9 Creative Lessons From Virgil Abloh
Insights from the late designer who went from studying architecture to working with Kanye to founding Off-White and to leading menswear at Louis Vuitton.
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Today, we will talk about creative lessons from Virgil Abloh’s incredible career…and also:
My Megalopolis review
Was legalized sports-betting a mistake?
…and them fire posts (including port strikes)
In July 2021, French luxury giant LVMH acquired a 60% stake in Off-White, a high-end streetwear brand founded by Virgil Abloh. Sadly, Abloh — who was also the artistic director for Louis Vuitton's menswear — died of cancer a few months later in November 2021 at the age of 41. Way too soon.
The Off-White business has since struggled and, last week, LVMH announced that it was selling the brand to Bluestar Alliance, a New York brand management company.
A lot of creatives — and massive dorks on LinkedIn — self-identify as “polymath” but real ones are few and far between. Abloh definitely qualified. He reached the top of the luxury industry with an eclectic background that combined architecture and engineering degrees with hip-hop (he was a former DJ and worked as Kanye’s creative director for a decade), streetwear (founded two brands: Pyrex Vision and Off-White) and high-end fashion (Fendi, LVMH).
Abloh was a force of nature and it’s not surprising that the brand he created in 2012 has floundered in his absence. While LVMH’s sale of Off-White is not the ideal outcome for Abloh’s legacy, he had already left so many learnings and insights for future generations.
For nearly a decade, he shared his process widely on Instagram. He also launched a digital archive of his work and, in 2017, he went on a lecture tour at the Rhode Island School of Design, Columbia and Harvard to share what he called a "cheat code" for the students to apply to their own careers.
I've gone through his work and found 9 key creative lessons:
"Readymade" (Build On What Already Exists)
The 3% Rule
The Power of Humor
Don’t Be a Perfectionist
Share Your Work
Build a Foundational Skillset
The Importance of An Outsider Perspective
Create a Personal Design Language
Collaborate Across Ages
But before teasing out these ideas, let’s walk through Abloh’s inter-disciplinary career.
One of the most comprehensive pieces on Abloh’s early life comes from a 2019 New Yorker profile by Doreen St. Félix titled “Virgil Abloh, Menswear's Biggest Star”.
Abloh was born in 1980 in Rockford, Illinois to Ghanaian immigrants. His father Nee worked for a paint company. His mother Eunice was a seamstress, who taught him how to sew (random coincidence alert: in my deep dive on Lululemon, I wrote about how founder Chip Wilson also learned to sew from his seamstress mom).
In his teens, Abloh started dabbling into street culture as an avid skateboarder, graffiti artist and t-shirt designer.
But his parents being immigrant parents — which I can 1043% relate to — wanted him to pursue a practical degree in college. So, Abloh enrolled in the Civil Engineering program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
His serious academic studies never stopped him from pursuing his old hobbies, though.
“I [didn’t] want to be an engineer in the classic sense,” he said of his undergraduate degree. “And the only way to not do that is to do fifty per cent engineering, fifty per cent life.”
In fact, Abloh kept making custom t-shirts while at college and started DJ-ing on the side (his interest in music was passed down from his father).
After the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Abloh went to the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) to get a Master’s in Architecture. According to his digital archive, it was at IIT “where he was introduced to a curriculum — originally established by Mies van der Rohe — which was formed from the notions of Bauhaus, that enabled [him] to learn how to converge the fields of arts, craft, and design.”
Another influence was Rem Koolhaas, a Dutch architect who designed buildings and also worked with the fashion giant Prada. Koolhaas’ inter-disciplinary career across different industries inspired Abloh and the two would later become friends.
“I was like, ‘Now I can be even more excited about architecture, because I don’t have to just do architecture,’” says Abloh on learning about the various Koolhaas pursuits. “Studying architecture, to some people, is, like, ‘Oh, you build buildings.’ But to me it’s a way of thinking. It’s a way of problem-solving with a rationale. And you can apply that rationale to building a building but also to scrambling eggs.”
Abloh was wrapping up his Master’s degree at the same time that the fame of a hip-hop artist from the Illinois region was about to go parabolic: Kanye West, out of Chicago.
At the time, West was making a name for himself as a producer (e.g., Jay-Z’s “Blueprint” album). The future Yeezy — who has since thrown away much of his reputation — surrounded himself with creatives from all fields and Abloh’s custom t-shirts caught his eye.
