Claus' Calculations, Conditional Carousing, Carey's Cash 🎅
TL;DR
🎅 Santa's Christmas Dashboard
🪩 Holiday Parties Are Optional
🎄 Mariah’s Cash Machine
HO HO HO
🎅 Santa’s Christmas Magic and Holiday Cheer
If I were Santa, I would ask the kids to put their wishes into the Santa chatbot on my webpage. I would aggregate all the data in the cloud and run an AI model to get the naughty or nice classification.
Only the nice kids would automatically end up in Farseer where I would manage my operations.
Since I buy the largest number of toys worldwide, I would negotiate purchases at steep discounts.
I would use an AI model in Farseer to calculate the most efficient global delivery routes, accounting for weather, air traffic, and time zones.
I wouldn’t use drones or anything like that. That would kill all the magic.
But I would have a neat dashboard like the one below, tracking all the action.
Thankfully, I’m not Santa. This is why I helped a 5-year-old write a letter to Santa where all the P’s are turned the wrong way.
Some things are best left analog.
Happy Christmas 🎅🏼
PARTIES
🪩Are holiday Parties Festive Team-Building or Forced Fun?
Here’s the thing about holiday parties and team-buildings: people too often love to trash them.
“Ugh, corporate Christmas parties are just a lame employer branding stunt,” they say, sipping their third mulled wine/beer/whiskey at a friend’s festive bash.
But let’s cut through the cynicism, shall we?
Holiday parties aren’t evil.
They’re not some nefarious plot to brainwash you into liking your job.
They’re just…a party.
And, shocker, they can actually be fun.
If your company wants to throw a party, what’s the big deal? Nobody’s chaining you to the karaoke machine or putting you on the spot with some contrived team-building exercise.
You get to choose—go or don’t. No existential crisis required.
People have genuinely enjoyed these events for the companies I’ve worked for. They’ve laughed, danced, and even bonded over questionable drink choices. And guess what? The ones who didn’t enjoy them didn’t show up.
Radical, I know. But that’s the beauty of it—it’s not forced. It’s an invitation, not an obligation. And if it really is an obligation and you have no choice, the Christmas party is the least of your problems in that company.
Sure, not every company nails it. Some parties are duds. Some are cringy attempts at employer branding. But does that mean we should throw the concept in the trash? Nah. If anything, it’s a chance for companies to show they care—by offering a little joy to close the year.
So, if you think holiday parties are lame, fine. Don’t go.
But for those of us who like them? Pass the free vodka and cue the disco ball.😉
EARWORMS
🎄All I Want for Christmas Is… a $60 Million Payday.
The real jingle in Mariah Carey’s holiday anthem is not bells; it’s the sound of cash registers.
“All I Want for Christmas Is You” has allegedly raked in over $60 million in royalties since its 1994 release.
Yes, you read that right.
While you scramble to meet year-end targets, this single track quietly prints money every December like it’s on the Federal Reserve’s payroll.
And it’s not chump change each season, either. The annual haul for Mariah and her label is estimated at $2.5 million—just for one month’s worth of the ultimate holiday earworm.
Consider that next time your CEO brags about an extra 2% revenue bump in Q4.
That’s a decades-old pop track outperforming entire product lines, marketing campaigns, and M&A deals.
While you’re pushing your team to close last-minute contracts and cutting costs to impress shareholders, Mariah’s biggest move is to wait for the calendar to hit December 1.
Streaming platforms gorge on the surge, retailers broadcast it on loop, and every ad wedged between choruses lines someone’s pockets.
Meanwhile, you’re still explaining to the board why your innovation pipeline looks like a middle school science fair.
Call it holiday magic or shrewd business. Either way, the lesson is clear: sometimes all you need is one smash hit, a sentimental hook, and the passage of time.
Your organization fights for incremental gains while one song quietly laughs its way to the bank, every damn Christmas.
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