Hail, fair traveller!
Come, rest your weary self in the warmth of thee huuman Layer’s weekly burn of Small Business news. Let us tell ye terrifying tales on this All Hallows Eve - or for the Celts amongst us, Samhain.
Samhain (or ‘summers-end’) as experienced travellers such as yourself well know, was the ancient pagan festival for a dying sun-god. A celebration of the etherial boundaries between the living and dead being at their very thinnest. Which, of course, translates strangely well, does it not, to the state of modern retail. For indeed, while big box Bed Bath has finally shrugged off its mortal coil - many zombies remain wandering the land, sacrificing endless square-footage to the sun-god of margins. New-Jersey based Spirit Halloween, of course, has been seen feasting greedily on those tattered remains, spawning 1,500 stores in a fertile year, filling recently departed 10,000 sqft spaces with 40,000 seasonal goth-oriented employees. A haunting tale ‘tis it not?
Speaking of zombies - hark! Have ye noticed that Canada’s economy hasn’t grown since May? BRaiiiiNsssss….
“Final numbers for September are not yet available, but early indicators suggest the trend continued into September. That means there's a good chance that Canada's economy has not grown in any meaningful way since May.”
Can it be that Canada is shuffling ever forward, glazy-of-eye, moaning in pain of a coming recession? Well, no, halt thine worry. A year of horrifying rate hikes and creeping inflation has tampered growth, so this may well just be the lag from that monetary policy coming home to roost, like an owl on a pitch-black night. On a positive note, no more rate hikes cometh. With flat-line growth, the BOC would, indeed, be spooking the very heart of the market by turning their rusty screws now, and one echoing cry of “Recession!” would unravel it all like a mummy caught on a rusty nail. Welcome succour I’m sure for those variable of lending!
And lo…did ye say creeping inflation? Indeed! Candy prices have been lynched ever more, but that hasn’t scared the coves that buy them! And the rates…the rates remain hauntingly high for CEBA - will the Federal government turn this trick into a treat? Rising Provincial unrest suggests…perhaps they may. A dubious game of chicken remains, then, afoot - but the government has turned under less pressure before. It’s also purely anecdotal, so forgive me traveller, but the seeming rise of Small Businesses currently for sale and changing hands before year end does somewhat seem to be more than just a ghostly economic apparition, does it not?
Finally, come warm thy aching bones near the fire one last time, which is thankfully oil powered and thus exempt now from Carbon taxation, unlike those other fuels for some reason. Exempt until the sun-god returns thrice, at the very least, so I’m told. Perhaps this Federal intervention may also fix disproportionate costs and render a green policy which is more focused on penalizing the producers than the consumers! One can hope, for indeed a bizarre year draws to a close and early snowfalls already awash the shires like broken climate spectres.
And so, yes, the hour approaches and you must leave this place. Go forth into the dark, dear friend. Fear not the terrifying creep of AI-generated product imagery nor the grotesque, yet chic, peasant outfits. Here, grab now this collection of spooky beats for protection, and make haste! Haste I say!
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The Living Dead
This week Jay Dort has been ‘meaningfully participating’ with the deceased for professional reasons - not because it’s his vibe or anything weird.
It turns out that half of us have been participating in “regular, meaningful, and impactful interactions with the deceased.” In a new study titled Enduring Relationships: Social Aspects of Perceived Interactions with the Dead, sociologist Karen A. Cerulo looked at a swath of Americans and gathered evidence that the practice of communing with the dead is much more commonplace than many might believe. According to her research, of the 47% of participants that did experience “continuing bonds” (the term used for interaction with relatives and friends who have passed on) 20% had interactions daily, and a further 20% had interactions weekly.
If you’re looking to get a bit existential before passing out sugar to kids dressed up as ghosts, we’ve got you covered. Social sciences have been attempting to qualify continuing bonds (CB) for a while now, and most of it boils down to – what is communication, anyway? It turns out that it’s tricky to define what constitutes a social interaction, as humans are very good at socializing with… almost anything. Our desire to communicate and socialize is so ingrained that most of us have deep and meaningful relationships with a broad range of human and non-human interactants on the daily. Just think, how many people do you know who see their pet as a family member with a unique and important role in their daily lives, or own sentimental objects that bring forward impactful feelings of motivation or recollection. There is a broad range of ordinary ways many people have conversations both internally and externally, such as talking to gravestones, having a lucky shirt, or feeling that the weather might’ve changed just because you were about to go outside.
So, we know that half the people studied experienced CB, but that takes on many different forms. Of those who encounter CB, 63% “felt the deceased’s presence in their physical space,” 61% “identified reciprocal communication,” a further 61% reported “speaking aloud to the deceased,” and 100% claim they “saw the communication as a two-way exchange—a back-and-forth interaction between living and deceased.” For many of the participants, the interactions that they had with the dead were as meaningful and engaging as those that they had with the living.
There are even some statistically significant benefits to speaking with dead people. Haley Joel Osment’s character in The Sixth Sense would’ve been 12% more likely than the average person to feel satisfied with his social activities and relationships, and he’d be 8% more likely to describe himself as “happy or very happy.” The movie might be worth a re-watch now that you have this new perspective. Bruce Willis had the right idea because the most common self-reported benefits associated with CB were “better coping skills (69%), an increased sense of well-being (65%), increased tolerance of others (54%), greater productivity (50%), and more trust toward others (43%).”
Now that there’s some reasonably good evidence that 25% of us feel increased productivity and 35% learn better coping skills, it’s just a matter of time before Harvard Business Review publishes its first think-piece on practical seance tips for modern-day leadership.
Just keep this in mind the next time you’re struggling with a tough business decision: now that you’ve seen the data, who you gonna call?