Category: 21st Century Sideshow

500 intriguing new ways to end a letter or email, according to our AI overlords 

Photo by Scott Graham on Unsplash

I DON’T KNOW IF this is a personal quirk or if others have this happen, but I bump into all sorts of odd and/or amusing content as I look for things to share on this blog. Most of the time, I couldn’t tell you how I found this kind of stuff, but here’s a good example of something interesting and amusing that I found recently.

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Yes, Today’s Crazy Job Listings REALLY Have Gone Off the Deep End

I’VE SEEN A LOT of job listings over the last few years, so why am I surprised at some of the preposterous skill requirements that some hiring managers seem to be looking for? I shouldn’t be — but then I saw this one. Here’s what was listed as the No. 1 required skill for a

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Is “Ghosting” a Big Problem? Well, I Was Ghosting Back When Ghosting Wasn’t Cool

WHO SAYS THERE’S no such thing as “fake” news? I’m reminded of this whenever I read about how the “ghosting” trend (people skipping job interviews, failing to show up when they get hired, or bailing from a new job with no warning) is disrupting recruiting and hiring, because the more I hear about it, the more

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Smartphone Addiction: It’s Problematic, Self-Destructive, and Taking Over Our Lives

People are in denial about their smartphone addiction. That’s what I take from a recent survey from KDM Engineering titled Smartphone Etiquette that hit my email recently. As I read the findings, all I kept thinking was, “This doesn’t surprise me at all.” Here are a few of the topline findings: A whopping 92 percent of Americans believe

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Summer Reading: The Best Dr. Seuss Book Is One You May Have Never Heard Of

EVERYBODY SEEMS TO HAVE their favorite book by the late, great Dr. Seuss. But picking the “best” Dr. Seuss book isn’t easy. According to The Washington Post, Dr. Seuss’s 45 plus published books have been translated into 17 languages and have sold 650 million copies in 95 countries. A number of them have also been turned into

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Yes, This Is Probably the Greatest, and the “Ballsiest,” Cover Letter of All Time

REMEMBER THE OLD military concept of “shock and awe“? It got a lot of attention during the Iraq War, and is defined as rapidly dominating an opponent “by the initial imposition of overwhelming force and firepower.” But “shock and awe” isn’t just for the military; it’s useful whenever you want to overwhelm someone quickly and

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Here’s More Proof That in Life, It’s Never Too Late to Make An Apology

JUST WHEN I’M ABOUT ready to finally give up on human nature, something happens that helps to give me a little hope again. And believe it or not, this new hope comes courtesy of controversial radio personality and “King of All Media” Howard Stern. I’ve watched or listened to Howard for many years, and although I don’t

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Starbucks Training Day Was More About Changing Culture Than Anything Else

HERE’S THE BOTTON LINE on the recent anti-racial bias training at Starbucks, and it was captured perfectly in the headline on The New York Times story about the big event. It said: Starbucks’s Tall Order: Tackle Systemic Racism in 4 Hours Yup, the NYT is right; it’s unlikely that Starbucks, or any other company, is going to make much

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Queen Elizabeth Should Be Proud: Her TV Counterpart Is Finally Getting Paid Properly

LIKE SO MANY PEOPLE, one of my very favorite shows on TV today is the Netflix original The Crown. I love it for the same reason’s I loved Mad Men — it brought me up to speed on an era I was too young to fully appreciate but just old enough to vaguely remember. But,

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It’s Finally Time to Kiss the Office Christmas Party Goodbye

THE HEADLINE ON A STORY in a recent issue of The Wall Street Journal pretty much said it all: Welcome to the Post-Weinstein Holiday Party. What followed was 1,400 depressing words that basically said, without actually saying it, something that you probably already know — the company Christmas/holiday party as we know it is officially dead and gone.

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