Scott Galloway is a professor of Marketing at NYU’s Stern School of Business, the host of the Prof G and Pivot Podcasts and a best-selling author. His latest book is Notes on Being A Man.
He’s also published a newsletter nearly every Friday for the past 10 years. It’s called “No Mercy/No Malice.” (Or NM2 in Scott’s shorthand.) You can subscribe here.
It was originally a client engagement product for Scott’s company L2.
Before I sold L2, we’d launched a series of media products to create more engagement. Winners & Losers was a video series exploring innovation in the consumer sector, and NM2 was meant to be a newsletter exploring, well, whatever was on my mind that week.
When Scott sold that company, the buyer didn’t want the newsletter. It was orphaned… it turned out pretty well:
NM2 was too salty for Gartner (the acquiring company), and they said it could not be affiliated with the firm, but I could have the IP. A decade later, we have 430k subscribers, and the newsletter is the center of the flywheel for ProfG Media. The tone/aim of NM2 is simple: provide insight and be fearless.
430k subscribers is quite impressive. But getting there took a lot of work. Pen to paper, week after week. I’m biased, but I love what Scott has to say about writing in his 10th anniversary post:
Writing is a full-body cognitive workout. And reps matter more than talent. Amen!
I may never get to 430K subscribers. Or even 43. But the process is good for my brain. And my heart.
Writing is becoming a lost art. You don’t have to be a pro to give it a go, though.
A good place to start is Julia Cameron’s “Morning Pages”:
You can learn more in Julia’s book The Artis’s Way. Or you can just do the morning pages.
“Tom Tomorrow” is a darn funny political cartoonist. He puts out a weekly cartoon/comic strip called This Modern World.
It’s actually a single-panel cartoon, but it’s usually subdivided into 6 frames. It’s always amusing, and unfortunately these days, it seems less like satire and more like reality. Here’s his cartoon from last week:
“Tom” (a.k.a. Dan Perkins) has some serious bona fides too:
“Tom Tomorrow’s sharp and iconic work embodies the higher purpose of political cartooning: holding powerful figures to account using satire grounded in good journalism,” the Berryman Award judges said.
(from the article linked above)
I used to read This Modern World in CityBeat, Cincinnati’s alt-weekly. But times are tough in the print biz, and Tom’s strip has been dropped by a lot of alt-weeklies due to budget constraints. You can check it out for free at Daily Kos, but a better way to reward his art is to subscribe to his weekly newsletter, “Sparky’s List,” which includes the weekly cartoon, some commentary on the artwork, and Dan’s personal observations.
You can subscribe to “Sparky’s List” for as little as $20 a year.
A single Jackson a year for a weekly dose of humor from Tomorrow? Totally worth it in This Modern World!
Jason Kottke’s newsletter led me to Molly Burford’s “list poetry” as Jason called it. I thought this one was very poignant:
I especially love “Those who are kind to those who can do nothing for them.” because I think it’s a great litmus test. And “scrappy souls” is a great moniker too!
If you have people like this in your life, you’re truly blessed. As Molly advises “Hold them close. Love them hard.”
And better still, be the type of person that others want to hang on to.
Molly Burford’s first poetry collection Moments to Hold Close is available now here.
Another assignment for the holiday weekend, from Don’t Call It Art: “Get offline as much as possible. There’s so much input to be found in the real world outside of the internet. Go old school. Listen to radio shows. Browse the recently returned stacks at your local library. Buy weird old books at thrift shops. Visit a museum you’ve never been to. Find a good record store and chat up the clerks. Interact with real people in meatspace.”
That’s great homework (or rather outside-the-home work) for any weekend, not just holiday weekends.
Your smart phone is making you dumber. The apps are engineered to hook you in and drag you deeper down the well (or cesspool).
Get out. Tune in to what the real world has to offer. Rewire your brain. Find something different, something funky, something fun. And then, as Austin so eloquently puts it “interact with real people in meatspace.”
For the uninitiated:
Make the meatspace a meet space too. Do “social” instead of social media. Your life will feel so much richer for it.
The pixels and data centers and ones and zeros will get along just fine without you. And vice-versa.
If you’re in the Cincinnati area, here’s a reco for your assignment. On Tuesday I went to the inaugural “Lunch Club” at the Mercantile Library downtown.
I had no idea it was the first gathering until I got there and the host mentioned it. To be honest, I’m 50/50 on reading the Mercantile Library’s weekly emails (due to time constraints, not due to disinterest). But I happened to read the one promoting this event and signed up, despite my loner tendencies. That was mostly thanks to Austin Kleon’s encouragement. I met four fine folks, we had lively conversations, and I headed back to work energized.
That’s some pretty good meatspace activity, especially for a vegetarian.
James Marriott’s long Substack post from last September probably won’t reach as many eyeballs as it needs to. Because it’s a long read – and hardly anyone reads anymore.
The post is equal parts sobering and depressing, with a dollop of scary on top. Since the smartphone was launched, we’re all reading less, but especially our kids.
The invention of the printing press democratized learning.
But the launch of the smartphone started sending our civilization in the other direction.
The “smartphone” is making us a lot dumber.
It’s turning civilized political debate into pro wrestling.
And because the big tech companies rely on our “engagement” for revenue, they profit from this race to the bottom.
Our civilization is at stake, and the clock is ticking (but not TikTok-ing). The smartest way to fight the smartphone scourge is to put down your phone, and pick up a book.
Anyone who has flown more than a few times probably has an airline horror story. Comedians have built bits, or even entire sets, around them.
Dan Piraro has an airline horror story too. He’s the guy who created the Bizarro comic strip, and still does the Sunday version. (His friend Wayno now handles the Monday through Saturday panels.)
In his blog post from mid-December, Dan recounts his air travel travails as he and his wife were trying to get back to their home in Mexico. But he also provides a very healthy dose of perspective.
Please read the entire post if you can. If not, chew on this nugget like it’s airline food:
My wife and I have befriended numerous Mexicans who have never flown on a commercial airline or visited anywhere farther than a half-tank of gas from home. This is common among low-income Mexicans, but they don’t complain. They place their happiness in their families and friends, not in material possessions or travel trophies. That may sound corny, but it’s true, and we find it inspiring.
It is all too easy for us developed-nation-types to forget that around 80% of the over 8 billion people on this planet have never been on an airplane, much less visited a vacation resort. And compared to the legions of displaced refugees worldwide, what my wife and I experienced over the weekend was but an annoying inconvenience compared to their treatment for months, years, or a lifetime.
Even when it’s bad, we’ve got it good.
And that perfect vacation photo on Facebook or Instagram pales in comparison to a life that seems “poor” but is actually quite rich.
They place their happiness in their families and friends, not in material possessions or travel trophies.
Kudos to Mr. Bizarro for his reality check. It’s plane (and plain) wisdom.
Kevin Sullivan on The full-brain workout: “Yep, keep writing .. in your voice. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/04/opinion/artificial-intelligence-ai-writing.html?unlocked_article_code=1.4VA.JFCf.Lr_UK5tlpBRR&smid=url-share” Aug 10, 10:57
Damian on The Future is forever: “It was a magical time for sure! Just don’t get any paint on that 97X sweatshirt, it’ll bring down the…” Jul 4, 20:44
Andrea J McKiernan on The Future is forever: “I still wear my 97X sweatshirt when I’m painting. I have some amazing memories of those times!” Jul 4, 14:46
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