Smoke signals
The Orchard, Grantchester.
Quote of the Day
“The dubious privilege of a freelance writer is he’s given the freedom to starve anywhere.”
- S.J. Perelman
Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news
Mozart | Symphony No. 36 in C Major, K. 425 “Linz” – (1) Adagio – Allegro spiritoso
Many years ago I drove from Cambridge to Vienna on my own, and I had all the Mozart symphonies on cassettes to keep me company. I played this on the A1 autobahn as I passed Linz on the last lap of the journey.
Long Read of the Day
An Ugly New Marketing Strategy Is Driving Me Nuts (and You Too)
Perceptive blog post by Ted Gioia on what comes after enshittification: the annoyance economy.
The rules of marketing never change. That’s what they told me in business school.
If you could peer inside the meetings at head office, you would see a never-ending loop of Glengarry Glen Ross.
Always be closing. Those are the A-B-Cs of business.
But that’s not true anymore.
In recent days, a new marketing strategy has emerged. I’ve never seen it before. And I wish it would go away. You probably do too.
It’s a new way of advertising. It’s a new way of marketing. It’s a new motivational tool.
It didn’t exist when I studied marketing back at Stanford GSB. I had the best marketing teachers in the world, but they never dreamed of doing this to customers.
Here’s the new marketing playbook of 2025:
>Do NOT try to close.
>Do NOT try to sell.
>Do NOT try to persuade.
>Don’t even listen.
The goal now is merely to ANNOY. The big companies do it on purpose.
Big streaming platforms are the experts at this new marketing tool. They want you to pay for a premium, ad-free subscription. The more annoying the commercials, the more likely you are to pay.
You will pay just to get rid of the ad.
Read on. It’s sharp.
Right on cue, YouTube is now becoming even more annoying. Same strategy: pay to avoid the ads.
So many books, so little time
Evelyn Waugh was a nasty man but an annoyingly good writer. And he could be very funny. His novel Scoop, for example, is the funniest thing ever written about old-style British journalism. But I’m discovering that his letters were often in the same league.
Here’s. An example — a letter he wrote to his wife in 1942 when his army unit (3 Commando) was on training in Scotland.
So, No. 3 Cmdo, Commando, were very anxious to be chums with Lord Glasgow so they offered to blow up an old tree stump for him, and he was very grateful and he said, don’t spoil the plantation of young trees near it because that is the apple of my eye and they said no, of course not we can blow a tree down so that it falls on a sixpence and Lord Glasgow said goodness you are clever and he asked them all to luncheon for the great explosion. So Col. Durnford-Slater D.S.O. said to his subaltern, have you put enough explosive in the tree. Yes, sir, 75 lbs. Is that enough? Yes sir, I worked it out by mathematics, and it is exactly right. Well, better put in a bit more. Very good sir.
And when Col. D. Slater, D.S.O., had had his port he sent for the subaltern and said subaltern, better put a bit more explosive in that tree. I don’t want to disappoint Lord Glasgow.” Very good sir.
Then they all went out to see the explosion, and Col. D.S.D.S.O. said, you will see that tree fall flat at just the angle where it will hurt no young trees and Lord Glasgow said goodness you are clever.
So soon they lit the fuse and waited for the explosion and presently the tree, instead of falling quietly sideways, rose 50 feet into the air taking with it half an acre of soil and the whole of the young plantation.
And the subaltern said Sir I made a mistake, it should have been 7 and a half not 75.
Lord Glasgow was so upset he walked in dead silence back to his castle and when they came to the turn of the drive in sight of his castle, what should they find but that every pane of glass in the building was broken.
So Lord Glasgow gave a little cry & ran to hide his emotion in the lavatory and there when he pulled the plug the entire ceiling, loosened by the explosion, fell on his head.
This is quite true.
Feedback
Marco Pagni emailed about the ‘Ode to Joy’ story in my and Andrew Brown’s comments on Otto Dov Kulka’s Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death to say that I should have a look at Slavoj ZiZek’s experimental movie The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology, in which he has interesting things to say about the ‘Ode’. So I did, and he does — mainly about the various powers and groups who have used Beethoven’s symphony as an anthem or theme tune. Spoiler alert: some of these users are unsavoury.
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