horrible injustice. Just the other day, someone was like, 'I’m unfollowing you because of ads!' And I asked, 'So basically you would prefer to continue enjoying people’s photography, writing, music, artwork, poetry, and any other form of creativity for free on this app every single day. But you have no intention of supporting those people getting paid?' I mean, if you actually think about that reaction, it’s bizarre. Like, do they never turn their TV on again because they saw a commercial one time? The fact that people think they can dictate when and how you dance like a monkey for the camera but have a fundamental problem with anyone giving you money? God, it’s a weird f*king world." - So You Want to Be an Influencer: The Realities of Being Insta-Famous | (Adam Ruggiero for GearJunkie) * "You don’t save the good parts of said capitalism by doubling down on the worst, most exploitive parts." - Work harder or the communists will win! (David Heinemeier Hansson for Signal v. Noise) * "'I think there are more and more people who are saying, ‘Hold on, I’m concerned about my drinking and I would love a way to work on that where I don’t have to explain it all to people,’' says Jessica Lahey, author of The Gift of Failure and a forthcoming book on addiction in kids. 'That’s what these sobriety experiments can be.'" - The Rise of Elective Sobriety (Virginia Sole-Smith for Elemental) * "Consider, for example, David Boies. Many aspiring litigators, myself included, were once fans, following his high-profile cases with a keen interest and holding him up as a paragon of ethics and savvy. But, as has been revealed over the course of a single, skinny year, that favorable view of Boies was woefully, almost tragically, misplaced." - David Boies’s Fall From Grace (Scott Alan Burroughs for Above The Law)