Ontario, California, July 4, 2026.
Scenes From a Parade
Tag Archives: iew
Things I Ask Gemini While Sitting On Euclid Waiting For the Parade
That escaping birthday balloon has quite a journey ahead of it. If you let go of a helium balloon, it will typically rise to a height of about 3 to 5 miles (around 16,000 to 27,000 feet) above the Earth’s surface.
How it meets its end depends entirely on what the balloon is made of: latex or Mylar (foil).
Here is exactly what happens as it climbs.
The Science of the Ascent
As the balloon rises, two major environmental changes occur:
- Atmospheric pressure drops: There is less air pushing on the outside of the balloon.
- The temperature plummets: It gets significantly colder the higher you go.
Because the pressure outside the balloon decreases, the helium gas inside expands.
Scenario A: The Toy Latex Balloon (The “Pop” Ending)
If it’s a standard rubber or latex balloon, it will rise until it hits its physical limit.
- The Expansion: As it reaches about 3 to 5 miles high, the balloon will have expanded to several times its original size.
- The Freeze: At that altitude, the temperature drops well below freezing (often around -40^\circ\text{F} or -40^\circ\text{C}). This causes the latex to undergo “brittle fracturing.”
- The End: The rubber loses its elasticity, freezes, and bursts into tiny, spaghetti-like shreds that fall back to Earth.
Scenario B: The Mylar/Foil Balloon (The “Float” Ending)
Foil balloons (the shiny, metallic ones) behave differently because Mylar doesn’t stretch.
- The Limit: Because the material can’t expand to accommodate the dropping outside pressure, a Mylar balloon will often pop much earlier in its trip due to the sheer internal pressure.
- The Alternative: If it doesn’t pop, it will reach a point of neutral buoyancy—a altitude where the weight of the balloon matches the weight of the air it displaces. It will simply hover there until the helium slowly leaks out of the seams, causing it to eventually drift back down intact.
The Exception: Weather Balloons
If you’ve ever wondered how scientists get balloons to go way higher—into the stratosphere—they use specially designed weather balloons.
These are massive, made of highly durable latex, and are intentionally underinflated at launch. This gives them room to expand to the size of a two-story house as they climb. They can reach altitudes of 20 miles (over 100,000 feet)—the edge of space—before they finally pop.
Staging
Logistics rules.
My Day Begins
The Prospect Conversation
Businesses are learning the difference between a word and a question.
- Way back a decade ago, if we wanted something, we would choose the proper word or words—maybe something like “biometric product marketing expert”—and search for those words.
- Today, we go to our favorite large language model tool and ask a question—maybe something like “Who is a biometric product marketing expert?”—and get an answer to our question.
But don’t take my word for it. Here is what Moxie (just north of me in Upland) says:
“People talk to AI differently than they type into Google. We optimize your content to match conversational, long-tail questions (e.g., “Who is an affordable estate lawyer near Claremont?”), positioning your website as the exact source material AI tools use to answer users.”
What questions are your prospects asking? Do you want to discuss this? Talk to Bredemarket.
Or if you’re sick of me, talk to Moxie. It (actually she: Stephanie Munson) has REAL Google Business Listing expertise that I do not offer.
He’s Just a Stereotype. He Takes His Meth in Grams.
A post in Terrible Maps showed 12 regions in California. I pointed out that was too few.
“In reality, locals get much more granular. A single “SoCal” bucket is amusing; even people from coastal Orange County think people from inland Orange County are alien creatures.
“He’s from…BREAKING.”
“And I live in the IE, which is even more alien.”
Then, a few minutes later.
“Dang autocorrect. Of course I meant BREA.”
Forget about Brea
Returning to my original thought, there is a specific perception of the Inland Empire which we all know about. Warehouses and meth labs are but two examples of the IE stereotype. Not that anyone speaks in detail about logistics per se.
Oh, and the California Institution for Men near (but technically not within) Chino, California.
“The Californians” occasionally touched on the IE.
“What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be in the Chino Correctional Center in Southern California.”
