Rachael McKelvey

• Please recycle less but better
• Do headphones divide offices or make them functional for all?
• Why Literary festivals are more than just books
• Even NASA want better data
• I need to talk about Succession – no spoilers

Please recycle less but better
A seemingly odd request when the world is simultaneously on fire and drowning, but it’s true. An excellent piece in the Inews has called out that people will be advised to recycle less as part of the Government overhaul to waste management.

Termed “wishcycling” a lot of things that end up in the recycling bins are not in fact recyclable, we put them in there solely to make ourselves feel better but they actually cause significant problems in the recycling process. From seemingly innocuous things like small bits of foil that the splitting machines just can’t detect, much better to start a foil ball and put it in when it has reached a substantial size. Your paper takeaway coffee cup? Has plastic in it which is incredibly hard to separate, your pizza box, that is entirely cardboard? That greasy pizza ring can contaminate a surprisingly amount of other non-contaminated cardboard for recycling.

Do headphones divide offices or make them functional for all?
The Sunday Times has asked whether headphones in the workplace are “dividing colleagues” and citing the increase in usage being down to being able to listen to music and podcasts when we were working from home in the pandemic, which seems very on brand for the Times. Citing Debrett’s, the 250-year-old British guide to etiquette: “If you work in an open-plan office where there is frequent conversation and interchange of ideas between colleagues, do not wear AirPods or headphones.”

I’ve worn headphones in the office for most of my career, I don’t function at my best in an open plan office on a floor of 200+ people talking about a lot of things all at once, nor a smaller office with more than about 5 other quiet people in. I usually only have one in, in the ear away from colleagues, sometimes I am listening to something, most of the time I am just using them for noise cancelling. I never mind being interrupted by colleagues and I don’t use them to exclude dialogue and important conversations, I just use them as a tool to help me focus, much like when bosses just get to be unavailable and get to close their office doors.

Why Literary Festivals are more than just books
Don’t get my wrong, books are important but the soundbytes coming from Hays Literary Festival again this week just make me remember how important they are in the world, the enquiry and the discussion between writers and audiences is almost more important than the books themselves.

The most interesting discussion to come out of Hay Festival this week was Patrick Vallance, probably the only Government Chief Scientific Adviser anyone will ever be able to name in history, he has called for greater research into the use of psychedelics as a tool for mental health. This was prompted solely from an audience question about their 107 year old grandmother who has depression. There has been many decades of interest in psychedelics and Vallance confirmed there was a lot of enthusiasm at the moment and questioned why we don’t work it out properly.

This long read from the FT back in March has stayed with me, the story of Aly and her journey with Anorexia and psychedelics contrasted with Ekaterina’s story and the mission and values of Compass and just how hard it is to secure funding for research and trials, even when the results seem so positive because well…drugs.

Just FYI, Vallance did warn not to slip your grandmother an ecstasy tablet just in case anyone was wondering.

Even NASA wants better data
It’s been a week at work this week so it was nice to know that even NASA is like if you want us to find things we need better data. NASA this week confirmed they have not found alien life and that of the staggering number of unidentified flying object reports they receive that really only a very small amount remain truly unexplained.

Sean Kirkpatrick of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (cool job) said they receive around 50-100 new reports of sightings each month and only 2% to 5% of those fall into that truly unexplained category. Why so low? The quality of data submitted isn’t quite what they need. Eyewitness reports aren’t enough to provide conclusive proof and you absolutely know trying to capture a video of anything in the sky with any phone always basically looks like you’ve filmed it with a potato.

Next time you’re sat at work thinking this doesn’t make sense, there is no useful insight here, the data is awful. Know you are not alone, even NASA just wish people would record things better.

I need to talk about Succession
The ending was perfect, and this is a hill I am prepared to die on. You may come at with me with your bad opinions, but I can assure you that was probably never what the show was about. Everything ended exactly as it should, they all got what they earnt or deserved.