Over the next decade, Abloh worked as West's "artistic fixer" on everything from his songs to music videos to fashion, per The New Yorker:
Kanye West once said that Abloh had been “the strategist” in their partnership.
“I’m like Tesla . . . like Nikola Tesla, not the car,” West said. “I’m thinking of all these ideas, and Virgil is able to take all of those ideas and then architect them, because he is an architect.” […]
The two men travelled together constantly. “We’d be flying on the same plane,” Abloh recalled. “I’d be in coach. He would come back from first class . . . to oversee my work, while the person next to me would be, like, ‘Is that Kanye West in coach?’”
Kanye clarifying the “Tesla” point made me laugh, so did the visual of him strolling into the airplane coach cabin…because of this tweet:
Anyway, Abloh’s path to the top of the luxury world truly began at the 2009 Paris Fashion Week. In an absolutely glorious photo, West and his team — including Abloh at the far right — were flexing on them by rocking Louis Vuitton and Goyard briefcases while wearing…well, just look at this image.
The photo was ridiculed by fashion media at the time but West and Abloh were very serious about carving out a role in the luxury industry.
West had climbed to the top of hip-hop — coming off of College Dropout (2004), Late Registration (2005), Graduation (2007) and 808s & Heartbreaks (2008) — and pulled some strings to get the pair an internship in Rome at the LVMH-owned brand Fendi.
They didn’t cut any corners. West and Abloh were paid intern salaries ($500 a month) to do intern duties from 9-to-5 getting coffees and photocopying documents.
Impressively, this internship took place while West was making his best album ever, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Abloh’s peak role in West’s masterpiece was as a creative consultant on the wild 35-minute short film version of the hit song “Runaway”.
Fast forward to 2012: Abloh launched his first fashion brand, Pyrex Vision.
The brand's first item of clothing was a plaid Ralph Lauren shirt stitched with the word “Pyrex” and the number “23” on the back, in reference to the two main paths for people to get out of the hood:
Pyrex signifies “drugs” (the glassware that is used for cooking crack cocaine)
23 signifies “basketball” (Michael Jordan’s jersey number)
These two options were previously immortalized in the Notorious BIG line, “Either you're slingin' crack rock or you got a wicked jump shot”.
Pyrex Vision didn't take off but it showed Abloh’s vision for fashion, which was all about riffing on existing work as he told the New Yorker:
Streetwear in my mind [is like] like hip-hop. It’s sampling. I take James Brown, I chop it up, I make a new song. I’m taking IKEA and I’m presenting it in my own way. It’s streetwear 10.0—the logic that you can reference an object or reference a brand or reference something. It’s Warhol—Marilyn Monroe or Campbell’s soup cans.”
Through this venture, Abloh met the team behind Italian luxury brand New Guard Group. They eventually joined forces, combining New Guard's manufacturing prowess with Abloh's creativity to create the streetwear clothing brand Off-White (Abloh owned the trademark, while New Guard owned an exclusive multi-year manufacturing license).
In the following 9 years and before Abloh passed away, Off-White dominated fashion and was regularly ranked among the "most popular" luxury names in the world.
Many notable consumer brands — Nike, Ikea, Rimowa, Kith, Moet — collaborated with Off-White to get some of that Abloh magic.
The ultimate seal of approval came in 2018 when LVMH asked Abloh to become Louis Vuitton’s artistic director for menswear (Pharrell Williams — also a massively talented polymath — has since taken on this role).
What was behind Abloh’s success? Thankfully, the engineer-architect-artist-designer — although he considered himself “maker” above all — was very transparent about his work.
Here are 9 key creative lessons I took from going through his archive and watching that 2017 lecture tour (Rhode Island School of Design, Columbia, Harvard).
1. "Readymade" (Build On What Already Exists)
Abloh’s cautions against the instinct to try and create something from scratch. Build on the work of a mentor (dead or alive). Odd are, these mentors did the same.
It's important to recognize we're in the lineage of art movements…I'm sure…you're trying to challenge yourself to invent something new. Try to be so avant-garde, that has zero [connection to the past]. That's impossible…We exist off the backs of many other things in iterations before us. So once you think about us as a collective, you then realize that we're all tracking towards the same direction.
The artist that influenced this view was Marcel Duchamp.
Working in the early-20th century, Duchamp is known for his irreverent paintings and sculptures that mocked traditional perception of “art”. In particular, he is known for "readymade" artwork (ordinary manufactured objects that are modified).
