This week I have been deep in discussion with lots of clever people about the topic of my next post and it has expanded beyond all bounds. Rather than rush it, I have instead compiled another collection of ephemera. Check out similar posts from November 2022 and February 2023.

1. Fictional Brands Archive

One of my first exposures to any brand, whether fictional or otherwise, was the ACME corporation, which provided the gadgets for Wile E. Coyote. The Fictional Brands Archive is an essential resource for anyone interested in graphic design and movies.

2. 15-minute Cities

A couple of years ago the former FT features writer and ex-bookshop owner, Natalie Whittle, wrote an illuminating-if-critical book about the idea of the 15-minute city. It was a pretty innocuous idea at the time and the book was published by an indie press in Edinburgh, perhaps inspired by Anna Hidalgo’s success in Paris. In recent months, it has been fascinating to see it turn into a full-blown conspiracy theory that believes we are about to be confined to Hunger Games-style districts. As ever with conspiracy theories that gain traction, it is best to try to empathise with people than simply dismiss them.

Update: reader Alex shares this post by Cory Doctorow that helps explain what else is at risk with the massive data capture used in policing low-emissions zones.

3. Alexey Guzey’s lifehacks

I am a sucker for a lifehack and there are some good ones here:

11. if you don't have consistent scheduled time for your top goals, you don't have top goals
12. What are you being a coward about? be specific
13. what are you ashamed of? be specific
14. What makes you angry? be specific
15. everything has an MVP & final version. MVP can usually be done in 10% of the time with a timer for 5-10-15 minutes & ensures you don't get stuck. what's the mvp of your current top goal?
16. don't be ashamed to ask "what do you do?" as the first question at parties.
17. seek out weirdest people at parties.

4. A 2-minute version of The Great Gatsby

Jeffrey Lewis’s unique song-comic movies are dense sources of useful information. If you read The Great Gatsby a long time ago, watch this and see it all come flooding back. He also has a righteous history of Chile.

5. Pigeon nests

We have a problem with pigeons nesting in a nook near our balcony. I am not quite sure where they are hiding but having seen the state of their nests I don’t know how we ever would without there being an egg.

6. A Walk around Kampala

In an overstimulated media landscape, full of hypnotic 30-second TikToks, I understand why people enjoy watching ambient videos with no voiceover and no editing, nothing but someone walking around. I found this one from Uganda via Paul Skallas, but you can type in any city and find similar things.

7. iPhone’s Collage Tool

The iPhone has an odd feature where if you do a long tap on figures in a photo a ghostly white line appears on the edge of the image. It’s a magical effect but it took me months to work out how to use it to make collages. Here are some of my early efforts:

8. Jony Ive’s Carolean Design

The second Elizabethan age covers far too long a period to be defined by any aesthetic. If anything, her reign is distinguished by the distinctiveness of each decade’s fashion. With the King’s faithful knight, Sir Jony Ive, by his side it will be interesting to see the power of design in the Carolean era. Can Ive do for the UK what he did for Apple? Will all the nature motifs help us enter a more ecologically-minded age?

9. The Cosmic Order of Charles III

One difference between the new King and his mother is that Charles has a philosophy. He sincerely believes that there is a natural order to the cosmos. This lead me to imagine a cosmic order featuring HP Lovecraft’s Elder Gods and I created the collage below. Learn more about his ideas and influences on the Macrodose podcast.

10. The Dickon Edwards Substack

I mentioned Dickon a couple of weeks ago and reposted to an old interview I conducted with him, so was delighted to see that he is putting his PhD to use by starting a Substack. Rather than seeing dyspraxia as a disability, he is embracing it:

The good news is that dyspraxic brains are often able to find less obvious connections and solutions. They tend to be creative, painstaking, and original in their thinking. In my case, I now realize I’ve channelled my dyspraxic difference into a form of deliberate dandyism (and indeed, a dandyism which is drawn to the playfulness of alliteration; but not too often). This applies not only to the way I dress and present myself physically, but also to the way I write and the way I look at the world. Hence the title Letter from a Dyspraxic Dandy.

I highly recommend you subscribe.

11. How Quickly Should You Answer Emails?

Tom Hodgkinson, the editor of Idler magazine, wrote a very helpful newsletter recently advocating replying quickly to emails. The newsletter sat in my inbox for about five weeks, but having read it and put his advice into practice, I concur that I do feel a lot lighter with an empty inbox:

I’d argue that if you get your work done at great speed, then that will leave more time for sitting in the pub or staring out of the window or going for a long walk.
Truly, efficiency leads to idling.

12. Aristophanes’ Perfect Lovers

Plato’s The Symposium is a breezy set of conversations about love. My favourite of these is Aristophanes’ talk about love being a literal search for your other half because the gods separated people in two.

The primeval man was round, he had 4 hands and 4 feet, one head with 2 faces, looking opposite ways. He could walk upright and he could also roll over and over at a great pace, turning on his 4 hands and 4 feet when he wanted to run fast.

I wondered if anyone had attempted to draw these strange figures. They had!

Update: Alex also points out that this is illustrated in the Hedwig and the Angry Inch film:

13. OneZoom Tree of Life

A strangely humbling experience as you find out how species emerged by following the many branches of evolution. If you’re feeling vain for your own species, see how long it takes you to find human beings.

Things I found interesting in May 2023