"...headline hyperbole has taken an explosive turn"- Jonathan Bouquet, The Guardian, May 29, 2022. In the attention economy , which operates more and more on clickbait, headlines are high-value currency. Early in the digital game, when I began blogging in 2005, I got it: An article not receiving many page views could get a second life if it was reposted with a different (read that "more catchy") headline. Usually that was effective. And if the article was popular it could get a third life by being posted later with another catchy headline. As competition keeps increasing for attention, it's become a dog fight. You bet I focus on how I can create THE headline which will grab, hold, and grow attention. Incidentally it was partly because I was so skilled in the headline game that AOL had hired me as contract career columnist. If something wasn't attracting eyeballs, then slap on another headline. We will continue to juice the headlines. That will be the ...
"'I wish we had done better with lots of things,' [Chief Executive Officer Parag] Agrawal said during the call [an impromptu kind of town meeting with all Twitter employees]." - Insider, April 29, 2022. Earlier the media reported that the chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde wept at a meeting with her people. She reflected that the future was so uncertain. She also expressed her extreme pride in what they had accomplished. The mood among both the leadership and rank-and-file at Twitter seems to be grief. The profound kind when something big is about be lost - forever. Decades ago so many Gulf Oil employees - present and past - experienced exactly that when Chevron acquired it. Intuitively we knew Our Family of Orange had been wiped out. Although the details are different, what is going on at Twitter and the new film "Memory" could be this: The sense that the very very rich are unstoppable and beyond the norms of society and even justice. Already Musk ...
The good versus evil meme plays out over control of the Ministry of Magic. That's the delightful plot and setting for the latest sequel in the "Fantastic Beasts" film series. This one has the subtitle "Secrets of Dumbledore." The good side is represented by Albus Dumbledore and the evil one by Gellert Grindelwald. What hangs this all together is the need to protect the mystical creature Qilin which can see into souls and foresee the future. Meanwhile Grindelwald has conjured up a fraudulent version of the Qilin. Magic, of course, is the way problems are solved and opportunities are seized in the film. Those on the Dumbledore team use white magic. Those on Grindelwald's the toxic kind. But, white magic wins, thanks to the ability to get the Qilin to the election to select what leader is pure of heart. Along the way the displays of fanastic whatevers, including the beasts, are amazing. And, like a Shakespearean comedy, the film ends with a wedding. Al...
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