Hacked emails

One of the perennial tabloid princesses is in a snit because her employers called her "a minimally talented spoiled brat".

It is not important to identify the actress.  It could apply to most of them.  They are bottles of STP Oil Treatment: The package costs twice as much as the contents and the cost of the merchandizing dwarfs the combined costs of the contents and package.

Those emails, which were presumed to be private when they were sent, may cost the employer in the neighborhood of $100M.

I don't have a dog in this fight.  But I know that I sent emails that would not reflect favorably on either me or my employer.  There, but for the grace of God (and the fact that my career was boring to the point of invisibility), goes Eaton Rapids Joe.

The human condition is messy.  Creative thinking does not proceed in straight lines.  It is often the repeated combination of like/similar/figurative. Creative people like jokes because it tickles all of those like/similar/figurative neural connections.  A creative person cannot turn off their mind anymore than a basketball player can quietly hold a basketball.

Wealth

Creative people are the well-spring of intellectual property.  According to Charles Hugh Smith, the creation of intellectual property is the wealth bottleneck.  There is no shortage of financial capital as central banks create it by the $1T.  There is no shortage of manual labor.  There is no shortage of steel or copper or plastic or silicon.

Creative people, as the guardians of the wealth bottleneck, are in a position to become fabulously wealthy.

That does not sit well with the mediocre.  It offends their sense of fairness.  They become vulnerable to envy.

Somerset Maugham wrote "Only the mediocre are always at their best."  That quote has been a balm to me.  It also points out a vulnerability of creative people.  Their lack of slavish conformity to norms can be merchandized as callousness or evil.

And the fact that a good set of facial bones and skillfully applied botox can be "damaged" to the extent of $100M proves that we live in an age dominated by merchandizing.