So What, Who Cares (vol 2, issue 87) Who's up for a June wrap-up?

Hello! A big thank-you to all of you who hung in with me during the May hiatus and have stayed steadfast through June. I appreciate your readership more than you know. Also, I appreciate how few of you (i.e. none) wrote in to say, "Wait ... did you somehow completely screw up the numbering system for your newsletters?" And the answer is, Yes. I did. Oh boy, did I. (**cringe**)

So! Here's what So What, Who Cares? covered this month:

AMAZON HAS BEEN BUSY. They're making a move into their own private-label grocery business, a move meant to shore up their Amazon Prime flank against an encroaching Wal-Mart play (vol 2, issue 55). And they are about to blow open the publishing industry (again) through their new compensation scheme for self-published authors, a development which introduces Amazon's technology for monitoring how much of each book is read before the author receives any royalties and allows Amazon to gather insane amounts of data on how and what we're reading (vol 2, issue 86).

THE AMERICAN DIET IS ABOUT TO GET HIT WITH A ONE-TWO-THREE PUNCH. Punch #1: Panicking Big Food companies are trying to woo back consumers that are increasingly concerned with fresh and local food, preferably made without ingredients that are subject to nearly no safety testing or government oversight (vol 2, issue 79). Punch #2: the bird flu may challenge some Thanksgiving menus (vol 2, issue 84). And Punch #3: The German conglomerates that own Trader Joe's and Aldi's have managed to train a hefty percentage of Teutons to accept smaller grocery stores with less inventory and more seasonal offerings -- and now they're aiming to transplant that model to the U.S. (vol 2, issue 85).

THERE ARE NEW PREMIUM PRODUCTS TO CONSUME. As in, there's a rise in "glamping," i.e. glamorous camping, which raises some sticky issues when private glamping companies are staking out public-park campsites and effectively barring a less-moneyed camper from enjoying the park that they, too, are paying taxes to maintain (vol 2, issue 77). Disney is becoming the province of the moneyed and doubling down on the "experience as a luxury" angle (vol 2, issue 84). And new home goods retailer Snowe aims to become the Everlane of $265 cotton sheet sets, complete with ethical origin stories for all its goods (vol 2, issue 85).

SCIENCE: ALL ABOUT THE 'CAN WE PRINT HUMAN SKIN?' QUESTION, NOT THE 'SHOULD WE PRINT HUMAN SKIN QUESTION." Well, the point to that science brief was covered in the kicker, wasn't it (vol 2, issue 83), but the other fun science briefs this month looked at how our personality influences how we perceive time (vol 2, issue 81).

THE ROBOTS ARE COMING FOR OUR JOBS. A look at the trend of quantifying your job pointed out that is quantification is the smoke signalling the real workplace fire: a shift away from easily specialized, rote jobs. Quantifying the specific tasks someone does is the first step toward identifying how to automate them (vol 2, issue 56). And the robots are already gunning for fast-fashion factory work, thanks to an innovative new method for doing piecework (vol 2, issue 80).

MICROSOFT IS LAYING THE GROUNDWORK TO RULE VIRTUAL REALITY WHERE IT COUNTS: IN THE WORKPLACE. A trio of patents suggests that the company is getting ready to develop a suite of software tools that will become the default in professional training and simulations, especially in industries that require a lot of hands-on work or configuring physical spaces (vol 2, issue 80).

ONE SIDE EFFECT OF WOMEN MAKING SERIOUS PROFESSIONAL INROADS: DELAYED PARENTHOOD. Women in their 30s and 40s are driving the current uptick in baby-making -- and it's the result of younger women getting more education, focusing more at work and "adding to their family by choice, not by surprise." (vol 2, issue 83).

AND FINALLY: IT WAS A FUN MONTH TO WATCH RETAIL. I outlined the reasons why stalking retail companies made for high drama in our turbulent times (vol 2, issue 78) and a scant week later, both The Gap and J. Crew made headlines for their sales spirals -- demonstrating how precarious it is to be a mid-market retailer at a time when the American middle class is hollowing out (vol 2, issue 82). How fitting that Lucky magazine chose that week to give up the ghost too.

AND IN POP CULTURE:

It was a month for remixes: The delightful, delightful mashup between Max Mad: Fury Road and The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. (vol 2, issue 55), the Marvel 99 mashups, which take stills from the Marvel Cinematic Universe properties and transpose quotes and situations from Brooklyn 99, The Grand Overlook Hotel, which mashes up footage from The Shining and The Grand Budapest Hotel, the SNL sketch "The Midnight Coterie of Sinister Intruders," the now-classic recut movie trailer "Shining," Frozen recut as a trailer for a horror movie, and 10 Things I Hate About Commandments (vol 2, issue 77). You could also make the argument that Text from Superheroes is another iteration of remix culture (vol 2, issue 83).

I looked at the beautiful people with an exhaustive list of reads about the modeling and fashion industry, inspired by "How Ford Models Changed the Face of Beauty" in June's Vanity Fair (vol 2, issue 56). A little bit later, inspired by Bryce Dallas Howard's high heel stunts in Jurassic World, I recommended some more style-conscious reads (vol 2, issue 82), but my favorite book about fashion was Robin Givhan's The Battle of Versailles: The Night American Fashion Stumbled into the Spotlight and Made History, which I recommended in vol 1, issue 81.

I also recommended these non-comic, non-style books: I Am Not Myself These Days by Josh Kilmer-Purcell (vol 2, issue 86), Michael Davis's Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street (vol 2, issue 79) and Caitlin Moran's How to Be a Woman (vol 2, issue 84).

In comic books, I lost my mind with joy over Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie's Phonogram: Rue Brittania and The Wicked and the Divine (vol 2, issue 84). And on film, I lost my mind with joy over a colorized version of Georges Méliès' 1902 film A Trip to the Moon (vol 2, issue 78).

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Are there typos? I apologize in advance. The only editing class I did not get an A in was copyediting.

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