Instead of creating something from a blank canvas, Duchamp believed that anything could be art based on the intent of the artist as highlighted by two notables pieces:
“The Fountain”: In 1917, Duchamp took a porcelain urinal, wrote “R. Mutt” on it and submitted it to an art competition. The piece was rejected and Duchamp took the rejection as a way to protest who got to define “art”.
L.H.O.O.Q.: In 1919, Duchamp took a postcard of Mona Lisa and drew a moustache on her and wrote the letters “L. H. O. O. Q”. The letters were a grammogram of French sounds that read"Elle a chaud au cul" (which translate to “she is hot in the arse").
These “readymades” were created in opposition to “retinal art”, which was meant to be visually appealing but had no larger message.
I don’t particularly like either of these Duchamp pieces. I also get annoyed when people do dumb things and call it “art” when it’s really just them doing dumb things.
But I also recognize that Duchamp was operating in a very different media environment when a handful of gatekeepers really had a chokehold on "art". He was making a point that art doesn’t have to be a grand sculpture or elaborate canvas painting. It can be everyday objects that are given a new meaning with additions, subtractions or transformations. Anyone could do it.
In the meme-y digital age — with billions of people having access to tools and distribution to riff on text, audio and video — Duchamp take has lasted the test of time. There’s a lot of “readymade” content in the 2020s.
As a form of expression, “readymade” work has the huge benefit of being recognizable. It's easier to capture mindshare, when building on existing ideas (like a DJ who "remixes" a hit song).
There’s a reason why the Hero’s Journey for film and same “Four Chords” for hit music keep on resonating decade after decade.
The Off-White logo is itself an application of "readymade" on two levels. First, it's a ubiquitous shape (arrow) with a slight riff (two of them made into an "x" shape). Second — and probably more relevant — it looks a lot like the old iconic Glasgow Airport logo designed by Margaret Calvert.
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2. The 3% rule
What is a good way to riff on existing work?
Abloh’s approach was often to make a small “3% “change to the original form. He wasn’t changing something by 3% just to change it by 3%, though. He was adding his personal 3% touch (in a world of generative AI, I really want to emphasize the personal touch aspect here).
My favourite example of Abloh's approach was a collaboration with Nike on “The Ten”, which was a re-imagining of 10 of the most popular Nike shoes.
Abloh made small changes to the product — some text, a color change or a tag — and it became a smash hit. From Harvard lecture, Abloh explained that Nike “products were so good” and “so perfectly put together” that he only wanted to make slight edits. He wanted to “recognize the shoe he already had” but with a personal touch.
Abloh called this "The 3% Rule": you alter a product or idea by only 3% to create something totally new. Why does the approach work? Because humans desire two competing things: familiarity (to give us comfort) and novelty (to fulfill our curiosity).
Whatever you think of Abloh’s 3% edit — and some critics say he is overly derivative — the psychology behind it is very sound.
In a piece for The Atlantic, Derek Thompson relays the story of French Industrial Designer Raymond Loewy, who understood the importance of small edits and was a master of designing popular products that combined familiarity and novelty.
Working in the mid-20th century, Loewy’s firm created some of the most iconic designs in American culture including logos (Shell, Exxon, TWA, BP, Greyhound), consumer products (Coca-Cola vending machine, Lucky Strike box), and vehicles (Air Force One nose, Studebaker Avanti). In 1950, Cosmopolitan Magazine wrote that Loewy had “probably affected the daily life of more Americans than any man of his time.”
The Frenchman’s design philosophy was summed up by 4 letters — MAYA (bold mine):
“Loewy had an uncanny sense of how to make things fashionable. He believed that consumers are torn between two opposing forces: neophilia, a curiosity about new things; and neophobia, a fear of anything too new.
As a result, they gravitate to products that are bold, but instantly comprehensible. Loewy called his grand theory “Most Advanced Yet Acceptable”—maya. He said to sell something surprising, make it familiar; and to sell something familiar, make it surprising.”
The preference for familiarity and tendency to gravitate towards things we see more often is known as the “mere exposure effect”. Evolutionarily, this makes sense: humans are cautious around new sights and sounds because they might be dangerous (but become more comfortable if the supposed threat turns out to be harmless upon repeated exposure). Thompson says that the “mere exposure effect” is one of the “sturdiest findings in modern psychology”.
However, there are limits to how much we want to see the same thing (eg. Marvel and Star Wars reboots). But a small change can provide the novelty humans also crave (fine, I’ll watch if there’s a random Samuel L. Jackson cameo).
