Reading List: Unrelated, Popcorn Is A Breakfast Of Champions And I Shall Take No Feedback At This Time.

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Happy Friday, lovely people. I hope your week has been chock full of adventure, kindness and as many homemade cold brews as your heart can handle.

Let’s to the longreads!

Jonathan Swan, Shane Goldmacher and Maggie Haberman, Defend Trump and ‘Hammer’ Ramaswamy: DeSantis Allies Reveal Debate Strategy (NYT) - I mean, we all know that super PACs will go to any length to circumvent restrictions on communication with campaigns, but wooooof, it still sucks to see how the sausage is made.

Jude Doyle, A Vindication Of The Rights Of Ken (Medium) - With one of the greatest subheads I’ve read in a while, this examination of the impact of culturally-dictated “feminine” gender roles on whomever is forced to exist within them should be required reading for any of the young men screaming into their front camera about how much the movie hates men.

Garrison Hayes, Debunking Florida’s Argument That Slavery Could Benefit the Enslaved, in 120 Seconds (Mother Jones) - Less of a long read than a short read introducing a powerful takedown of one of the most cynical and crass conservative talking points on slavery, succinctly debunked in showing how “their skills meant very little in society the moment their bodies no longer belonged to a white man.” 

Peter Wilke, German far right’s Höcke wants to kick disabled kids out of regular schools (POLITICO) - So, umm, we all know where horrific ideas like this end up, yes? 

Roni Caryn Rabin, Growing Segregation by Sex in Israel Raises Fears for Women’s Rights’ (NYT) - During my one trip to Israel over a decade ago, I viscerally remember the anger I felt at the Western Wall, stuck on one side of a partition whilst my male travel companions were free to explore the larger section of the wall and visit the stone structures within the buildings themselves. Obviously, there are so many reasons to criticize so many actions taken recently by the Israeli government, but it still chills me to read about how ultra-Orthodox politicians are pushing divisions based on sex into larger portions of public life: “Bus drivers in central Tel Aviv and southern Eilat have refused to pick up young women, because they were wearing crop tops or workout clothes. Last month, ultra-Orthodox men in the religious town of Bnei Brak stopped a public bus and blocked the road because a woman was driving.”

Have a glorious weekend - drink some water, get outside, and be kind to each other, won’t you?

xoxo Amy

Life Hack: Harness The Energy Of HRC Learning About The New Indictments Whilst On Maddow.

A REMINDER!
I am shifting these should-be-daily(ish) missives over to Medium,
so please don’t forget to sign up here.

Good morning, poppets! Since I’m waiting for the cold brew to kick in… Something something charming, something something witty, call to action to START READING STUFF ON THE INTERWEBS!

• This morning, I kicked off the day by listening to the latest episode of Behind the Bastards, because it is revisiting Sam Bankman-Fried re: his bail revoking and Jamie Loftus is guesting and omg, chef’s kisses all around.

• Um, ahoy hoy? This is the energy we all need today: ‘Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen Says She Ate Magic Mushrooms During China Visit’ (HuffPost)

• Look, I’ve yelled about it a ton, but perhaps we all need the NYT to yell about it as well: ‘This Is a Reminder That You’re Probably Oversharing on Venmo’. And hey Brian X. Chen, while I loved the article, this first graf isn’t great for my social anxiety: “There’s an app for snooping on your friends, family and colleagues to find out about their fancy dinners, the people they are dating and the parties they are attending that you weren’t invited to.” I wasn’t thinking about that before - but I am now!

• Related to what I wrote last week, this is why we can’t just automatically celebrate something solely because a woman is involved: ‘‘Better martyrs’: the growing role of women in the far-right movement’ (The Guardian). 

• As if I needed another reason to be smug about being a Bolt driver vs. a Tesla driver, Mum of the Missive sent this our way: Motor Mouth: Elon Musk cheated and he’s going to get away with it (Driving), which is based on this banger of an investigative story in Reuters: “Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints” It’s jaw dropping! “According to Reuters, not only has Tesla been deliberately programming its cars to exaggerate their range estimations, it has set up an entire division to deny and obfuscate owners’ accusations that such exaggerations exist”. OK, on a personal note, I am glad that this is an instance where my refusal to let my battery go below 25% out of severe range anxiety would have served me well.

• Meanwhile, this is the only tweet I care about re: the whole Elon Musk / Mark Zuckerberg BS:

• Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go down a rabbit hole on the Georgia RICO case against the former president and his merry band of co-conspirators: Georgia indictment lays out Trump election plot in all its shocking detail (The Guardian)

You’re all lovely. Drink some water, get outside, and be kind to each other, won’t you?

xoxo Amy

Now That Women Are Driving Headlines With Our 'Disposable' Cash, Can I Get Recognition For How Much I Spend On WWII Histories and Horror Novels?