I don’t want to talk spoilers, but I do question your commitment if you’ve been there this whole time and you’ve not finished it yet, but if like me you are the first finisher amongst your friends please let me sign post some wonderful comforting podcasts that might just act as the emotional ant acid you need while you wait.

First up the HBOs Succession Podcast S4 E10 Part 2 “With Open Eyes” with Director / Producer Mark Mylod Kara Swisher and Mark Mylod talk through the last half of the episode, the characters, the intention, the styling. This was the comforting hug I didn’t realise I needed.

Up next Oh God, What Now  – Succession Finale: Goodbye to the Beastie Roys Andrew Harrison, Hannah Fearn and Alex Andreou talk ALL things finale, touching on all the important moments, including what it was like to watch it as a women, like the long winding chat down the pub I really needed.

What an achingly beautiful show through and through, right to the end. The most beautiful, awful goodbye. I’m going to miss those strings.

Current watch:  Anatomy of a Scandal – Happy to be well over a year late to the party on this one, because now I know I didn’t get caught up in the hype. David E Kelley has a special place in my heart (Ally McBeal, The Practice, Boston Legal…I could go on) and along with Melissa James Gibson they created a masterpiece based on Sarah Vaughan’s novel.

The story follows Sophie Whitehouse, the wife of a prominent Tory MP, after her life is blown apart when she learns of her husband’s affair which results in him standing trial accused of rape. The story comes full circle right back to where their relationship began.

It’s dark and clever and if you’ve ever had anything to do with Oxbridge of old, probably likely a little too close for comfort.

Current read: 8 Rules of love – How to find it, keep it and let it go by Jay Shetty – I was heavily influenced by informal yoga book club on this one and while I initially was really sceptical, it just felt like the diary of a smug married, I did really enjoy this book when it got passed the concept of romantic love.

I am probably a little more receptive to this book as I am in myself love healing era and enjoyed the roadmap to modern love with all the references to eastern philosophies, the input from other professionals and the tangible advice and practices to help with that self-reflection piece that we just don’t do. Absolutely not a book for everyone, it’ll make you think and maybe sit in discomfort, but you will probably realise something.

Most Impactful Listen: The Intelligence from The Economist – Cash out: the digital-payments revolution – Jason Palmer, who sounds like melted chocolate, and Ore Ogunbiyi talk us through the shift in global digital payments and how it is more than just a matter of convenience, cash is no longer king falling 25% pp in the last decade, thanks to digital payments. UPI in India is fascinating and it’s just nice to have some coverage that isn’t crypto based. The podcast also covers the future of Singapore’s Golden Mile and recommends 3 books that document some of history’s greatest hoaxes, what is not to love?

• WhatsApp edit function goes global
• Should schools teach arguing?
• Introverting in a room of people people
• Winnie-the-Poohs catchy new slogan
• A night by the canal

WhatsApp edit function goes global
Rumour has it you can now edit your WhatsApp messages, I’ve not tried it but apparently this week Meta announced it would start rolling out the edit functionality globally the coming weeks, “From correcting a simple misspelling to adding extra context to a message, we’re excited to bring you more control over your chats,” it said in a blog post.

But don’t get too excited, the message will append with an ‘edited’ to tell exactly everyone you’ve made a mistake, arguably less embarrassing to just delete the message and retype it.

The internet has long called for an edit function, it’s literally all Twitter users have been screaming for a decade, but there is no real rival pushing this on, not so for Meta and Whatsapp with rival apps including Telegram and Signal already full on edit function fans.

Should schools teach arguing?
When I had initially heard that Alastair Campbell said that he thought that schools should teach ‘arguing’ in classes at The Hay Festival of Literature & Arts this week I might have rolled my eyes and thought this is exactly what Alastair Campbell would think is a good idea.

I do have a lot of time for Alastair Campbell, I don’t always agree with everything he says, but actually I do listen when he speaks and that is sort of his teaching arguing in schools point. In a world that entirely operates on conflict, some are impassable but actually most are not. You can be brilliant friends with people you disagree with on a whole range of subjects and maybe in the world of polarising extremes and supposed “culture wars”, the thought about learning how to argue and disagree isn’t all that stupid at all.