Thompson cites two other examples of familiarity meeting novelty:
The Spotify team found that the custom Discover playlists they created for users — which started as a way to recommend you entirely new songs — performed best when it included tracks you had previously heard (Spotify stumbled on this after a bug mixed up people’s Discover playlist with songs that they had previously listened to).
Harvard and Northwestern researchers studied how the US’ National Institute of Health (NIH) assessed research submissions. They found that the NIH gave the worst ratings to papers with “the most novel proposals” whereas the best-performing papers only made slightly new discoveries. The conclusion: there is an “optimal newness” for ideas (I don’t know if optimal newness is 3% but you get the point).
Again, the brain seeks familiarity. And if you can mix in novel repetition, it’s a potent combination. As Napoleon Hill said "Any idea, plan, or purpose may be placed in the mind through repetition of thought.” Or in marketing speak: the rule of 7 states that a prospect must see a brand at least 7x before making a buying decision.
In an essay, Abloh further expounds on The 3% Rule and why you only have to slightly innovate an existing project to create a new one:
3 % is applicable across practices and fields, different media, eras of our history. Our future.
A series of 3%’s brings the classics to modernity. Connects icons to burgeoning talent.
[…]
3% is packaging, 3% is marketing.
3% is a single sneaker with Nike, executed 50 different ways.
[…]
The 3% ideology has its advantages. It recalls an eye-to-emotion-connection in the brain and adds an alternate voice. 3% expands our world view, without pushing our zones of comfort to the brink.
We’re-exposed to “new”, but not eccentric or disconcerting.
This is a long way of saying: one day, I will own all ten of those Nike x Off-White shoes (for real, though, I will buy them once my wife gives me more closet space).
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3. The power of humor
Abloh says humor is "an entry point of humanity". You open up when you laugh. On the internet, "ironic humor" and memes are the go-to language. Along these lines: Abloh made a "keep off" rug for Ikea and a transparent luggage for Rimowa.
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4. Don't be a perfectionist
Abloh will often complete only 70% of a project before moving on. By not making everything "perfect", he can experiment and keep learning by working:
Once I realized that it's okay to not be a perfectionist, all of a sudden I can do a million things at once…I look at other friends’ work who are super precise and perfectionist. I realize [when I’m trying to be a perfectionist], I'm just trying to be a perfectionist [for the sake of being a perfectionist] and I'm not even thinking anymore.
Abloh says his primary tool is a "fully-charged iPhone" and his work style is "conversational". He manages his different projects via WhatsApp chats, which are real-time and don't impede the creative process.
A “perfectionist” might scoff at such a set-up but that’s how Abloh was able to juggle so many different projects and keep the ball moving on all of them.
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5. Share Your Work
As part of not chasing perfection, Abloh regularly posted “works-in-progress” images to over 6 million followers on his Instagram account. He believed that this approach to “working in public” demystified the process and was a way to inspire others:
For a modern designer or creative, I distinctly feel like this generation is the first one where we can unveil the mask and give the kids the tools. Let them create… [That’s why I] post the unfinished products [on Instagram] because it's going to inspire some kid to do something afterwards.
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6. Build a foundational skillset
Abloh's work is grounded in his engineering and architectural background, which taught him how to analyze problems, design solutions, implement ideas and defend the logic.
He says that having a hard engineering background gave him the confidence and conviction in the decisions he made on any creative project.
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7. The importance of an outsider perspective
Abloh's comfort with many disciplines can be traced back to his upbringing. If his father Nee had accepted the "box" he was born in, he never would have come to America:
The idea of putting things in a box just doesn’t work for me. It worked for a generation that was supposed to be where they are. My story starts from immigrant parents from Ghana in West Africa. On the will of my dad making it to America, I was afforded the range of options opposite from a third world country.
Being an outsider allowed Abloh to approach challenges from atypical directions. Another way that Abloh sees himself as an outsider was that he brought a beginner mindset to a lot of projects…because he actually was a beginner in many fields:
You have to be an amateur, in a way, or kind of innocent, to do so many different things but then have an instant opinion about them. [The work of being a creative director] is that you sit in a room and people bring things to you all day long, and they say, ‘This or that?’ or ‘This spoon or that spoon?’ That’s where the naïveté is an important aspect. You’re not exhausted. You’re not jaded.
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8. Create a "Personal Design Language"
Abloh says that each artist has a through-line across all their work. One way to keep that through-line and maintain an internal consistency is to sit down and figure out your own "Personal Design Language".