A REMINDER! I am shifting these should-be-daily(ish) missives over to Medium, so please don’t forget to sign up here.

As I’ve written previously (I feel like I reference my “cool girl” email once a month at minimum,) I didn’t let myself like anything “girly” for so much of my life. Working in male-dominated tech in a role typically pursued by women (marketing/PR), I wanted to be “different than those other girls”, which meant learning to like things I otherwise wouldn’t alongside things I genuinely enjoyed doing.

When I first started The Morning Missive in 2015 (that’s right, 2015!!!), I had a specific section named “Lady Stuff” or something like that. At that point, as I was figuring out how to express myself in a newsletter format, I thought it was important to include a section for issues impacting folks like me, and figured I needed some kind of separation between those articles and the rest of the “real” news I wanted to share.

I look back now and realize how much internalized misogyny I carried in my brain in that small detail alone. In separating out articles dealing with “women’s issues” or featuring “women doing stuff”, I inadvertently implied that that said news wasn’t meant to be considered alongside other (serious) issues of the day. The section ensured that articles otherwise covering happenings in tech or business or bodily autonomy or human rights were siloed away with a bit of a wink, providing people I assumed wouldn’t want to read them a way to skim and skip over it — the Lady section even lived at the end of the email. That formatting fell away pretty quickly when I settled on the 5ish link template as a way to take pressure off of needing to be profound or scour the web for something for everyone.

But looking back, I cringe that I instinctively shuffled anything involving gender or abortion rights or equal pay or the dearth of women leaders into a bucket, that I inadvertently signaled that men shouldn’t care about gender or abortion rights or equal pay or the dearth of women leaders.

Over the last week, there have been plenty of articles about how the Barbie Movie, and the tours of Taylor Swift and Beyoncé are “unleashing the spending power of women” (CNN). It drives me crazy how each article covering the economic impacts of these cultural phenomenons breathlessly recounts stories of women… spending money! On stuff they like! Gasp! Because I don’t know about you, but it’s not like women just this summer suddenly started to “control or influence over 80% of consumer spending”, as mentioned in the CNN article above. Yet we are still shocked (shocked!) when art made by women primarily for women is devoured by a hungry audience.

Seriously, don’t forget head on over to Medium here.

Because I feel like I am taking crazy pills as I am not at all surprised in the slightest that Barbie and Beyoncé and Taylor are filling theaters and stadiums, because it is DAMNED GOOD ENTERTAINMENT created by INCREDIBLY DISCIPLINED PEOPLE AT THE HEIGHT OF THEIR CREATIVE AND BUSINESS POWERS supported by MASSIVE PROMOTIONAL BUDGETS. Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig convinced a major multinational to go along with an overtly feminist movie that celebrated AND poked fun at said multinational’s crown jewel IP. Beyoncé’s show was described as “a sci-fi stadium-scale superclub, the greatest disco in the known universe”. And Taylor Swift is causing seismic events as her fans dance the night away at shows being breathlessly livestreamed by fans of all ages.

But these absolute feats of creative capitalism (and yes, let’s again acknowledge that lest we think we’re breathlessly ascribing solely pure motives behind how this all got made) are, in the media, being reduced to examples of the “she-economy” in think pieces across the web. I get why these stories are written, but it sucks that they erase the fact that these pieces of pop culture may seem created for one demographic but are in practice having universal, gender-agnostic impacts. Because men love these things! Non-binary people love these things! And I hate to tell you, but some women… HATE these things! And that’s ok!

Anecdotally, some of the best conversations I’ve had around the Barbie movie are with a male friend who excellently articulated how the movie demonstrates the dangers of toxic masculinity on MEN, not just women. And if you need a shot of unbridled joy, I encourage you to watch a few Tik Toks of dudes introducing TSwift to their “bros” — their reactions are a soul cleanse of pure enthusiasm. To smush all of this into “women be shopping” behavior negates both the impact on male participants AND how powerful these phenomenon are across the gender spectrum.

Can’t we just like the stuff we like, y’all? And get to the point where we don’t try and push women-created art into a box? So if you’ll excuse me, I’ll get back to losing my shit over Taylor’s announcement of the 1989 re-records.

Anyhoo, that’s my rant for today. Drink some water, get outside, be kind to each other, won’t you?

xoxo Amy

There's A Participant Prize For Those Mornings You Wake Up And Meditate, Yes? If So, I'll Send You A Mailing Address For The Trophy.

A REMINDER! I am shifting these should-be-daily(ish) missives over to Medium, so please don’t forget to sign up here.