He suggested the idea of calling it “arguing”, “policy” or “big issues” and while none of these sound like the best name that would get kids signing up, I definitely think there should be room on the curriculum for more how to live life stuff.

Winnie-the-Poohs catchy new statement
In the same week after nearly 100 years, a library book was finally returns, Winnie-the-Pooh is now offering advice on what to do if a gunman comes to your school.

The Guardian has reported that a book produced by local law enforcement has been given to school children in Texas. The book features the EH Shepard illustrations of my youth alongside the phrase “If there is danger, let Winnie-the-Pooh and his Crew show you what to do: Run Hide Fight”.

As of January 2022 Winnie-the-Pooh is no longer subject to copyright and is in the public domain, there is no permission or fee required to use the characters or the setting…I can’t help but think this probably isn’t what A.A Milne would have wanted.

Introverting in a room full of people people
I work with people people, people are their speciality and they are really good at peopling, by contrast I am not. I have limited abilities to people and the worst luck, so of course I had just about reached my people limit the day before the first all company meet up where I would finally get to physically see a lot of the wonderful people I work with who make me genuinely believe people are alright sometimes.

Want to know what made it worse? I had to sneak off to grab my laptop and do some work in the space where it was designated no work was required, I then had to be that guy who checked her phone all afternoon just in case there was something else I needed to move on because payday is important and doesn’t care you’d rather be doing something else and you can guarantee come payday everyone would have wished you’d done the payroll and not the something else.

All is well that ends well, but I do envy people who can just turn it all off and people.

A night by the Canal
I’m lucky to have an amazing friend Liz, who does amazing things…like running 145 miles down canals (Kennet and Avon, Grand Union, Leeds & Liverpool) and she is so good at running along canals, she even does it again the other way when its uphill when given the chance.

When she asked if I would help crew, the answer was ‘of course’ and when I volunteered for the night shift solo, she very kindly said ‘yes’. My heart is so full, I am never happier than when I am on, in or near water and the peace of the night on the British waterways is like nothing you’ve experienced before. The weather was perfect, maybe a little too warm to a little too cold for running but for crew duties, which is essentially just turning up at various points with snacks, drinks and kinds words, it was absolutely perfect.

There is also all the admins, so I get to get my clipboard on, my rubbyouty pens and do running maths. Liz finished her race and it was absolute honour to be a tiny part of that.

Current watch:  Canal Boat Diaries – I saved this entire series to watch the day of crewing, you cannot pre-sleep to stay up for 48+hours, you just have to rest. Robbie Cummings welcomes your aboard his narrow boat the Naughty Lass on his journey from Sheffield to Braunston over what can only be described as a magical autumn/winter on the water.

Robbie is very honest about boat life and the historic significance of Britains Waterways, it is my ultimate feel-good TV. Highly recommend. No better prep for 17 hours along the Grand Union.

Current read:
What They Don’t Teach You About Money: Seven Habits to Unlock Financial Independence by Claer Barrett – Claer is the FT’s consumer editor and host of the FT’s Money Clinic podcast, both her Serious Money column and the podcast are not to be missed. The minute she let the world know she was writing a book about the things she wished people knew about finances I knew it would be accessible, straight forward and genuinely useful.

While Claer has some serious knowledge to share, she does it with kindness, humour and understanding, it’s the honest conversation we should all be having about our finances, without the judgement or expectation that usually comes with having those conversations in the very few settings we currently do, either from your family or a financial adviser. This book is for all ages, those who’re just starting their money journey and those of us on our way who might feel like they’ve left it too late, I cannot stress how useful this book is.

Most Impactful Listen: Stuff you should know – What is the Bechdel Test? – Am I really recommending a podcast by two men talking about the measure of representation of women in film? Yes I am. Josh and Chuck are really good at explaining stuff you should know, they explain what the measure is, how it came to be and some of the surprising films that do and don’t pass the test, they also cover the history of why that might be the case. I really enjoyed the episode, much to even my own surprise, even though it spectacularly failed the Bechdel test!

