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The last time Amazon didn’t post at least 14 percent sales growth in a quarter was the fall of 2001. Whoa.

Check out the chart above; essentially, the last time that Amazon had quarter-over-quarter sales growth of less than 14 percent was, ahem, 2001. This is a completely new model in the business world in some ways, because while their sales growth — and the… Continue Reading →

Brief thought exercise: if your parents’ marriage is great (bad), will similar elements of your marriage be great (bad)?

Start with a baseline assumption of two parents that stayed together and had a relatively happy marriage — or, if you want, two parents that ultimately separated but maintained a functional, happy environment for the children involved. In either of… Continue Reading →

Is HBO’s “Veep” the most underrated (or even the best) comedy on TV right now?

Veep just got renewed for Season 4 (Season 3 is airing right now) and there’s lots of scuttlebutt these days about Julia Louis-Dreyfus — having sex with a clown for GQ, posing naked on the cover of Rolling Stone — and in some ways… Continue Reading →

The three most-searched-for terms in porn, from an occupation standpoint, are likely “teacher,” then “babysitter,” then “nurse”

The cliche is “pizza delivery boy” or “plumber,” but the reality is: Full data here (the link is safe for work; it’s just their Insights blog, which can actually teach you a lot about the habits of different parts of… Continue Reading →

The process of boarding a plane was 50 percent slower in 1998 than in 1970. Can we fix this process? (Hello, Steffen Method vs. WILMA)

There is a surprising amount of research out there on the effectiveness of different plane-boarding processes — and, honestly, a surprising amount of videos on YouTube of literally nothing more than people waiting to board a plane. I suppose it all makes… Continue Reading →

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Can the Brand Arc, via ZOO and Google, help marketers better understand how to tell their story?

ZOO is an “agency for agencies,” or, said another way — it’s a custom solution for those trying to market/advertise across Google and YouTube. It’s run (essentially) by this guy Eric Solomon, who got a PhD in psychology (a good field… Continue Reading →

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Did Mad Men use the same foreshadowing clue as How I Met Your Mother once did?

You won’t see Mad Men and How I Met Your Mother compared that often — although Neil Patrick Harris could probably fit seamlessly on both — but they may have dropped a similar foreshadowing technique in their final couple of seasons. Above, you see… Continue Reading →

Is Jeff Teague going to become a star as the Hawks beat the Pacers in Round 1?

Pretty much all the signs are there, even if you don’t want to admit them/see them: 1. The Hawks won Game 1 of their series vs. the Pacers (the top overall seed in the Eastern Conference), and it wasn’t like it… Continue Reading →