Sometimes you buy a movie because you’ve always meant to watch it. Other times, you buy one because the price is right, and you know it’ll eventually come around in your collection. That’s exactly what happened with Paul. As I continue working backward through my iTunes library of more than 400 movies, Paul was the…
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Every once in a while, I make the mistake of stepping into a political discussion on social media. Most of the time, it reminds me why I don’t do it very often. The latest conversation started with a list of “warning signs” that people often associate with authoritarianism. Someone asked which political party those warning…
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Can I tighten up these articles? Absolutely. I can make them shorter. I can strip them down, clean them up, and measure every paragraph down to the millimeter of available text space. I can make each article deliver one clean point, remove every detour, and get the reader in and out as quickly as possible.…
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One of my longest-standing professional values can be summed up with a simple phrase: Never go fishing off the company pier. That principle can apply to customers, coworkers, professional contacts, gambling, relationships, and just about any other situation where personal decisions can become tangled up with how you earn your living. Recently, I picked up…
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One of the funniest things about working multiple gigs is how quickly people assume that every skill you have comes bundled together. Nope. That’s a different billable code. I drive rideshare. That means my job is to get you from Point A to Point B safely and efficiently. If we have a great conversation along…
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One of the great things about working rideshare and living the gig life is that you never run out of stories. Every day brings a new conversation, a new situation, or a new lesson about dealing with people. One situation that comes up from time to time is when passengers ask for recommendations. “Where should…
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Like a lot of people, I had already seen countless clips from The Menu on YouTube Shorts. One scene here, another scene there, and before long it felt like I had seen half the movie without ever actually sitting down and watching it from beginning to end. When Apple put it on sale for $4.99,…
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Every once in a while, you get one of those emails that makes you stop and laugh. Mine started with the familiar pitch: ChatGPT isn’t a magic wand. Are you struggling to get good results? Let me show you the right way. No thanks. Let’s get one thing straight. I don’t have a problem with…
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There is something that constantly happens in my family. My sisters—especially the second oldest—love sending old family pictures into the family chat. Every once in a while, I’ll look at one of those faded photographs and think, “Let’s throw this through ChatGPT and see what it can do.” People tend to think restoring old photographs…
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