Darlings, it’s Wednesday, it’s nearly mid-August (eeeeek) and I’ve resisted the urge to slam back two cups of coffee before sitting down to ye old laptop this morning, which means I get to use my favorite gif:

TO THE INTERWEBS

• I want to hate this marketing bandwagon chasing, but I just can’t: ‘‘Sharknado’ Channels ‘Barbie’ as B-Movie Hit Gets New Poster, Trailer Ahead of 10th Anniversary Theatrical Release (Exclusive)’ (The Hollywood Reporter)

• Casey Newton, hear! hear! I LOLed at this line: “…Musk is essentially playing Ric Flair without the charisma”: ‘It’s time to change how we cover Elon Musk’ (Platformer)

• This is from last year, but does a good job of summing up the feeling of what I often prefer hotels over Airbnbs: ‘Relax In Our Fragile Airbnb: Just don’t touch any of our expensive, easily broken decor’ (Slackjaw)

• I read Hunter Walk because he’s the antidote to the crazy pills I feel like I’m taking whenever I read about venture capital trends: ‘“Winners Take None:” Coworking, Self Storage, Scooters Have Burned Billions of Investor Dollars and Maybe Were Never ‘Tech Companies’’

• And finally, ‘”Hank the Tank," Lake Tahoe bear linked to at least 21 home invasions, has been captured’ (CBS News) - Look, I’m going to say it because you are all thinking it: #justiceforhank

Have I told you lately that you’re lovely? Drink some water, get outside, and be kind to each other, won’t you?

Xoxo Amy

Life Changes, FTW!

Poppets! It’s been quite a spell, hasn’t it? I’ve missed chatting with you every morning, but I’ve had a couple o’ life changes and a dog without a walker last week (lady Orca needs her four hours of exercise a day, thank you very much!) 

Soooooooooo I started a new gig last Monday, as VP of Communications at Medium! After years of cheering the company on from the the sidelines, I’m officially working at a company home to “human storytelling” — and that’s pretty damned cool.

So a bit of background (which I already shared on LinkedIn, because what screams peak 2023 cringe more than multi-platforms to announce something as mundane as a job change? LOL): after 10+ years of agency life, I’ve moved in-house. But this isn’t just any in-house move, it’s a bit of a homecoming of sorts: 12 years ago, as colleagues at The Obvious Corporation when Medium was created, I first experienced Tony Stubblebine’s creativity, thoughtful leadership, and remarkable ability to build and get shit done. We’ve kept in touch throughout the years as he grew Coach.me — a key personal tool and community when I quit drinking btw — and I went agency-side in technology public affairs and then corporate reputation. And, of course, I cheered loudly from the sidelines when he took the helm of Medium as CEO last year.

So when Tony reached to see if I’d be interested in helping tell the next chapter of Medium’s history, you’d better believe I took the call. And after long and animated conversations with Scott Lamb, a media leader I’ve admired since his BuzzFeed days, discussing Medium’s external communications opportunities, and a call with Cameron Price morphed into a boisterous convo on all things employee engagement, it was clear this was an opportunity from which I couldn’t walk away.

“We believe that what you read and write matters. Words can divide or empower us, inspire or discourage us. In a world where the most sensational and surface-level stories often win, we’re building a system that rewards depth, nuance, and time well spent. A space for thoughtful conversation more than drive-by takes, and substance over packaging.” — Medium About Us

After all, we’re at a pivotal moment for public discourse, and Medium plays a critical role in that ecosystem. And when I read through Medium’s new About Us page last week, it hit home that I now work at a place dedicated to writing and how it can be shared and discovered. 

So what does this mean from a Morning Missive perspective? I’m going to be migrating all of my work and communication and daily-ish musings over to Medium — in the name of knowing a product, embracing a community, practicing what I preach, etc. etc.

And in doing so, I hope I can utilize this space you’ve granted me, a spot alongside your morning cup of coffee to skim the web and get up to speed, to dive in a bit deeper as well. I’m not going to lie, I’ve been burnt the hell out over the last year, and the mere act of pulling together a list of links every morning was getting harder to do. Now, as it is literally a part of my job to write, I’m looking forward to using this space to explore and experiment and generally have a swell old time.

I hope all of you will join me over on the Medium side of the fence, as I attempt to import all of you, dear readers, over to our new Morning Missive home. There will be speed bumps with this week of overlap between the two platforms, but I hope you’ll stick with me through the transition. So I apologize in advance if you get duplicate emails or something wonky happens - human error, it’s a thing!

As always: drink some water, get outside, and be kind to yourself, won’t you?

xoxo Amy

P.S., here’s an Orca tax for your troubles