Hey there lovely email friends. You can already just-about notice that it’s getting a little brighter here. I am surrounded on all sides by brambles, all of whom have definitely noticed. They’re up and about already, as if it were mid-summer. Must be exhausting. Well there’s my bramble ramble, let’s see what else is going on, shall we?
❓ Phil Gyford’s Favourite Asks of 2021: Now look, when it comes to this new-fangled cyberspace malarkey, I can’t think of anyone that does it better than Phil Gyford. These days there aren’t many people who’s posts I read word-for-word every time. I could go on about this, but for now let’s just say when (if?) I grow up I want to be Phil Gyford, and so should you. Anyway, his tolerance for Ask MetaFilter is much higher than my own, and he has listed his favourite questions posted last year. You should read them.
🧦 Energy firm E.On apologises for sending socks to customers: I mean you have to marvel at the extrordinary DoSAC levels of stupidity here, but this energy supplier is “incredibly sorry” for sending socks to its customers to encourage them to turn the heating down, at a time when bills are set to soar.
💾 How Tumblr Became Popular for Being Obsolete: The social-media platform’s status as a relic of the Internet has attracted prodigal users as well as new ones. Nearly half of the platform’s active users and 61% of its new ones are Generation Z.
🏝 What If We Just Stopped Being So Available? Recently the email client on my phone stopped giving out notifications. I fiddled with it a bit, but I also realised my already healthy relationship with email had improved still further. Today’s norms of responsiveness are ridiculous. We shouldn’t apologise for failing to meet them.
☯️ How to be useless: Now here’s an attractive thought: reclaim your life and happiness by letting go of the need to produce, strive or serve a purpose.
‼️ Men Should Use More Exclamation Points!!! Studies have found that women are responsible for up to 73% of all exclamation points!!! Men are imprisoned by the fear of appearing enthusiastic, but a simple exclamation point can set them free from their drab little lives!!!
🤏 Microaggressions Sound Minor, But They’re No Laughing Matter: It’s a silly-sounding word, but the issue is not to be laughed off. It’s often thought that if aggression is delivered in small-enough doses, short of an out-and-out hate crime, it can be dismissed as mere words, which, unlike the proverbial sticks and stones, can’t hurt anyone unless that person “lets them”. Not so.