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

Everyone is the hero of their own smartphone.

— Mark Barrett

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 ]

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 ]

A little over a month ago, after weathering a sudden deluge of chatbot spam about how artificial intelligence (AI) can purportedly crank out content and comments for me here on Ditchwalk, I wrote a short post titled AI Is the New Crypto. In that post I pegged AI generally as the next investment craze, and sure enough over the intervening weeks there has been no end of announcements — including from the biggest tech companies in the world — about AI and chatbots revolutionizing the internet, and indeed life as we know it. Well maybe, but probably not for the better.  [ Read more ]

Despite the fact that I not only enjoy winter, but have always thought of its furies and merciless silences as sacred and central to my own sense of annual renewal, I am not going to lapse into a rant about how this year’s non-winter makes clear that we have destroyed the planet. Instead, allow me to simply point out that when I took the trash out yesterday afternoon I was greeted with multiple squadrons of geese flying northwest in massive vee’s. The birds I saw must have numbered in the hundreds, and despite the fact that it is still early February they were demonstrating the same eager commitment that used to take place in mid-March.

But it’s all fine. Your heating bill this winter will be less, and you’ll be able to drive hither and yon through all four seasons, just like people from Missouri and Arkansas always have.

— Mark Barrett