There must be some irony in welcoming the new year while also starting the dead of winter.  It always feels like the new year is eventually going to be this fresh start, you just have to get through January, February, March, and a bit of April to get to the “fresh” part.  

The other side of the fresh start is putting all the holiday stuff away.  I remember driving through my neighbourhood in August and my 5 year old pointed out with her keen eyesight a Christmas tree with its lights on in someone’s condo.  I’m all for trying to keep the holiday spirit alive as long as possible but there comes a time when you have to move on.  

My wife loves Christmas blow ups.  If she had it her way our front yard would be an army of nylon Santa’s, Snowmen, and anything else she can find online.  We tend to put them out early in December and then watch our street as the other nylon Santa blow-ups make their way to the front yards of other houses.  We currently have like 6 or 7 that stand tall in and around our street...there was clearly a sale at Costco for these things.

But then there’s the taking them down part, which if you’re lucky, you do so before the weather gets really bad.  In which case you bring them in and do this 👇️ . 

Until next year giant Costco/Canadian Tire impulse buys!

This week's issue is a 3 minute read:

💔 The land of the rising single people

🧑‍💻 Lost in the Amazon

🤦‍♂️ IT’S JUST A CUP

Ain’t no datin’ going on in Japan

Years ago I stumbled upon the world of hosts in Japan, essentially men and women who work at bars (host clubs) and get paid to drink with the people who show up.  The business model behind being a host is to be kind, charming, and good looking which hopefully increases your odds that clients will want to stay longer in the club, subsequently buying more alcohol.    

The typical clientele of the male host clubs tend to be women in their early 20’s to early 30’s, often times they’re hostesses themselves, stopping in to the host club after their shift is done being a hostess at their club. 

With over 300 host clubs alone in Tokyo and something like 15,000+ hosts in Japan, why would you ever think to date someone when you can pay to hang out with people whenever you want?

Well it turns out there’s a big chunk of the population in Japan who are not only single but in fact have never actually dated someone before.  More than one third of unmarried adults ranging from 20 to 40 years old have never been in a relationship, while one fourth of this group have no intention of ever getting married. 

The number one reason for men not wanting to get married is the financial strain of being married whereas the number one reason for women is that they don’t want to give up their freedom and independence.

So be single and spend time and money at host clubs instead...?

Getting paid to do nothing 

This is Nelson “Big Head” Bighetti.  He “worked” for Hooli initially getting paid $600K/year to sit on a lawn chair on the roof of his office.  This isn’t real of course, Big Head is a character on the HBO show Silicon Valley.  Getting paid a lot of money at a tech company to literally do nothing isn’t a thing.

Oh wait, it totally is!

Justin Garrison, a now former employee (as of yesterday) of Amazon’s cloud business, AWS, wrote a blog about essentially becoming a real life “Big Head”.  After going on a serious round of layoffs last year, AWS teams went from being lean to essentially emancipated according to Garrison.  As result, ain’t no one there to do the work, let alone to barely keep the lights on.  

And so ironically, as Garrison has made predictions for some major AWS outages for 2024, he found himself in a situation where they were severely stalling on giving him a severance package after he and his team were told their jobs were going to be eliminated. Instead of firing him, Garrison was told to find another role within the company.  Meanwhile his boss wanted to keep the headcount he had for his team but not fire any of his employees.  Translation: lemme have my cake and eat it too.

Garrison was left in limbo between September and January of this year where he hadn’t found another role and there seemingly wasn’t any work for him to do, all the while getting paid at minimum, an estimated $200K/year salary.  

The latest in random retail crazes

Remember when everyone freaked out and stocked up on toilet paper during the pandemic for no real logical reason? (Meanwhile essential things like non-perishable foods were always in stock)

How about when Popeyes kept selling out of their spicy chicken sandwich?…which was just a spicy…chicken…sandwich.

Or looking waaaaay back, when Tickle Me Elmo first came out and you couldn’t find one anywhere.

Fun Toys R Us hack - if they ever bring them back, make all the Elmo’s laugh at the same time on the store shelves. I dare you not to laugh.

In the what are we doing as a human race department today, that craze over the Stanley Mug is still alive and very real. I thought this was a hit Christmas gift and that’s why everyone wanted to get one. But Christmas is long over and people are still going nuts to get one. IT’S JUST A MUG.