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Copyright © 2002-2026 Mark Barrett 

How Not to Run a Business

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Early last week I was doing some online shopping when I ran across an intriguing site. Predictably these days, when my mouse pointer floated over a graphic I triggered a pop-up which offered me 20% off my first purchase, in exchange for my email address. Because I was considering a purchase anyway, however, that seemed like a win-win to me, so I entered my address and almost immediately received a coupon code in my inbox.

Because there were variable site offerings, and because I was buying for more than one person, I then spent time over the next few days plotting out my best use of the coupon. It wasn’t rocket science but it did take some planning, and as the weekend came to a close I felt confident about placing my order in the next day or two. But….

Before I could get to that today — Monday, less than seven days since I received the coupon code — I received a follow-up email from the site, letting me know in a good-natured but calculated way that my coupon code was about to expire. When I scanned the email, however, then read the email in detail, nowhere did it actually tell me when the code was going to expire. So not only was I being threatened with loss of the coupon code less than a week after I first visited the site, but I was being motivated to act — in a good-natured but calculated way — by the withholding of information that the site could clearly have passed along.

Now, I don’t know who thought that particular timing and messaging was the right way to engage with a prospective customer, but I am here to tell you that it was the wrong way, which is why I will not be spending between a hundred and two hundred dollars on that site. And I would have told that to the site owners themselves, but on closer inspection they don’t even have a contact page or email address, which not only seems pretty sketch but more than a little hypocritical. On the positive side, if you’re thinking about starting an online business yourself, and you can avoid acting like a remorseless extortionist, I think that will significantly increase your odds of success.

— Mark Barrett

Wooldrige on AI

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It has been about three years now since the purported visionaries who engineered the most recent slate of so-called artificial intelligence (AI) programs raced each other to the nearest podium to announce that their particular approach would solve all of humanity’s problems in the next few years. Other than a short declaration that there won’t be any AI-generated content on this site, I haven’t had much to say about AI because the average technology consumer — let alone the average citizen — simply doesn’t know what they don’t know about these applications, and that makes meaningful dialogue impossible. From time to time I have run across earnest attempts to pull back the curtain on what is essentially an industry-wide scam, but those efforts were either flawed by the same ignorance or merely sought to steer AI research in a different but equally dubious direction.

If anything has surprised me over the past three years, it is the speed with which masses of humanity have not only given themselves over to various implementations of AI, but done so enthusiastically, regardless of any potential risk. In retrospect, of course, I should have expected that because the same thing happened with cell phones and smartphones, which are now not only ubiquitous but de facto extensions of their owner’s minds, even as they are also often a demonstrable detriment to sanity. (Present the average consumer with a product which simultaneously generates and resolves an insecurity, no matter how absurd — like the fear of appearing in public without applying a crevice deodorant, or the fear of being thrown in the trunk of a car without a smartphone — and you will have an emotionally dependent customer for life.)

A few weeks ago, however, I happened across a recent lecture by Professor Michael John Wooldridge at the Royal Society, titled This Is Not the AI We Were Promised, and I have to say it’s pretty good on all fronts. If you are interested in understanding what is happening behind the AI curtain in Silicon Valley — and why you may have a persistent feeling that there is less to AI than currently meets the media eye — I think you will find that lecture worth your time.

— Mark Barrett

The Ditchwalk Music Sampler

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If you’re looking for new music — by which I mean music new to you, not necessarily new to the world — I would point you to this compilation on Bluesky.

There are currently 211 songs listed and linked, all of which can either be viewed on that page or on YouTube if you prefer. (If a song is playing on Bluesky and you scroll the page, the song will stop. To avoid this, just right-click on and launch the visible link, or click the ‘Watch on YouTube’ link in the lower-right corner of the video window.)

The songs are all broadly pop, but span virtually every conceivable genre over the past seventy-five years or so. They are loosely grouped either by…uh…group, or by genre (say, disco hits) or thematic associations, so if you find one song you like there should be others nearby which will appeal to you as well.  [ Read more ]

The Invalidation of Caitlin Clark

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Whether you are an ardent sports fan or prefer to do something productive with your spare time, even if you live outside the United States you have probably heard of a young female basketball player named Caitlin Clark. Having literally graduated over the past year from the college game to the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA), and having recently concluded her first season as a professional, I want to look back not only at her accomplishments, but at the cultural narratives which swirled around, at at times obscured, her play on the court. And the first step in that journey begins with a series of disclosures, so you know where I am coming from.  [ Read more ]

The Year of the Elm

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If I had to pinpoint when I finally decided to head down the self-publishing road, there is no question that impetus occurred as a result of writing this collection of short stories. I wrote the first story decades ago, with no thought to writing a second, but then a second story showed up, and a third, and after a while I had a dozen contemporaneous stories about the same little boy. When I contacted agents and publishers about the collection, however, I invariably received the same response. No one published short story collections, and if I wanted anyone to sign me as a client I would have to convert those episodic stories into a novel to satisfy the demands of the market.

While I was grateful for that insight into the brute realities of the publishing industry, I also believed in the structure of the work as it was, and I didn’t want to lose the effect that my authorial choices had on the reader. I have never written under the flag of art because that banner is itself routinely co-opted by the whims of the marketplace, but I am a firm believer in craft, and I could not convince myself that a novel was the best form for those stories or that character. In another era my conviction would have consigned the collection to a desk drawer, but with the advent of self-publishing — as differentiated from what was then known as vanity publishing — I could finally convey the work to readers as originally intended.