During his lectures, Abloh shared this slide of his own “Personal Design Language”.
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9. Collaborate Across Ages
Abloh's interest in many fields means he was always looking to collaborate and cross-pollinate. And this meant working with people of all ages. He kept correspondences with a near 80-year old Rem Koolhass as well as college students.
Bernard Arnault — the head of LVMH — has a similar approach.
"When you run a fashion house,” Arnault has said about bringing in talent from different generations (Abloh, Rhianna, Stella McCartney). “You're looking at the future, not the past. To attract new clients you have to take risks. Designers, like painters, are more creative [in the 30s]."
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Links and Memes
My Megalopolis Review: So, I saw Megalopolis last Saturday and had two immediate thoughts afterwards. First was “the markup on these Skittles and bottles of water at the concession stand must be 50x.” And second was “WTF did I just watch?”
Is it a good film? Not really.
Francis Ford Coppola’s 23rd film didn’t really feel like a film at all, though. It felt more like an experiment to see if cultural goodwill can be turned into box office success.
As we’ve discussed in this newsletter, the now 85-year old director famously sold parts of his winery to self-finance this $137 million passion project that he’s been working on-and-off on for the past 47 years.
Since having a kid, I rarely go to the theater – only 5x in the past 7 years – but felt obligated to see Coppola’s likely last major theatrical release.
This was my rationale. Coppola did the greatest 7-year run in Hollywood history: The Godfather I (1972), The Godfather II (1974), The Conversation (1974) and Apocalypse Now (1979). These films are in the fabric of our popular culture and influenced so many films and TV shows I love. My guess is that Coppola and Coppola-inspired projects have led to ~200 hours of entertainment for me. Can I toss Coppola 2 hours of my time to drive to a movie theater and watch his 47-year passion project? That’s 1% of the bounty he’s given me and the answer was “yes”.
Clearly, there aren’t many filmgoers making this same calculation. I went to the 9:30pm showing on a Saturday night. There were 11 people in the theater. That’s not a typo. Eleven people. I kind of expected low attendance based on reports that the film was headed for a $6 million opening weekend against that $137 million budget (it ended up pulling in only $4m). But 11 people in a theater on a Saturday for opening weekend is insane.
I once took my kid to a live Blippi show. It was awful but 1,000 people were there. Sure, half were kids. But that’s 989 more people that showed up to watch Blippi than a feature film from the guy that gave us “I love the smell of napalm in the morning” and “I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse” and “leave the gun, take the cannoli” and “my offer is nothing” and “the horror, the horror” etc.
Beforehand, I didn’t read any reviews but did see the trailer and knew the log line:
“The city of New Rome is the main conflict between Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver), a brilliant artist in favor of a utopian future, and the greedy mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito). Between them is Julia Cicero (Nathalie Emmanuel), her loyalty divided between her father and her beloved.”
Add in some fantasy elements and themes about the Fall of the Roman Empire in modern times but the plot details are honestly irrelevant.
There’s barely any real story or character development. The film is a 2 hour and 18 minute canvas for Coppola to stitch together interesting (and often weird) visuals with a bunch of Ancient Rome ideas he’s been noodling on for decades. The dialogue is completely forced and subtly tries to opine about modern politics and technological progress. There are a bunch of monologues as well as random Shakespeare verses and Marcus Aurelius quotes.
The closest feeling I previously had to my post-Megalopolis reaction were Terrence Malick films. Specifically, I remember leaving the theater after The New World and thinking “this is the most self-indulgent auteur BS I’ve ever seen in my life”. But that film stuck with me and I’ve watched it a few times since and realize it’s a masterpiece. I had similar feelings watching The Thin Red Line and Tree Of Life.
Malick’s film age incredibly well.
Could Megalopolis do the same? On the film’s press tour, Coppola said he aims to have people still watch the film 50 years from now.
Megalopolis obviously won’t be Malick level (those films are truly beautiful). But I think the film has a chance for longer-term cultural relevancy because the meme potential is huge (technically, it already started with people calling it Mega-Flop-Olis…Coppola walked right into that one).
Shia LaBeouf basically plays a version of that meme of him flexing and saying “just do it”. Aubrey Plaza goes full thirst trap. Coppola throws Hollywood legends some absurd scenes (Jon Voight, Lawrence Fishburne, Dustin Hoffman). Adam Driver has a bunch of “WTF?” moments.
