This year, we promise not to write another sentence that begins, “In today’s world.” This usually cues some tired generality about the accelerating pace of change in business and life. Enough already. Speed, sound and stimuli have their place but it’s time to ramp up our investment in three other s’s—slowness, space and silence. Oh, and simplicity. If your product or service makes your customers’ world more fragile or complex, can you please rethink it?

Given the worldwide rise of anti-elite sentiment, appealing to exclusivity is going to get tougher and riskier, at least overtly. The new new luxury might depend on a subtle new set of marketing dog whistles.

They Shall
Not Grow Old

What if you took old, grainy, over-cranked footage of soldiers’ everyday lives from WWI, smoothed it out, slowed it down, and added sound and color? A distant time and place would suddenly become more immediate and moving. That’s what director Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings) has done.

Look past the obvious link to sex and redefine porn more broadly as getting off on the idea of something more than actually doing it: You’ll start to see a general trend towards pornification in all kinds of areas. We’ve got a front row seat to plenty of true, fabulous, category-creating innovation. But it somehow pales to the sheer number of organizations, conversations and initiatives around it.

Moral Grandstanding:

striking a moral posture (often in a tone of indignation or outrage) in social media to gin up followers and influence. Replaces morality. Yet another way people literally turn into posers.

(tweeted November 27, 2018)

Tunde Jegede
& NOK Orchestra

The composer’s contemporary take on the classical kora music of Mali tugs at the heartstrings.

Motus

On the heels of a major acquisition, the leader in reimbursement for the mobile-enabled worker works out a radical new positioning and messaging platform to move to when the market moment is right.

With Hamagami/Carroll, Los Angeles

Mill Valley
Lumberyard

Respect the patience and planning department back-and-forth that must have gone into renovating this green, creeky retail oasis. Yes, it’s in the toniest of Marin towns, but that shouldn’t count against its thoughtful, quirky, maker-centered vibe.

MUT

Territoria, a daring and deeply principled Chilean design and development firm, articulates its vision and introduces a name for a sustainable, multi-faceted market and cultural space just above Santiago’s busiest metro station.

With BLOK, Toronto

“Capitalism works on media time, rendering commodities obsolete quickly so that it can constantly entice consumers to buy new ones. But human culture — the way that people engage with the world, including with art and music and film and television and books and games — operates on fan time.”

Abigail de Kosnik, Washington Post.
(tweeted November 27, 2018)

Hunter of Stories
by Eduardo Galeano

A posthumous parting gift from the great Uruguayan reteller of historical incidents and legends at risk of being lost. Galeano is a master of the epigram and vignette who puts both of these forms at the service of honesty, dignity and provocation.

CU Direct Introduces Origence

A fast-growing lending industry innovator introduces a new era of digital lending with a name for its new SaaS lending platform.

Al Nawras

Yemeni food shares many qualities with other Middle Eastern cuisines but includes traditions, dishes and flavors all its own. This friendly South End restaurant wins praise for serving Yemeni cuisine “just like back home.”

—Thank you, Rashid Alnozili

Wattpad

Messing around with this story-sharing platform to explore what’s on offer in a world of fiction without the mediating influence of publishing houses—and to better understand the platform dynamic at work. How literary is it? An open question for now (and, to be honest, one that might not matter to everyone).

Izakaya Hachi

What tapas would be if they were Japanese. Inventive tapas at that, with offbeat ingredients and thoughtful preparations. In a food-centric mini-mall that offers decent alternatives if you mistakenly show up thinking Hachi is also open for lunch.

—Thank you, Mia Natsume

Absolute

A new narrative supports a strategic pivot that introduces a new cybersecurity paradigm—Enterprise Resilience…

Chili Joe's

Take the best, most iconic LA fast food faves from the previous three generations and then lovingly recreate them using fresh, local Sonoma ingredients. We’re here at least once a week.

For those individuals who desire not to be segmented, sorted and second-guessed, we anticipate a new generation of tools and services that blur personal behavioral data. By making ourselves less predictable,
we might help to break down the silos fragmenting our society. The corollary to machine learning: machine unlearning. Or, pataphysics.