So What, Who Cares (vol 1, issue 63) Why you should brush up on your barometer-making skills
Hello! I apologize for not sending out So What, Who Cares? last night/this morning. I got sucked into the series finale of Sons of Anarchy and could not think straight after being beaten about the head and shoulders with symbolism for the last 40 minutes of the two hour show. I'll be sending out a make-good edition on Friday night/Saturday morning.
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A newsletter follow-up note: Several of you have very strong opinions on Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime." None of those opinions could be considered endorsements. All of them only confirm that my readers have great taste.
Please continue to send me your opinions on which Christmas carols need to be expunged from the modern canon via email or Twitter.
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Weather nerds will make or break a holiday retail season. Shipping companies like UPS and FedEx employ their own meteorologists to help predict where and when storms will strike and/or weather will snarl up the movement of packages all over the country prior to December 25. Private meteorologists also work for retailers like Wal-Mart and Home Depot, telling them when they might want to stock up on storm supplies and anticipate customer rushes.
So what? Weather data is big business. One company that trafficked in predictive weather analysis, The Climate Corporation, made $400,000,000 off agricultural clients (it has since been bought), all for being able to tell them what weather would likely mean for crop yields.
Being able to weather-proof your business is the difference between being able to turn a profit or going broke. And thanks to the one-two punch of e-tailers promoting rush shipping during the holidays and shipping companies letting customers track their packages on the Web, it's more important than ever to shipping companies to be able to work through inclement weather. Having good weather data means being able to futz with everything from cargo plane schedules to delivery route timing.
Who cares? The rise of private weather analysis is really an indicator that private, specialized data analysis is a growth field. In other words, it's big data. If you're looking for a way to keep your job skills fresh for the next decade, figure out how to combine an in-depth nerdy passion for a information-rich field with data analysis. If you're looking for a way to become rich beyond imagining, figure out a way to reduce the overhead in data preparation, i.e. turning mountains of raw digital data into clean, coherent tracts that can then be queried.
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L.L. Bean is out of duck boots. Seriously. This is an actual thing that has happened in the U.S.A. The company began tracking an uptick in sales two years ago and tied the uptick to college students and urban trendsetters; apparently, the handmade boots channel the same artisanal, authentic feelings that a subscription to Modern Farmer or Kinfolk does. And now, thanks to the boot's popularity, the company's sold out until February 2015.
So what? The Gap's Dress Normal campaign has not worked (vol 1, issue 51) -- and it continues to not-work, to the point where the Gap's chief marketing officer is leaving the company -- but this is another indicator that normcore is not going away. We are in for a season or two of resolutely sensible shoes, all in the name of modish apparel. Get your classic Tevas before they sell out!
Who cares? Not me! I already have a pair. In all seriousness, this story illustrates one of the innate limitations of the handmade, small-scale economy: One of the reasons there's a shortage is because it takes at least six months just to learn how to operate the machine that helps the bootmaker stitch the boots. For handmade goods, it is extremely difficult to scale the expertise or to compress the learning process. As a result, there's a gap between demand and supply.
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Your holiday pop culture note of the day: Have you all seen Kiss Kiss Bang Bang as part of your holiday line-up?
It is a sorely underappreciated gem in the "The holidays make this improbable situation more antic and stressful!" genre (see also: The Ref, Gremlins) and you all should see it as soon as possible, mostly because it features Robert Downey Jr. being a very good actor and not "Robert Downey Jr., highest-paid actor in Hollywood."
That is because this movie came out in 2005, and the press surrounding it was all, "Who is the greater Hollywood casualty -- Val Kilmer or Robert Downey Jr.?" So you have two very good actors who are basically freed from the burden of high expectations, and they kill it in this movie about a petty thief, a gay detective and some magic tricks. And thanks to the magic of the Internet, you can pretend you listened to the DVD commentary too.
Check out a clip here for a flavor of the chemistry between Kilmer/Downey. You can rent the movie for $2.99/$3.99 on Amazon Instant video or $2.99/$3.99 on iTunes.
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Did you miss an issue of So What, Who Cares? The archive is here.
Also, there is now a topic index that tells you what was in each issue. If you're like, "When did she send out a picture of Brandon Routh snuggling a kitty cat?" -- well, now you can find it. (It was November 11, 2014, btw.)
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