Once this thing hits streaming and more people watch it, Megalopolis could be one of those “so bad, it’s good” type things. Especially because of the modern-Roman visual look and the fact that it’s a career-capper for someone that directed three of the 20 greatest films ever.
After making The Godfather II, the studios kept asking Coppola to make another mobster flick. He decided to make Apocalypse Now and later said “If you make films you don’t know how to make, you learn a lot. If you make films you do know how to make, you maybe make more money but you don’t learn as much.”
Similarly, the best case I can make for watching Megalopolis is that “if you watch only things you know how to watch, you don’t learn as much.”
For better or worse, Megalopolis is unlike anything you’ll ever watch.
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Was legalized sports-betting a mistake? It kind of looks like it. Since 2018, 30 American states have legalized sports gambling and gamblers have wagered an insane $400B. Sport-betting stocks are booming. Flutter — which owns FanDuel — is worth $40B+ while DraftKings is worth $19B.
Now, I have no problem with gambling per se. I hit casinos and happily fork over money to the house and its guaranteed 51-55% edge (in exchange, I get “free” chicken fingers and fries). My issue is the ease with which sports-betting apps allow someone to make a wager — including absurd 10-leg parlay bets with terrible odds — combined with the engagement hacks of app design and smartphones.
There’s been a natural A/B test with states that haven’t legalized sports-betting and the results are not good, per Bloomberg: “In states that allow online betting, they found, the average credit score drops by almost 1% after about four years, while the likelihood of bankruptcy increases by 28%, and the amount of debt sent to collection agencies increases by 8%.”
Another issue I have with the apps is that successful bettors get throttled. It’s the right for FanDuel and DraftKings to allow certain usage — similar to how casinos kick out card counters — but then the entire business model is built on ripping off amateurs and addicts.
As Bloomberg details, professionals are “priming” their accounts so the app raises betting limits before laying down a high-confidence bet. They do so by looking like:
An amateur: Do wagers that a casual bettor would typically make
A homer: Open an account from a New York IP address then bet on the New York Yankees.
A degenerate gambler: “One pro bettor I know set up a bot which logs in to his accounts every day between 2 and 4 a.m., to make it seem like he can’t get through the night without checking his bets. Another withdraws money and then reverses those withdrawals so it looks like he can’t resist gambling.”
If that is the type of behaviour that your platform incentivizes, then I think there’s clearly a problem with the design. What’s the solution?
Well, the most problematic users are often “gifted” funds to keep betting. One egregious example recently hit the docket. A former employee for the Jacksonville Jaguars was allowed by FanDuel to lose over $20m on the platform, including on the company credit card (which he stole funds from). To get him to keep betting, FanDuel gave him $1m in credit even though it was clear he was a problem gambler. This guy clearly committed a crime but FanDuel also failed to follow its own policies on dealing with gambling addicts (the gambler is actually suing FanDuel for “exploiting” him).
At a minimum, there should be hardcore restrictions on enticing addicts. Longer term, the government should consider making sport-betting illegal again if these platforms won't let users actually win and are only profitable because of problematic gamblers.
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Some other baller links:
RIP Kris Kristofferson: Speaking of polymaths, Kris Kristofferson died last week at the age of 88. He was a Rhodes Scholar turned army helicopter pilot turned country singer-songwriter turned actor turned activist. Perhaps apocryphally, he scored a gig with Johnny Cash by landing a helicopter in the country legend’s backyard and handing him a demo tape (here's an awesome duet of them singing Kristofferson’s “Sunday Morning, Coming Down”).
The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books: Absolutely wild piece from The Atlantic on how the incoming batch of Ivy League students are unable to finish entire books and exhibit lower reading comprehension and vocabularies than previous generations. What happened? Well, there’s been a significant decline in “reading for pleasure” among teens in the past decade and high schools aren’t assigning as much book reading. Also, things that rhymes with “fartsmone”, “BlikBok”, “TouYube” and “Minstagram”.
…and them fire posts (including one about former President Jimmy Carter, who turned 100 years old on Tuesday and has had the most productive post-Presidency ever: particularly for helping to eradicate the Guinea worm parasite from this world).
Finally, there was a major port strike in the United States. Over 45,000 longshoreman on the East and Gulf Coasts were briefly off work. The strike was estimated to cost the US economy up to $5B in trade a day and the workers were demanding higher wages and guarantees against port automation. They settled on a wage increase (+62%), but the issue of automation of still in being negotiated.
I have nothing else to add other than these posts:
thank you