• How do you feel about AI?
• That weird feeling of agreeing with Matt Hancock
• Is nature trying to get even
• Intensive three day courses
• Voter ID, the data is coming

How do you feel about AI?
BT announced this week that will be reducing staff numbers by up to 50,000 employees by 2030 and estimates 10,000 of those jobs will be replaced by AI and while not all because AI can replace humans, but that better infrastructure requires less maintenance, so this is not simply AI replacing jobs, but it’s the first step.

In the same week a wonderful human in my life sent me a wonderful piece of prose from ChatGPT from the simple instruction “write me a poem about…” and selected two variables. I don’t mind saying it punched me right in the feels, it was as beautiful as it was insightful and I couldn’t quite marry up the insight with the lack of human being the one that put it together, it has obviously originated in those words, maybe not in that order before, from human input.

I think I am AI agnostic, simply because for a little while longer I’d like to believe in the future that robots will do the heavy lifting of life and I will be the one writing prose and making art…not the other way around. (Side note: If ever there was a call for universal basic income, the time is coming.)

That weird feeling of agreeing Matt Hancock
Thank god Matt Hancock went on The News Agents podcast and had an opinion on Nat-Con because I couldn’t not talk about NatCon but who wants to talk about NatCon? What happened at NatCon should very much have stayed in all their heads. On the one hand “don’t talk about them, it’s exactly what they want” but very much on the other hand when you have serving members of parliament sharing and cheering some quite obviously fascist policy ideas then you definitely have to say something.

It pains me to agree with Matt Hancock but he did the right thing. While he has come out to criticise those speaking at Nat Con it’s worth noting he does so from the safest possible place that can’t damage his political career. He is not a member of the Conservative Party, currently sitting as an Independent and he is not running at the next general election, but credit where credit due. He quite strongly condemned, rightly so, the right of his party, the current civil war and the honest reality if they think this is the answer to win a general election they will not be voted back in for a generation.

Is Nature trying to get even?
Following a spate of Orca’s sinking boats in Europe, Live Science published an article that might explain why and how Orcas appear to be teaching each other how to do it.

Scientists think there is a “critical moment of agony” which results in attacks on boats and that this is now becoming socially acceptable behaviour in the Orca community, in the most recent attack the Skipper reported that the two younger smaller Orcas were imitating the larger orca and also slammed themselves into the yacht.

The crew were rescued, the boat bought into port, where it promptly sank at the entrance, days after a similar incident where a pod of six Orcas charged another boat. Is this a fight back? Just because we built boats and can travel by sea, should we in quite the way we are doing it now?

Intensive Courses
I am just off the back of a three day intensive course and assessment and I am shattered. It definitely does not suit my learning style at all. I am so tired might I cry. Very early on I had a feeling that I couldn’t do it, I felt quite deflated on day 1, turned up on day 2 wondering if I was even going to turn up on day 3 and well day 3 was a story arch of “if there was no more content today I might pass this” to if I fail this I don’t think I’ll bother getting assessed again, I don’t need this.

I passed, somehow. It can only be based on the submission for assessment criteria, I knew the stuff but that it would probably escape me in the moment. Our assessor was lovely and the time flew, but my mind definitely went blank, I definitely got some things wrong and I definitely am not at peak fitness. The fact that a three day intensive course had be stuck entirely in fight or flight, an entirely voluntary course and assessment that no aspect of my life depends on me having.

With a whole generation of Covid children facing week two of their GCSE’s this week, it was nice to be humbled, you think you get it, the stress and the overwhelm because we’ve all done it, but you forget what it’s actually like, in the moment.

Voter ID, the data is coming
It’s currently being predicted that around 10,000 people were not eligible to vote at this round of local elections as they did not have the correct eligible ID – because it wasn’t even about having ID, it was having the right ID.