The first edition of The Year of the Elm was produced in 2010 on CreateSpace, an entirely distinct subsidiary of Amazon. If you dig around on this site you’ll find all sorts of posts exploring and debating every aspect of that initial foray into self-publishing, from pricing to cover art to ISBN registration and everything in between. And that would have been the end of it, save two related events which transpired over the past few years. First, and most importantly, Amazon killed off CreateSpace as an independent subsidiary and converted the entire CreateSpace catalogue into KDP titles. Second, while I was thinking about moving The Year of the Elm to a new self-publishing platform, I made the mistake of reading through the collection to see if there were any formatting or publishing changes I might want to make. Which is when I also discovered several glaring and hilarious botanical errors that had previously escaped my notice.

Now, if you’re not a writer yourself you won’t know this, but no work is ever really finished. Instead, you just get to a point where you either stop or go insane, and for that reason, if you’re smart, you don’t ever revisit old texts. Having proven myself not so smart with The Year of the Elm, I went ahead and fixed everything that was broken, adjusted the formatting, tweaked the cover, and otherwise improved the work and book in a dozen little ways that most people never would have noticed in the first place. And hopefully that will prevent me from making the same mistake again — at least until the next round of corporate upheaval in the self-publishing space.

Despite all of the time and effort over the years, however, I don’t regret any of it because I learned a lot. I’m also glad I decided to protect the integrity of the collection, whatever that may or may not have meant in terms of writing as a career. And I say that because one of those short stories is probably the best piece of fiction I ever wrote, and if I had smudged and smeared the stories into a novel I think I would have inevitably diminished the effect of that story, and of the collection overall.

— Mark Barrett

Homestead on the Range

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My maternal grandmother, Pearl Mirich, had a significant and enduring positive impact on my life.

When I was growing up in Iowa City, Iowa in the 1960’s and early 1970’s, I simply knew her as Grandma, and that she was a long-time Cedar Rapids junior high schoolteacher who enjoyed playing bridge with her friends on weekends. The older I got, however, and the more I learned about her life, the more I came to realize that we also instinctively shared a similar spirit and outlook, even as the context of our formative years could not have been more different.

Like many Americans who lived through the Great Depression — and later, the long and lingering toll of World War II — Grandma Pearl could be tough and even uncompromising, but her stoicism was more than a cultural convention. In the early 20th Century, when she was born, the world really was a much more dangerous place, and not just because antibiotics had yet to become commonplace. Survival often hinged on resolve and strength of will, and left little time for processing or even acknowledging traumatic events.

I didn’t know much about my grandmother’s upbringing until late in her long life, when she set down her memories of several summers spent on her older sister’s Wyoming homestead. In that text — which was passed around in the family in manuscript form for over a decade — I was able to see young Pearl finding her way in life. Later, following her death, I produced a self-published volume of that book which was given to friends and members of her large extended family.

From the consistent positive response to her simple personal history, one of the tasks I set for myself in my own old age was producing a publicly available version of her memoir. Now, after plenty of dawdling and fits and starts, that version is available. (Click the image here, or on the Books page.)

There are a lot of things I like about this particular work, but I think it’s also an important reminder that everyone has a story to tell. If you know of people in your own family whose history might be of interest to others, consider this book a testament to the value of such homespun tales. (Self-publishing isn’t trivial, but it’s worth it.)

In any event there is a lot of interesting history in this little book, including a a compelling story of sisterhood and family. And family came first for Grandma Pearl.

— Mark Barrett

Ditchwalk and Artificial Intelligence

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It has been roughly a year now since the artificial intelligence (AI) bubble took hold in both the tech world and associated financial sectors. While the utopian marketing push from those symbiotic industries has inevitably lost steam as tangible benefits fail to make themselves known to the average first-world citizen, the degree to which AI is becoming a corrosive aspect of online life and internet communications is only accelerating. Couple the concept of deepfakes with the ease of generating convincing AI content, and the very premise of media authenticity crumbles to dust.

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How to Pronounce Jaguar in American English

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If you are one of those people who have a difficult time preventing your jaw, lips, tongue and throat from turning the two-syllable word ‘jaguar’ into a harrowing, three-syllable vocal adventure, then I don’t have to tell you that you’re one of those people. In fact, just reading the title of this post may have caused you to break out in a cold sweat at the thought of saying ‘jaguar’ in public. Well you are not alone.

Not only are there a lot of people who have difficulty pronouncing ‘jaguar’ as a two-syllable word, that includes sports announcers who are ostensibly paid to speak clearly. Given that those announcers probably threw everything they could at their own struggle, you would be forgiven for thinking the problem can’t be solved. On the contrary, however, I think most people can make progress by following a few simple steps.

That said, in the scheme of things this is obviously a trivial issue, and if you don’t care how you pronounce ‘jaguar’ then you shouldn’t let anyone else tell you you’re doing it wrong. Not only is there no stigma, but some of the variants I have heard over the years have been quite charming. If how you say ‘jaguar’ does bother you, however, please read on.  [ Read more ]

The Case of the Missing Emails

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If you attempted to reach me using the address associated with this website between mid-June and mid-September of this year — including responding to an email I sent, or using the contact form — it is likely that I never received your message. If you were fortunate you may have received an error letting you know your communication did not go through, but if you use Gmail you may have been blocked from seeing any failure notice for the same reason you were blocked from seeing my email. This post explains what happened and why, so you can make sure it doesn’t happen to you.

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