Russell Davies

Semi-retiring
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In other places

Over on instagram I continue to pointlessly amass #drumsonsunday...

Percussion at Work

And am now featuring #economistpoems...

January 30th

And #minidiscmondays...

nmesh

And on bandcamp the Pete Rugolo record shows up again as part of the source material for Bottlenecks.

And I've started playing with Roam as a way of collecting notes. There are links and bits collected by tags. It's folksonomy all over again.

January 31, 2021 | Permalink

January 2021

Music from Elite Panic.

January 31, 2021 | Permalink

I take full responsibility

Bogdana's got a meeting and I've got to work so Coffee Morning's going to be 11am not 10. This Friday. The 29th.

Sorry. Hope that's OK.

The zoom: https://us04web.zoom.us/j/8910289409?pwd=aWVJSUdCcjVLdDhaeWx3WkFkS0lyUT09

 

January 27, 2021 | Permalink

This is what they would buy

I've always been obsessed with how the super rich live different lives than everyone else. And the extent to which they can't.

I once wrote something for Wired about how the rich can't get a better OS than the rest of us (the wayback machine has it) but if they could it would just be people. That's apparently how Larry King has a better twitter than the rest of us.

https://t.co/eBXB0kUiHI pic.twitter.com/Baplo0aeFi

— hunter harris (@hunteryharris) January 23, 2021

And on Friday at Coffee Morning Flora told me of Yellowstone which we started watching yesterday and this seemed related:

“Leverage is knowing if someone had all the money in the world… this is what they’d buy.” - John Dutton (Kevin Costner) #Yellowstone pic.twitter.com/PR4Y8mo4ip

— Yellowstone (@Yellowstone) June 21, 2018

And then I was reading Garner's Quotations and came across: 

"Real wealth is never having to spend time with assholes" - John Waters

and

"The best things in life are free. The second best things are very, very expensive" - Coco Channel 

Incidentally Coffee Morning this week will be at 10am on Friday. Same link as below. It will be free. Or it will be very, very expensive.

January 24, 2021 | Permalink

2 coffee 2 morning

Bogdana has written of a coffee morning plan but she's written it on Medium which is like writing on sand so she's asked me to put details here where they are a little more permanent and accessible.

First new coffee morning will be this Friday. The 22nd. At 8am GMT. At this Zoom. UPDATE: Apparently that link doesn't work. Try this one:

https://us04web.zoom.us/j/8910289409?pwd=aWVJSUdCcjVLdDhaeWx3WkFkS0lyUT09

Be nice. Be patient. If it doesn't work perfectly we will try and make it better next time. Don't be that guy.

If you don't know what I'm on about...

We started coffee mornings years ago because it seemed there were a lot of planners and strategists out there who were a bit lonely. The only planner in an agency. Or freelancing. Or whathaveyou.
 
It wasn't complicated. Come and have a coffee and a chat. No networking. Anyone can come, you just have to expect a lot of chat about advertising and brands.
 
And then we stopped doing it, because lots of other events turned up to fill the void.
 
Right now, though, it's obvious that the loneliness problem hasn't gone away. And I bet there are loads of people who'd like to see some different faces on their screens. So we're going to try and do it again, virtually.
 
This might be more complicated. Large groups aren't automatically sorted by chairs and tables, ice isn't easily broken through beverage ordering. But we shall see what we can do.
 
Bogdana thinks that Zoom can be used cleverly to break people off into smaller rooms if it all gets too chaotic. We might try that. But, basically, we're just going to try it and see what happens.
 
(We will arrange subsequent events for different times of day so that other people can join in.)
 
Bogdana will probably have more news on twitter. If there is more news.

January 18, 2021 | Permalink

Remote intimacy

I've been listening a lot to this: a 3,350-Song Playlist of Music from Haruki Murakami’s Personal Record Collection (about). It's very listenable because it's in the right ballpark for music I'd like on in the background at home, lots of jazz, some classical and early rock/pop but knowing there's a human intelligence behind it - a guiding sense of taste - makes it somehow slightly more intimate than an algorithm. And, while I've only read one of his books, it fits how he feels. The whole aesthetic hangs together. It's like you're round his house and he's playing you stuff. It's revealing.

I've also been listening to a James Baldwin version. Chez Baldwin - the music in his record collection. I don't know tons about Baldwin but his record selection makes me want to know more. My image of him is austere and intellectual, waspish, dry. But his records aren't like that. So much Diana Ross and Randy Crawford. It's funky and joyful.

This remote intimacy is a bit like Ben's point: part of the fun of Zooms at home and on the media is peeking behind the scenes at someone's life. Which is why it's annoying and funny when someone tries to fake it.

January 10, 2021 | Permalink

#economistpoems

It wouldn't be January without me making a stupid plan to do a stupid weekly project that I'll regret before the end of this sentence. (And there it is.)

This year I've been inspired by Austin Kleon's magnificent collage habit and I've decided (why?!) to do Economist poems like this.

January 2nd

Which now I think about it isn't a collage. (Is it?)

Should you be interested you will find them on instagram.

January 07, 2021 | Permalink

Stay at home, come on air

One of the things I've enjoyed about lockdown has been the 'casualisation' of news and media.

Technical issues, bad sound, wonky camerawork are laughed off and forgiven when everyone's struggling to even get on air. And the presenters seem more chatty, more willing to break the fourth wall, when everyone's broadcasting from their cupboard or from under a quilt.

I like that they've stopped pretending that there are no cameras and microphones involved. Conference organisers had a phase where they tried to hide the laptops too, but that seemed to pass eventually.

And it means that a wider, more diverse range of better people have started turning up on podcasts and online conferences. Because they don't have to travel. They don't have to take so much time off work. They don't have to arrange child care.

The sound gets slightly worse but the content gets hugely better. That's worth it.

 

January 03, 2021 | Permalink

Did COVID kill the climate?

I've spent quite a lot of the last four and half years thinking about how to get people to make a renewable, green energy choice. And I've not written much about it. 

That's mostly because I don't think I have loads of useful things to say. If I knew the answer I would tell you.

I do collect piles of potentially useful stuff though. Links, podcasts, readings, stray thoughts. So I'm going to try and be better at sharing those.

Here's one: David Runciman talks a lot about climate change and it's political interaction with COVID in this lecture. It's meaty, useful stuff. One spectre he raises, which hadn't occurred to me before, is Farage returning to activist politics as 'anti-green'. Anti wind farms, cycle lanes and green taxes. Pro motorists. (This is the relevant bit.)

He also points out how divided Western societies are: young people, broadly, are radically worried about climate change, old people, broadly, aren't. And "older voters decide elections". That's worth thinking about.

 

January 03, 2021 | Permalink

December 2020

January 02, 2021 | Permalink

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