George

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January 15, 2018




Dear George,


I hope this letter finds you in good health and strong spirits up there in the frozen tundra that is the Buckeye State this time of the year.  We are determined to come and see you and Janet in your near-term natural habitat.  Just not while the snow dunes are too high to allow for the safe passage of air traffic.  After 5 years and as many addresses in the Seattle area we finally bought a house just across the channel from the former “Jet City,” now the Amazon Jungle, on Vashon Island.

The bit of work we decided to put into it before moving our stuff over there has snowballed just a tad to become a full-fledged remodel.  We’re currently waiting on the flooring to arrive so that it can be installed and we can move in on top of it.  And we’re excited about becoming islanders.  We can see Puget Sound and sometimes hear orcas from the front yard!  But certain aspects of the property are going to be a long-term project. **COUmoneysuckGH**

As part of Project Gratitude 2018, I’m writing you to say thanks.  When I worked with you, and then under your leadership as a draftsman in the Dallas office, your patient, hard-working example was a pleasure to follow.  Even then, I never foresaw the friendship that would bloom years later after my attempts to ride into the sunset were rick-rolled, and you rescued me from the claws of XXX.  Maybe I should say purchased, but whatever.

When you and Janet took Jenn and me on the tour de Finger Lakes on our first cold visit to Upstate, we didn’t imagine that over the next two years we’d spend so many beautiful summer Saturdays together tasting wines and badmouthing Yankee attempts at BBQ and Tex-Mex together.  Sweet memories abound, from visits to the Thirsty Owl, to initiating new hires at Horigan’s over shepherd’s pie and Guinness, to our glorious rounds of pun-tification. I’ve really never had or heard of a professional/personal relationship that worked out so well in both realms.

Thank you for your trust with the grooming of the Boston area office.  I remember coming to you to ask exactly what and how you wanted me to go about the grooming of a new detailing team there, and you basically told me that you were sure I would figure it out.  That was definitely one of those moments when having my hand batted away, or maybe I should say “believed in,” rather than held, was in my best interest.  Going on to develop my own curriculum and train that team with your trust behind me definitely furthered my professional development.  It was at least as beneficial to me as it was to the teammates I was privileged to work with, maybe more.  If only I’d thought to include a lesson on avoiding drama in the workplace . . .

And thank you for letting me go— for your recommendation to the Seattle Bar Mill.  When opportunity on the Left Coast came knocking again, I was finally able to pursue and realize my hope to live in the Pacific Northwest (there’s no better place to “bleed green” for NUCOR than the Emerald City!)  Peeling away from the friends we made in NY was harder that I’d imagined it would be when we arrived in the Empire State— but we haven’t lost touch, reuniting since then on both sides of the continent.  That’s just one more thing for which I’m very thankful.

With love and thanks until we meet again,

     Daniel

Dear Editor (NY Times)

Ref: The Article
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January 28, 2018



Dear New York Times Editor,

I want to personally commend the fine muckraking by Nicholas Confessore, Gabriel Dance, and Richard Harris that is The Follower Factory or, as published in the Seattle Times, Paying to be Popular:  Inside Social Media’s Black Market.  Technology is in sore need of accountability, especially when driven by profits above all-else.  Exposés by a diligent free press sometimes seem like all that stands between freedom and A Brave New World.  As The Controller states in chapter 16 of Aldous Huxley’s masterpiece, “The optimum population is modeled on the iceberg — eight ninths below the water line, one ninth above.”  Deep divers such as yourselves, are critical to freedom and democracy.

In order to profit, social media needs to be trusted to some degree, or no one will use those platforms.  Eye opening articles like yours will make increased transparency and accountability more critical to their survival.  Devumi’s practice of selling fake followers to already popular people, artificially inflating their appeal, doesn’t just manipulate real people into a herd mentality and tempt them to jump on the bandwagon.  The practice artificially inflates the number of “new users” that platforms like Twitter report in order to drum up money from advertisers and investors.  Those companies have little incentive to cull fake accounts unless they come to believe that real people might close their real accounts in disgust.

“Influencers” who purchase thousands of fake followers in order to justify higher kickbacks for advertising to bots who will never make seem guilty of wire fraud.  The practice sounds oddly similar to that of an author or their marketing wheelhouse purchasing large quantities of books never intended for individual ingestion just to inflate the title’s sales numbers on bestseller lists.  I recall ex-Mars Hill Church Pastor, Mark Driscoll getting flogged in the public eye over this.  From what I understand, it was, and may still be, common practice.  Maybe pastors are just held to higher standards.  Can you tell me if the NY Times has changed anything in order to prevent inflated book sales from landing a title on your highly acclaimed best-seller list?

If only as many people read in-depth newspaper articles as binge-watch Game of Thrones or take interest in Trump’s tweets.  Thank you for what you’ve done, and please keep it up.


Sincerely,

     Daniel Loffer