Russell Davies

Announceable

I heard some good jargon the other day. Something I've spent a lot of time fighting without having a good name for it. Announceable. Something you can announce. A policy idea or initiative that you can announce and get some headlines. It doesn't need any other merit and it doesn't need to be real. You see announceables on the news all the time.

The problem, of course, is that sometimes some poor team has to implement it.

On the other hand, sometimes, an announceable is an art. It it's harmless and fun and costs you nothing and doesn't get in the way of real work.

It's interesting that most ad agencies don't show the same flair for promoting themselves as promoting their clients goods

Charles Saatchi was a rare exception - here's John Hegarty talking about the early days of the agency

Via @davedyecom https://t.co/Q4Ft6rMs4b pic.twitter.com/FDdmUru8KB

— richard shotton (@rshotton) November 10, 2022

With robots

I keep being shown this ad. I love it. It conjures up an image of me sitting there, blogging away, with a little robot pal sitting next to me also blogging away, writing posts for its robot content consumers. Both of us typing really fast. It'd be fun.

 

Ministry for the future / jackpot vibes

Amsterdam airport police running after hundreds of climate activists blocking private jets while on bicycles is objectively funny https://t.co/nhiVnblHGg pic.twitter.com/o4ULxKzmuH

— Thijs Niks (@thijsniks) November 5, 2022

It's a kind of sadness, it's a kind of sin

David Lynch on searching for pants. pic.twitter.com/pwyzXsvmpr

— Father Sean Misty (@seanieviola) November 6, 2022

Bog bean resonator

A link from Favejet led me to Earth.fm which had me looking for bog soundscapes. Which led me to this page with this intriguing text:

"Look carefully: among the plants and flowers on either side of the path, strangely shaped speakers have sprung up, resembling the bogbean plants that grow in peat bogs. From them come Kathy Hinde’s Deep Listening Soundscapes, compositions based around sounds recorded below the surface of the Flow Country by submerged microphones called hydrophones"

The Flow Country! And that leads to these photos and sounds and the phrase "bog bean resonator". Which is a winner.

"The first series of ‘Deep Listening Soundscapes” are composed from underwater sound recordings from bog pools and lochs of the Flow Country and also by sinking special microphones deep into the water logged blanket bog, into layers of peat that took thousands of years to form; almost like listening back in time. These soundscapes were played back through sculptural forms (inspired by the ‘bog bean’ plant, found sprouting up from bog pools"

This reminds me of the experiments with time lapse that James describes in Ways of Being. And someone he quotes:

"Writing in 1935 about his early experiments with time-lapse cinematography, the French film-maker Jean Epstein summed up the experience of watching natural processes unfold at other-than-natural speed: ‘Slow motion and fast motion reveal a world where the kingdoms of nature know no boundaries. Everything is alive. A surprising animism is being reborn. We know now, because we have seen them, that we are surrounded by inhuman existences."

Everything is alive. The apparent stillness of the bog is overturned by the gurgling, blooping and wooshing of its depths.

 

Not so live

As mentioned in the latest Afternoon Slow I planned to do a live mixcloud 'radio show' last night. It didn't work. I spent ages getting OBS set up, I paid extra to mixcloud for streaming privileges, I got a fancy mic stand. Nothing. Not sure why. I suspect broadband issues.

So, I'm going to try again later in the week. I will alert y'all via the always reliable bat signal of RSS.

Understanding carbon

This is a gorgeous bit of thinking and design from Matt. Illuminating.

What if we added CO2 emissions to our daily weather forecasts? This is an exploratory prototype playing with some data from the brilliant https://t.co/0DKN9moyQP. Have a go over at https://t.co/0syMHHr96O #co2 #dataviz #weather #drawdown pic.twitter.com/g4ZoBu41De

— Extraordinary Facility (@xtrrdnryfclty) November 1, 2022

Get out your drafts

Inspired by @undermanager with his increasing frequency of blog posts I'm pushing out a few unfinished drafts, because, let's face it, when am I ever going to finish them?
Memorable moments with technologies https://t.co/qObpYEHJo8

— Paul Morriss (@paulmorriss) November 4, 2022

Newsletters of note

If twitter is going to fall apart as a place for recommendation/discovery we're all going to have to work harder at pointing out the good stuff. So here are a couple of newsletters well worth some of your subscribing calories:

Converge Guy Moorhouse on design and stuff he likes, he has such great taste. There's bound to be stuff in here you don't know about but will love.

Checksies Anna and Rod on "Ways to get started and keep going on your money journey. Savings, pensions and other money whatnot." Complex things made simple. But not too simple.

Feminist Friday "A manageable number of links (2-3), about or around women and feminism, every Friday. Leans towards culture and history. Usually light on commentary." Always fascinating stuff from Alex.

ustwoeuropenewsletter (is that what it's called?) Nicki writes from ustwoland. Always interesting and properly opinionated, like a leader should be.

Fossil activists

'Fossil activists' is a very useful framing.

 

Fossil activists destroying a 19th century Romanesque Revival church designed by Erasmus Schüller. . https://t.co/Ru6gjpCD03

— Open Climate Data (@openclimatedata) October 27, 2022