Expat In Romania

How does anybody explain the Trump Phenomenon? Most opinion pieces talk about his fear mongering, an ignorant supporter-base, the disarray in the GOP, weak opponents, or his anti-establishment persona. The fact is, Trump is a polarizing figure, but he's never going to win the presidency (2019 Edit: Surprise, surprise, I was wrong! But everything else still applies). Still, that doesn't explain why he's come so far. I live in Romania. I only really hear about Trump if I want to hear about Trump. It's a blessing. I'm not saying that people shouldn't discuss a man who's making a serious run for the world's most powerful office. But people seem to be missing the bigger picture. Why did Trump get so big? I don't believe the 'perfect storm' explanation. How he plays on people's fears in a precarious geopolitical situation, how he's a straight talker in a world of political correctness run amok, and how he's not in anybody'...

Not something I do very often, but I'm going to momentarily stray from the things I typically write about. In case you haven't heard, the tech blogosphere is clamoring to report on the public firing of an AOL employee by CEO Tim Armstrong during a company-wide conference call aimed to boost morale following layoffs. This article contains some background, a transcript, the audio recording, and all the gritty details about what should be a non-story. Here's why I believe it to be one of the most brilliant inbound marketing scams we've all come across. 1. Tim can't stop talking about Patch. "You should be using Patch...Patch is amazing...Patch feeds and clothes you....bow down to the great Patch!" The whole time he was going on about it I was thinking, "WTF is Patch?" You already know I was all over Google searching for 'Patch' the moment the recording ended. I only got results when I refined the search to 'Patch AOL' though...