The BBC has gathered data with 160 of the 230 councils operating in the election showed that over 25,000 voters were initially refused a ballot paper for not having ID, but of those voters just short of 1000 voters did not return to vote.

What is great is that a significant percentage did return to vote with the correct ID and that is amazing, but, there is always a but, to do so comes with privilege, how many people didn’t return because they didn’t have ID, how many didn’t return because they didn’t have time?

Current watch:  The Chair – I originally watched this a few months back, but an odd conversation sparked my want to watch it again, because Sandra Oh. The premise is prestigious American university, a first woman chair of the languishing English department, that’s very stale male and pale, but she becomes caught up colleagues self destruction, declining enrolments and out of touch views.

There are three very strong female characters very much in different seasons of their academic life, highlighting how hard it is and always has been a woman in a sexist patriarchal power structure, even with women at the helm. I wish it was longer, it’s a short 6 30ish minute episodes, but it packs a punch because of the reality of it.

Current read: F**k You Ver Much: The surprising truth about why people are so rude by Danny Wallace – After 24 hours where I had seen impatient people abuse dispensary staff at the chemist and ignorant people abuse volunteers at a local hospice shop I was left with a feeling, a feeling I knew only this book would solve.

I absolutely adore Danny’s writing and this was on my kindle from its release back in 2018, but it had never been the book to suit the mood. So imagine my delight 5 years later when it confirmed everything I was already thinking, people are getting ruder and it’s a problem. It impacts those who are rude, those on the end of the rudeness and people who witness said rudeness.

Danny travels the world interviewing neuroscientists, psychologists, barristers, public sector workers and even joins a Radical Honesty group – never heard of them? Go look them up, I won’t come with you! I felt comforted in my experience and really do vow to be kinder.

Most Impactful Listen: Today in Focus – Why ‘Godfather of AI’ George Hinton thinks humanity is at a crossroads – Hinton stepped away from his work with Google in this field to be able to speak freely about this concerns, at 75 Geoffrey Hinton’s work on neural networking has been key in the progress of AI to date, but he is worried about the risk of the technology outpacing the human ability to respond and the risks involved.

It is well worth your time, regardless of your feelings on AI, because it felt oddly hopeful, because I think if you’re not concerned by the risks then you’ve missed the point, but actually there are reasonable steps we can take, so why aren’t we?

• 100% mortgages are back
• Financial Education in Schools
• The current cost of living
• Protecting overweight people
• Eurovision

100% mortgages are back
If you didn’t read that & hear the voice, then there is something wrong with you. Anyway, Skipton Building Society have opened a no deposit, unguarantored product aimed solely at renters looking to make the move to home ownership.

I already know what a certain generation think without even having to ask, 100%+ mortgages gave off strong main character energy in the 2008 financial crash, which my generation has paid the price for I volunteered at Citizen Advice prior to the financial crash in 2008 & let me tell you, 100% mortgages weren’t the problem. It was handing them out like peanuts at the bar that was the problem.

Skipton appear to have done their due diligence & assessed the risks. A 5-year fix at 5.49% limited to first time buyers, maximum £600k loan value, so long as the mortgage payments in the first 5 years don’t exceed the average monthly rent paid in the last six months of renting.

It’s a solid proposition, but likely falls short of the values needed to buy the average home. I suspect it will greatly help in the north, but barely be possible for the southern counties. As with all things in life, a solid solution but unfortunately the housing market just doesn’t work.

Financial Education in Schools
MyBnk this week have called for 30 hours of financial education in schools & I am here for this. While Rishi Sunak continues his obsession with maths, which by the way, I don’t think is the magic bullet he thinks it is & a rather odd hill on which to chose to die. Context however would be a great hill on which to want to die, financial education for all.

As a donator to the FT’s Financial Literacy & Inclusion Campaign I definitely think there need to be room made at key ages for practical education around finances, make maths lessons practical, teach the basics of compounding, the cost of debt, credit ratings, pensions. All very easily covered in 30 hours to allow young people half a chance of existing formal education & being able to make better decisions from a place of confidence.

