Frustrated little dude gripping a pencil saying “how do I pack this down into something I can actually share?” While swirling rainbows labeled “INFINITE POTENTIAL” float around them. Little dude frowns at a tiny grey box, exclaiming “all that work for THIS?!” Little dude shoves the grey box into another little guy’s hands; Frowning, stomping off, and saying “Here you go, I made this, it sucks.” Second little dude cracks open the box, swirling rainbows project out onto their face. Second little dude stares in awe at all the swirling rainbows now floating around them.

Sometimes we’re unsatisfied with a thing we made because when it only existed in our head, we saw all the things it could have been and when it’s done we know all the things that it isn’t, but we can’t see the way it expands into a million new things when someone else unpacks it in their head. 🖊️🦑

Slack is down at work today and I feel like I truly, fully understand peace.

Do you tip your chiropractor? Not urgent, I made my appointment via a Square-based platform, so just mentally preparing for the inevitable.

A clear starting point, learning how to navigate a complex, often bureaucratic, systems to reach a defined end point; while self-motivating to meet deadlines and manage personal/school to-do lists. This is the value that college brought me, rather than gaining specific knowledge or skills.

Merry Christmas to all (except retailers who place hard to remove price stickers directly on products)!!!

Perfect start to Christmas: date night with my great-grandma 🥰🎄🎁

Instacart delivery drivers who accept orders from Costco should be required by LAW to have a cart. 3 trips between lobby and condo door is utterly painful 🥲🤪

Interesting takeaway is that the “wrapped” or year-in-review style content isn’t necessarily unique or what differentiates for Spotify, it’s in the packaging. The UX, the highly shareable design, the engaging and compelling presentation of the content.

I think after GenZ we should maybe hold off on any new slang. Can't be too careful. Just a short moratorium while we figure out what went wrong there

I realized that, until today, I had not thought about Marjorie Taylor Greene in at least 30 days, since I deactivated my account on X. That’s a really beautiful thing. 🥲

Economic impact of banning TikTok in the US will be painful for many. $35B + in contributions to the GDP, largely driven by SMB. Hundreds of thousands of jobs. Creators + trends that drive consumer spending. It’s not just “entertainment”, it’s a digital marketplace and it’s fueling our economy.

Netflix, Mastercard Team to Offer Cardholders Perks for Streamer’s Live, In-Person Experiences Mastercard cardholders will get exclusive perks for Netflix's live experiences like 'Stranger Things: The First Shadow' based on popular shows.

Netflix + Mastercard are doubling down on experiential. 60% of consumers are actively saving to indulge in experiences that fuel their passions. We’re moving towards a future where the line between entertainment, shopping, storytelling, + culture are completely blurred.

variety.com/2024/digital...

Year in Review 2024! 👀 Instagram is dead to us... so what's next for creatives? https://buff.ly/3Q6SfIw

I still post to IG, engagement be damned, as a bit of a photo diary for myself. However, there’s very little joy left in the experience. What used to be about connection and expression is now almost exclusively meant to push products and influencers on me…and I’m just not interested.

IG is unusable.
- notifications UX doesn’t make sense nor provide value
- tap to react doesn’t work, requiring 2-3 taps to finally function
- feed is, at minimum, 75% sponsored, 25% accounts I follow
- engagement has cratered (probably b/c my friends and family aren’t shown my posts in their feed)

people say “you need to start living in the real world” but they forget that the real world includes lupines and lightning bugs and ginger beer and starlight and sea coasts and Renoir paintings and Rachmaninoff’s piano concertos and fog banks and foxes playing in snow.

Spotify’s personalization engine doesn’t operate the way it used to. Instead of delivering new finds and relevant recommendations, it is a loop of resurfaced music I liked earlier this year, or two years ago. For that reason, Spotify Wrapped is basically a copy/paste of last year, for me.

December is my Super Bowl for thrifting and vintage markets, with folks replacing and donating to make room for their Black Friday & Cyber Monday hauls. If you’re in Minneapolis here are my favorite spots:
- wild vintage collective
- E’s emporium
- The cat and the cobra
- Salvation Army North Loop

People who are gonna be grumpy about it are hopefully still over on X 😅

Sean Kim, former TikTok Head of Product, named CEO of AI-powered video app, Triller. Triller is interesting to me - their suite of advanced AI tools to create + edit videos, specific content challenges, creator marketplace, enhanced content analytics, etc. feels like it’ll resonate with creators.

An unbelievable, and yet, completely believable update here from Tesla. What kind of juvenile product feature will Elon prioritize next? Built-in Axe body spray car fresheners, perhaps?

Quick, what do y’all watch when you finish the absolute classic December movie, The Holiday? Similar energy, same type of vibe

AI generated composite image, loosely based on a CoBrA, Dadaism, Futurism artistic style. Representative of a consumer discovery journey. Varied opacity for artistic effect.

Feeling creative + hiding from the cold, I took bits from ~30 of my GenAI illustrations to create a composite image loosely influenced by a CoBrA, Dadaism + Futurism artistic style. My take on narrative abstraction with a playful, surrealist edge. This was for fun, but I’d love critiques. ;) #AIArt

“While technology and discovering businesses online will continue to be crucial, after COVID we have in fact seen a shift in younger consumers’ behaviors as they desire more IRL, human connections”

What’s more, shopping small is a priority for Gen Z + Millennials, at least for 55% of respondents.

My favorite game-changing prompt for ChatGPT? “Ask me a series of questions that will allow you to operate better and return stronger outputs.”

10 minutes spent responding and a noticeable improvement in output.

The Fantasy of Cozy Tech From the “cozy gaming” trend to a new generation of A.I. companions, our devices are trying to swathe us in a digital and physical cocoon.

This growing trend of #CozyTech really resonates with me. Products like Phillips Hue, the Pura diffuser, Hatch Restore, make my life feel calmer and bring me a sense of balance. I’m curious to see how this trend extends to mobile gaming, AI companions, software.

www.newyorker.com/culture/infi...

A ‘disrupter,’ or any startup, really, ideally seeks to solve a problem or meet an unmet consumer need. We don’t need more books; we need more quality books—well-written and thought-provoking.

Churning out 8,000 books using AI is the wrong solution to the wrong problem.

What we learnt at the Vogue Business Future of Shopping Summit The event, held at The Bowery Hotel in New York, brought together retail and brand leaders and disruptors to discuss where shopping is headed in 2025.

At the Vogue Business Future of Shopping Summit, leaders emphasized the rise of personalized experiences + AI in retail. My takeaways: stay true to strategy, engage communities, + blend online/offline experiences. Future of shopping is hybrid + tech-integrated

www.voguebusiness.com/story/events...

I love a good book - read a lot of ‘em in fact. But for some reason my feed here is almost exclusively obscure posts about books or authors. It’s not necessarily irritating, but I’d love my algo to deliver a more diverse set of topics 🤪

Hello Blue Sky! Thought I’d introduce myself. I’m Patrick.

My professional interests: consumer behavior, human-centered design, + innovation ecosystems

Personally into cultural trends + global influences, health + wellness, travel, + thoughtful interiors

If these topics resonate, let’s connect!