Good afternoon once again lovely email friends. Looking at the week ahead, I’m starting to wonder how I’m going to fit everything in. With the return of Love Island on Monday, which long-time readers may remember I consider one of the most important contemporary cultural touchpoints but also immensely time-consuming, there may not be enough hours in the day. Nice problem to have.
🎺 A Beginner’s Guide to Miles Davis: As a jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and composer, Davis was one of the most influential and prolific figures in the history of jazz. So prolific, in fact, that Spotify is brimming with his works, but with re-recordings and jazz being so improvisational, this huge body of work is a little impenetrable for the more casual listener. This guide was written to welcome non-experts into Davis’ incredible world.
🗿 The Lindy Way of Living: A technology lawyer argues we should be gleaning more wisdom from antiquity, since the only effective judge of things is time.
📶 Bombshell Report Finds Phone Network Encryption Was Deliberately Weakened: A new paper shows that two encryption algorithms used in mobile networks can be exploited to spy on phones’ internet traffic. The probability of the weakness being introduced accidentally is extremely low. Thus, researchers speculate that it was intentionally put into the algorithm. The group that designed it then confirmed this was the case.
🪤 Why user-centred design struggles with ethics: For decades we’ve been taught that user-centricity is the key to good design. But now the philosophy is showing vulnerabilities. We need approaches that are less narrow, less transactional, and more able to cope with the diverse, systemic challenges the 21st century has in store.
💰 Rich Celebrities Should Get Off Social Media and Enjoy Being Rich: Esquire wonders why extraordinarily wealthy and famous people are doing their own tweeting. In light of so many high-profile social media disasters, it doesn’t seem worth it. Can’t they just hire someone to run their account? Why are they bothering to post rise-and-grind cringe every day when they could be building their collection of exotic cars? One explanation would be this is a symptom of rampant narcissism and malignant insecurity.
👩🎨 How Corporations Can Learn to Collaborate with Creatives: As more companies embrace content marketing and other creative pursuits, so more managers are working directly with artistic, editorial and strategic talent. These insights from creative practitioners, compiled by Ben Schott of Original Miscellany fame, are an attempt to foster more fruitful collaborations between corporate canines and creative cats.
👧 Evolution of the dad: Most male mammals have little or nothing to do with their kids. Even among the other apes, our closest relatives, most dads don’t do much. Why is our own species different?
🎶 Edgar Wright Shares Ten Of His Favourite Music Documentaries: With his own music documentary out this week, Wright celebrates those that have gone before. The skill behind a music documentary is in the storytelling. Like the greatest narrative movies, the best documentaries can be funny, shocking, profound, thought-provoking, and sometimes life-changing.
💡 How to get ideas in four easy steps: Here’s a sixty-second guide for a much wider audience than just artists or creatives. We should all be generating ideas.