Thats how you empower people, regardless of age, by giving them the tools to make the best decision they can. Two thirds of young people do not recall having ever received any financial education and it might not be something anyone around them can help with either, but chances are we will all have income in our lives to manage, to preserve, to spend and to borrow. These are the basics, so if you insist that we must all learn maths till we’re 18, making it useful.

The current cost of living
Which released some interesting data this week on the impact of the cost-of-living crisis, showing that two million households in the UK missed or defaulted on either a mortgage, rent, credit card or bill payment last month. 2 million. 700,000 of those two million where I the housing payment category and then the tail end of this week saw the Bank of England raise interest rates again in an attempt to curb inflation.

A cost-of-living crisis disproportionately impacts the poorest, who already don’t have a cheaper alternative to buy. Retail research from Assosia looked at 15 everyday essentials at Morrisons, Sainsbury, Tesco and Asda…your mid-tier supermarkets, mid-tier and the 15-item basket had risen by 34% from 2021 to 2023.

When a standard 500g bag of pasta is now 95p, when it was 50p two years ago. No amount of financial literacy or 100% mortgages can help in a cost-of-living crisis as prolonged as this one, for many the maths just does not math and that is just not okay.

Protecting Overweight People
This week New York City council passed a law that protects against discrimination based on weight.

The life of living in a larger body is fraught with discrimination, you do not know thin privilege, unless you have been overweight and I have been overweight, morbidly so, I have been super thin, I have been fit and I currently reside in a body that is larger than feels comfortable but that simply “losing weight” is not possible due to health problems.

More than 40% of American adults are considered obese and the social studies from practical things, like being able to access facilities, sit down and weight limits to prevent moving around the city to possibly unexpected bias in costs and lower wages…especially for women.

The city councilman Shaun Abreu who sponsored the bill felt compelled to tackle the “silent burden people have had to carry” around weight stigma after he gained 18kg himself over lockdown. There are other states in the US that at local level have protections in place in the workplace against discrimination based on weight.

Eurovision
Love it or hate it, I think we need to talk about it. This years was weird, it felt a bit like a caricature of itself, which would usually be amazing but this year just felt a bit off.

It felt a very different vibe this year, properly political again but not really in and obvious political way, how did Israel do so well? I had the luxury of spending my post Eurovision Sunday morning with an International Relations and history student and it was fascinating to get their analysis and ask some probably odd questions about if there a political reason for this.

All of that aside, Liverpool put on an amazing display, twitter was superb as always and even Tiktok delivered some behind the scenes this is what happens in the 40s between the acts on stage interesting videos.

Current watch:  Evicted – Binge-watching heartbreak seemed odd this week, but what an important series. As the episodes open, when you’re a 20-something you should be having fun but they’re actually being priced out and pushed out of quite frankly awful accommodation for too much money. Section 21 has quite a lot to answer for and the statistics in the series are truly terrifying.

Current read: Happy Fat Taking up space in a world that wants to shrink you by Sofie Hagen – This book follows Sofies own journey into self-acceptance, through sharing her own experiences of fat phobia both from the external world but also her internal world to find a way to live a happy life.

This is half memoir, half social commentary with some amazing interviews with other voices in the fat liberation space, it’s funny (Sofie is a comedian), it’s beautifully sweet and really very honest – fat sex, getting stuck in a toilet, having to ask for extra things to merely be comfortably uncomfortable.

Most Impactful Listen: Robots vs Marathons – The List of Absolutely Everything That might Kill You – Hosted by radio presenter Matt Edmonson and author and comedian Adam Kay, the pair battle out innocuous everyday items that might be secretly plotting to kill us to create a lethal league table of sorts. They are each others ying to their yang and make a real lovely pair, they are joined by Professor Jennifer Visser-Rogers their resident statistician to apply the statistics from the surprising histories. This particular episode might surprise you as much as it did with. Well into marathon season and all the talk of robots, which do you think will mostly kill you?

• 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.