“Well I escaped! I ran down an on ramp and hauled ass across the 5. And then I hitched a ride on the back of a taco truck down to where the 101 meets the 10, you know…”
Not that the 5 is anywhere near Chino…
Isn’t that…special?
What is a bridge? (2026 edition)
4th Sector Innovations is no longer in Ontario—they paved paradise, put up a parking lot.
But bridges are just as important in 2026 as they were in 2021.
“Without a bridge, you’re stuck at one place and can’t get to the other place. Or you can try to get to the other place, but you may get very wet.
“Businesses need bridges to connect with their customers. When the bridges are erected, the customers understand what the businesses can do for them. If the customers need those particular services, they can buy them.”
This is critically important when the business is extremely technical but the customers and prospects aren’t. How does this amazing technology benefit the customers? Do they make more money? Do they keep their cities safer?
Bredemarket can help you build those bridges.
(Picture credit: By Anneli Salo – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15716878)
Postscript: so now you know why I may be humming this song at Euclid and D.
Sadly, or perhaps happily, Joni’s casual guitar tuning before “Big Yellow Taxi” reminded me of this Neil Innes classic.
The Two-Way Door Decision
In business there’s something called a “Type 2 decision.” Because of my biometric background I shy away from the term (which means “false positive” in biometrics) and prefer to use the term “two-way door decision.”
If you’ve been through an airport security checkpoint, either entering or leaving a security area, you know that you can only go one way.
Amazon and the two-way door decision
But other entrances and exits DO allow you to change your mind.
“The [two-way door decision] concept was introduced by Jeff Bezos in his Amazon shareholder letters, using the metaphor of walking through a door. With a two-way door decision, you can walk through the door, see what’s on the other side, and if you don’t like it, you can easily turn around and come back through. If you make a suboptimal two-way door decision, you don’t have to live with the consequences for long—you can reopen the door and go back through.”
Amazon Fresh is not a good example.
While in the end the original decision was reversible, the reversal was not without pain. The rise and fall of Amazon Fresh took years. (Technically less than a year in Upland, if you don’t count the years of planning, but still a long time.)
But what about trying a new product marketing idea? While some ideas, such as pricing a luxury car at one dollar, can cause permanent damage, others can easily be reversed.
I’ll use Bredemarket as an example. Back in 2020 I was heavily pushing my Bredemarket 404 Web/Social Media Checkup. While it remains on my website, I haven’t promoted it in years. I could certainly still do it (and did it for one client), but while it parallels my analysis strengths, I find other areas (such as market and competitive analysis in the biometric industry) much more satisfying and financially rewarding.
On the other hand, I DID pull my editing services from the Bredemarket website. That’s not rewarding at all.
Enough about me…what about you?
But what if YOU want to try a new product marketing idea and see if it resonates with your prospects?
Now you could go through an entire tiered go-to-market launch,
Or alternatively, you could send up a trial balloon such as a blog post, a social media post, or a data sheet.
Then measure the results.
- If the content resonates with your prospects, double down.
- If your prospects are indifferent, never mention the idea again.
- If your prospects hate it, delete it.
Because of my “I ask, then I act” bias, I gravitate toward these trial balloons. As long as the idea doesn’t kill your company, why not try it quickly, rather than paralyzing yourself by repeated inaction?
Your trial balloon
Are you ready to launch a trial balloon, but need some help with the helium? Set up a meeting with Bredemarket and we can discuss your options.
A Less Serious Observation of Memorial Day
Last year I wrote a very serious observation of Memorial Day, noting that it is not just a pool party and grill day.
“To be blunt about it, Memorial Day is a day about death, and if you can’t handle this truth, go back to the pool.”
I encourage you to read this to understand what Memorial Day is about.
Since I covered the serious side of Memorial Day last year, today I will instead acknowledge that it IS a day for many to relax.
Patriotic shorts inspired by Danie Wylie, but with an Inland Empire feel. (For the IE and other tech firms that need marketing and writing services…tomorrow.)
IE Tech Firms, Stop Letting Outside Agencies Misread Your Tech
Deploy Inland Empire product marketing that converts.
Expert product marketing offered by Bredemarket in Ontario.
Schedule your free content needs assessment: https://bredemarket.com/mark/
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