Rachael McKelvey

• Life aboard the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
• Post Pandemic “Skills gap”
• Why every vote counts
• Why is it so difficult to unsubscribe
• More rubbish plastic records

Life aboard the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
So it turns out thousands of marine creatures called nuestons have unexpectedly hitching a ride across the ocean on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a patch of human made debris that stretches for hundreds and thousands of square miles in the North Pacific. Species including a violet sea snail, bright-blue jellyfish and blue sea dragons have been found on the 1.6million square kilometre patch.

The official paper High concentrations of floating neustonic life in the plastic-rich North Pacific Garbage Patch was published this week off the back of the beautiful amazing if not slightly hideous discovery was made when long distance swimmer and environmental activist Benoit Lecomte embarked on his swim from Hawaii to California with the intention of swimming through the garbage patch. Ben and his team collected samples throughout the patch in the name of science.

Now the paper is live it has raised some interesting questions – there are other garbage patches, five in fact, are they also now fully functioning ecosystems? And now raises the questions over whether its right to clean up the plastic in the seas when it yields and supports so much life now?

I think we can all agree we need to stop plastic getting into the sea, but what do we do with it now its there?

Post Pandemic ‘skills gap’

This week saw PwC and Deloitte acknowledging the ‘skills gap’ amongst new recruits whose education was disrupted by lockdown by offering additional coaching to support both communication and teamworking skills to support their adaptation to a working environment.

I think Ian Elliott CPO at PwC put it more positively than Deloitte’s partner for people and purpose who said it was “understandable that students who missed out on face-to-face activities during Covid may now be stronger in certain fields, such as working independently, and less confident in others”. Starting to think I joined the wrong Big Four!

This was talked about on one of our lunchtime walks this week with children once again off school as a result of striking, which everyone supported by the way, but just pondering the impact on students in the long term of the last few years and possibly the few years to come.

Is it time for an education over hall?

Why every vote counts
While I hope everyone voted in their local elections, I do understand why people don’t. I understand it, but I don’t get it. Life is full of hard choices & voting unfortunately just fits in that category. Go in & spoil you ballot if you can’t decide, partake in the process because it’s an absolute privilege…even more so now you need photo ID, another rant for another day when they have all the data.

The most comment no point in voting opinion you hear is that it doesn’t matter and while sometimes it feels that way, especially in first past the post, a local council seat changed hands by a margin of 4 votes to a different party? Imagine if those 4 people had been like ‘not today my vote doesn’t matter’, your vote matters, even when it doesn’t seem like it.

Also just by way of fact’ing this out a bit, the Conservatives lost 60% of their councils in which they held majorities and you can now walk from Dover to John O’Groats without walking through a Conservative council. Result.

Why is it so difficult to unsubscribe
I have been spring cleaning my inboxes, well trying too, but it’s increasingly hard to unsubscribe from anything…to the very hidden terms and conditions to the endless ‘we miss you and want you back’ emails…Calm down corporate America, we know where you live. If I want you back I’ll find you!

After a little bit of looking around I stumbled around this brilliant but of storytelling from The Pudding on why it really is so hard to unsubscribe and what exactly Dark Patterns are. The article by Caroline Sinders follows an experiment she ran at the end of summer 2022 in which she signed up for and subsequently cancelled 16 different services with some interesting side effects. Encountering 20 instances of dark patterns across the 16 companies, which seems like A LOT.

In the day and age where we have to sign up to so many things, it really does make you think if it’s really worth signing up in the first place.

More rubbish plastic records
This weekend Adrift labs announced on twitter that had removed over 400 pieces of plastic from one baby sea bird and over 50g from another, which were new records for the research team on Lord Howe Island in the Tasman sea between Australia and New Zealand.

Adrift are a research team dedicated to seabirds and marine plastics research, they want to gather as much information as they can for as long as they can to help shape marine and waste policy in influence positive change at individual and community level to help our Oceans survive.

In March they had released a paper about the ingestion of plastics by wildlife another incredibly sad read, so the turn up of a recording breaking amount of plastic in a baby sea bird hits hard.

Current watch:  Colin from Accounts – Don’t panic its not about accounting. It’s and Australian comedy picked up by the BBC written and starring husband and wife duo Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer, playing to single genuinely flawed human beings bought together by a car accident and an injured dog.

It’s funny in a laugh out loud and on a deep soul level, it’s cutting and brave as you watch two people learning to be brave with one another to navigate life. It’s very bingeable and heart-warming.

Current read: Gene Eating The Story of Human Appetite by Giles Yeo – I was very influenced by the episode of Diary of a CEO with Giles Yeo and even more surprised to stumble across the book in the library and was surprised at how interesting I found the book, it is exactly the right balance of informative and engaging, it’s incredibly well researched but also funny and engaging on a real human level and I think it’s an important read.

There is so much out there right now about weight loss and it’s hard to tell the real from the pseudo-science because everyone has a podcast. Giles is at the cutting edge of obesity research and while this book is hailed as anti diet, I think it’s more nuanced than that, it explains why they work and why they don’t and really how your genes impact your body’s ability to lose weight or even gain weight. I certainly feel it gives a kind perspective on why your body might not behave in the ways you’re led to believe it will be.

Most Impactful Listen: More of Less: Behind the Stats – How much is the Coronation crown worth – A really wonderful short explainer on the truth behind the numbers quoted in the media, I was surprised and learnt a lot in 10 minutes.

Historian Dr Anna Keay and CEO of the Gemmological association of Great Britain Alan Hart talk with Charlotte McDonald about the truth worth of 2kg of gold and 444 gemstones and what it might really be worth today.