One Man's Notes

Polarisation wears an unexpected face in today’s Engaged Reading Digest.


Iris is having an artistic moment.


Kinda struggling to believe that Facebook can’t afford enough developers to do an iPad app.


Looks like Storm Dennis has abated enough that the kite surfers are heading out again.


This is a fascinating, and troubling, German investigation into the way corporations are funnelling funds into climate change deniers: The Heartland Lobby

Their latest approach? A young influencer, that they are positioning as the anti-Greta.


The girls appear unimpressed by my efforts to get them to go for a walk in the face of Storm Dennis


A new town, alone and on foot

Martin Belam, on the joys of travelling to see his team play an away game:

I also think there’s something useful socially about travelling around the country more. To get out of your normal locale. To see people and places you don’t normally see. To experience a miserable afternoon in Aldershot and feel the way it has been neglected, or the way Northampton’s town centre has been hollowed out in favour of an out of town retail park you couldn’t possibly entertain going to without a car, to see that Cheltenham looks lovely and there’s more to it than horses. To mind boggle about the drugs that council town planners must have been on at some points in the seventies.

20 years ago I had a wonderful job. I got to spend one or two days a week travelling to a different part of the country, and profile the property markets there. Like Martin, I always took the time to enjoy a little of the town itself, to explore the residential areas, and the town centre. It was even more interesting when I could stay overnight.

I regret that it was in the pre-digital camera, pre-blogging (for me, at least) era, because I have very little record of those experiences. Martin’s post made me achingly nostalgic for those trips - and makes me wonder if I can’t find a way of bringing them back into my life.


Podcasting the great outdoors - one of the ways I try to disconnect from work over the weekend.


Spotify is trying to become podcasting’s gatekeeper. We musn’t let them.


I’m pleased with this one, winding up our VUCA series for NEXT Conference:

Embrace ambiguity and forge our quantum future.


Riders on the shore.


My major lesson this year so far is that the right new coat can do wonders for your self-image.

Good night.


Watching the boats on the Adur rise as high tide approaches.


Whatever happened to Yahoo’s digital time capsule?

Marie Boran asks if everyone has forgotten about Yahoo’s digital time capsule?:

This was to be opened on the company’s 25th anniversary on March 2nd, 2020, but the webpage looks abandoned; according to the webpage countdown there is still a decade left until the capsule opens.

So much of 90s/00s digital culture is gone. Future historian will lament that we were so careless with the archive of the formative days of our digital culture.


This video might challenge your ideas of what you can do with an iPad: Editing Podcasts with Ferrite and Apple Pencil


The psychology behind Boris's war on the media

Nick Cohen on why Boris Johnson is so suspicious of the media:

I suspect there is a strong element of projection at play. It is because Johnson was a partisan columnist that he is an enemy of press freedom. He assumes all journalists are like him, and that they will twist, distort and censor accordingly.

Good insight that makes a lot of sense.


This is absolutely one of the things that makes me uncomfortable about most newsletter software. It not just tells you how many people opened your email - but exactly who. And that’s creepy: Mailing list software should stop spying on subscribers - Signal v. Noise


Plain old driftwood.


The information ecosystem is badly polluted — and journalism is playing its part. We need to clean up our act, and depollute the information ecosystem.


Great newsletter from David Mattin on the creation of the technocratic elite. This is shaping up to be an essential weekly read.


Beach sign


The (brief) time we decided to share the beach with Storm Ciara yesterday…


Rob Beschizza: Study: Facebook quitters report more life satisfaction, less depression and anxiety

Not a surprise. I nearly joked that it could prove to be the mental health equivalent of smoking - and then realised that was no joke.


Actually getting out of the house to work – it’s far too rare at the moment.


After Ciara

This was the garden at 8am this morning, after the worst of Storm Ciara had passed:

Garden mess after storm ciara

Not too bad, although things aren’t looking great for the potted Christmas tree.

I was planning to sort this out around lunchtime, as a work break. But I ended up legging it to my daughter’s school in a hurry, to take her her water bottle before she went into class. And, as I had my coat and boots on anyway,…

Tidying in the storm's wake

20 minutes of quick tidying (and refilling the bird feeders) later:

My garden, tidied after Storm Ciara

We got off lightly, despite being in a coastal AND river location. We’re pretty luck about how sheltered we are from weather coming off the sea. (Gales blowing down off the Downs and along the Audr are a different matter entirely). In fact, much of the Quay is looking surprisingly tidy, and many of out neighhbours have been out sweeping and tidying. All very minor.

Others have not been so lucky.