Oprah using screens
You may not have noticed but this didn’t happen last month. It hadn’t been an easy week and just as I sat down to newsletter we had a power cut. I took that as a sign and gave up. I can’t imagine anyone noticed but apologies anyway.
Five things:
I’m writing a book about PowerPoint (which is really a book about presenting [which is really a book about communicating] ) which means I’ve been getting slightly obsessed with lists. Lists force you to be definitive. Things are on the list or not, they’re in or they’re out. That clarity is useful. I wrote my own list as an anti-homage (is that a thing?) to the 48 Laws of Power but these are better:
Things Nicky Haslam finds common
What Agnes Callard is for, on the fence about, and against
(both via Favejet)
Chuck Jones’ cheat sheet for Roadrunner and Wile E Coyote
(via Storythings)
Alex Mitchell interviewed Kelly Wright about using algorithms to uncover unconscious bias. And data, race and language. It’s a quick, fascinating read. I guess thoughtful use of algorithms can be as productive and illuminating as careless use is destructive.
I think a lot at work about how to talk to people about their ‘carbon impact’. This thread from Jay Owens is brilliant. She points out that the notion of the carbon footprint was first popularised by BP (presumably as a way of shifting responsibility away from themselves and onto the rest of us) but then, persuasively, argues that we still have to think and act at an individual level.
We’re spending time at the moment in a semi-rural bit of Derbyshire. There were Black Lives Matter protests here which seemed very cheering. In a Guardian interview Reni Eddo-Lodge explains the cheeringness:
Consequently, what have you found encouraging?
“Black Lives Matter protests in rural areas. I saw a protest happening in an English village surrounded by greenery, and that’s not usually an environment you see BLM protests happening. Angela Davis said on TV the other day, that she’d never seen anything like this in her lifetime. And I thought, if Angela Davis is going to be optimistic, I will be.”
(There are 583 of you. The 583 series were limited express electric multiple unit (EMU) train types introduced in 1967 by Japanese National Railways that ran on the through services express Kitaguni and other special trains until 2017. Their seats could be transformed into three-berth beds, enabling the trains to be used on both daytime and night train services.)