Another Monday and today, we ask interesting questions about the sequence; we revisit one of the movies that define Gen X as much from the soundtrack as from the movie.  In another image and commentary about hours worked, Jason Sudeikis shows us his bag, and we've got notes on Glastonbury.  Big start to the week; try to keep it simple!

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This weekend, Seth Godin and his unlimited creativity question how human beings order certain finite things.  Think small, like phone numbers, addresses, and anything you can put into threes.  Expand that all the way out to the 26-letter alphabet.  In Godin's piece, he asks if there are other examples of "Finite Ordered Sets.”  The separation between 3 and then to 12, which you could add some geography, planets, oceans, and continents.  Past that, it is tough to come up with anything that most people would know the order. 

We asked ChatGPT, and it came up with the Chinese Zodiac calendar, but despite the names of each animal isn't any different than the English calendar. 

Godin has added a link to a Google Doc; you can fill in your best answer.  We will report back if anyone has a good response.

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In The Atlantic this weekend, journalist Soraya Roberts does a great job detailing why the 80s cult favorite movie Valley Girl was such a favorite.  The article has plenty of comparisons to Romeo and Juliet; any movie with two people from different sides of whatever you want to pick will be compared to Romeo and Juliet.  In addition to the tale as old as Shakespeare, it was not unusual in the 80s to see a movie about someone trying to be someone they are not and confronted by someone else who doesn’t care to play a part in someone else’s movie life.  Stories like these are relatable, similar to a horoscope, written so that we can all see a part of ourselves in the story.

80s cinema was partly a reflection of the sexual revolution of the 60s and 70s.  Valley Girl went in another direction; if most movies highlighted the relationship and teased it with sex, Martha Coolidge, who directed Valley Girl, wanted to honor the subjects and characters in the movie instead of depicting them as a sort of poster of airheaded indulgence.  Filmmakers like Coolidge and John Hughes defined the 80s by giving the characters a real voice and not talking down to them.

The deeper dive into the psychology of Valley Girl has been refreshing, but a large part of the cult favorite of this film is the soundtrack.  It reads like a primer of punk rock, and the new wave is K-Tel ever made a punk rock compilation.  Look at this list of bands:

Last week we discussed results over hours in the working world.  The idea is that time clocks are outdated for many job types.  Today Visual Capitalist provides a graphic of the average number of working hours per year per country.  For context, a 40-hour work week x 52 weeks per year = 2,080 hours.  We assume this chart considers holidays and vacation days to come up with an average number of hours.  The U.S. is on the high side at just under 1,800 hours annually.  The Americas won the race for most hours worked; several countries in Central and South America are in the top five, and Mexico has the most at 2,128 hours worked per year.

Many Nordic countries have a reputation for a good work/life balance; based on the graphic, most have the least hours worked per year.  The winner of the least amount of hours worked annually is Germany came in at 1,349 hours per year.  The graphic and corresponding article suggests that hours worked don't automatically correlate to higher productivity.  Germany is known for engineering, and its GDP has grown substantially over the last two decades. 

Again, we point to results over hours.

Life’s hard, go with Least Complicated.

Click on the Apple Music image to listen to the song on Apple Music or on the Spotify Image to listen to Spotify.

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Thank you for spending a few minutes with us. Here’s one for the road!

With A Shout newsletter is written by Johnny Christian with the support of a thousand idea bits and the help of many people.

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