Every two weeks I write about culture, brands, creativity and technology. This issue #222 covers: → slop machines 🎰 → weirdos 🦹🏻‍♂️ → anarchy 🏴‍☠️ → care-less 😮‍💨 → soul-full 👐 open.substack.com/pub/upstream...

Every two weeks I write about culture, brands, creativity and technology. This issue #222 covers: → slop machines 🎰 → weirdos 🦹🏻‍♂️ → anarchy 🏴‍☠️ → care-less 😮‍💨 → soul-full 👐 open.substack.com/pub/upstream...

A better world is possible

“It actually doesn’t take much to be considered a difficult woman. That’s why there are so many of us.” ― Jane Goodall 💙 RIP to a real one. My childhood hero

Nice. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Nice line..... lbbonline.com/news/The-Gua...

Brand naming projects are always tricky. But.......bear in mind that Hiscox and Johnson Controls both exist.

Everyone's got a god shaped hole they need to fill, as Blaise Pascal said.

👀👀👀

The era of efficiency continues. And yet. I can't help but continually think of the "the doorman fallacy". What do we lose, when we think we gain? www.businesspost.ie/companies/lu...

“If we can recognize that change and uncertainty are basic principles, we can greet the future and the transformation we are undergoing with the understanding that *we do not know enough to be pessimistic*.” Hazel Henderson

“Birds born in a cage think flying is an illness” Alejandro Jodorowsky

"Sell yourself like a product and get treated like one". "By inviting strangers to watch, you not only welcome praise and adoration but critics too — ready to review the show, comment on the character development, poke holes in the plot, follow the franchise." www.afterbabel.com/p/we-are-the...

A wet Saturday mass 🙏 ⛰️ 🏃‍♂️

JFC 🤦‍♂️

"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong" H.L. Mencken.

“You think that because you understand ‘One’ that you must therefore understand ‘Two’ because one and one make two. But you forget that you must also understand ‘and.’ Donella Meadows

heh

Wonderful writing….

👀 🇺🇸 🤡

Back at it…..

Christ 😞 …..I mean, any crumb of effort, any thinking at all….would help….

Some turnaround.... → digital revenues now 72% of total revenues → 38% of total revenue now comes from outside the UK → digital subs increased by over 150,000 to 1.3m www.theguardian.com/gnm-press-of...

Good idea💡.

Divide and conquer. As old as time. We never, ever, learn.

“quickly shut down systems after realising the severity of the cyber-attack. Three weeks later, the carmaker is still incapacitated, unable to produce at any of its factories”

"Tell me what you pay attention to and I will tell you who you are." José Ortega y Gasset

Every two weeks I write about culture, brands, creativity and technology. This issue #221 covers: → extremis 🥵 → riz 😎 → flattening 🫓 → road kill 💀 → open up 🔓 open.substack.com/pub/upstream...

In case you want to share that EPIC Dutch Disney parody with friends who aren't on BlueSky - here's a YouTube link. (& if you haven't already watched it, you are missing OUT!)

Great point.

I’m Jimmy Kimmel ✊

I’m Jimmy Kimmel ✊

“Everything had already been said, but nobody listened, so it had to be said again” Victor Hugo

Absolute phwooaaaaarrrrrrrr

Jesus, what a fucker.

Not fucking around. “We personally estimate about 65% of the tasks agencies get paid for currently could be done by AI agents with today’s technology,” said Wes ter Haar, an executive director of S4 Capital on the earnings call for the group’s interim results". digiday.com/marketing/wh...

Phwoaarrrrrrr www.dezeen.com/2025/09/09/a...

Post 5 pleasures in life: 1. Watching my kids grow up 2. Running down a mountain 3. Watching my wife laugh 4. A holiday lunchtime beer 5. Reading in the sun ☀️

Live by the sword, die by the sword. Bullshit. Put the fucking swords down. "Like so many MAGA heads out there, none of them seem to understand that their own hate, their own ignorance, their own violence, has consequences that eventually touch them". substack.com/home/post/p-...

Oh ffs

Oh ffs www.rte.ie/news/newslen...

The young fella’s football match. Strange weather. (they won 🙌 )

Saturday mass 🙏

Autumn 🍂 shrooms 🍄 👌

This. Everywhere. This.

Interesting.... "We talk about online places as spaces—Slack channels are “rooms,” Twitter a “public square”—but we don’t really think of them that way, and we even less design them that way." every.to/source-code/...

Favourite animated movies of all time: 1. Kubo and the two strings. 2. The Iron Giant. 3. The Monster in Paris. 4. Big Hero 6. 5. Song of the Sea.

Beautiful evening 🌅 ⛰️ 🏃‍♂️

"At some point, these girls have had enough: of social pressures, family dramas and especially of questionable male authority figures. The only thing left to do is vent at top volume." www.nytimes.com/2025/09/06/a...

History is made up. Often confabulated. And written by the victors.