The100: Cathedrals, scarcity heuristics and sucking sounds

When you’re last, make it a race to come first

Mr D Trott esq has a knack for finding anecdotes around people solving problems in unusual ways.

Here’s his tale of a wine merchant using the scarcity heuristic to invent a tradition now culturally ingrained.

As a columnist from The New York Times put it:

As a wine it’s so-so; as a marketing gimmick it’s one of the great triumphs of our time.

The floodgates have officially been opened

Unlike a “scarce” red wine, there seems to be no shortage of online events these days.

However, the lineup for The Drum’s Can-Do Festival is spectacular. 10 days. 84 speakers (and counting). Seemingly free? Annnnnd Noel Edmonds! Guess you may need to be of a certain vintage and appellation to truly appreciate his appearance.

What are your opinions on online events? I have rather strong ones 🙂 But I thought I’d hand over the mic…

• Do you prefer listening on-demand, or tuning in live?
• What about interacting with the other attendees and the speakers?
• How much time in your day are you prepared to put aside for an online event?

We run our own event each year, you see, so your take would be greatly appreciated.

Disruption. Chaos. And enormous sucking sounds.

Got yourself a student debt?

Got a kid in University now?

Got a child who’s soon planning on going? (I feel for you.)

Watch listen to Professor Scott Galloway – who can say more in 10 minutes than most do in a lifetime – talking about the future of higher education. The intent, the scale, the impacts most definitely have global resonance. Boom!

Normal rules may not apply

Keeping with the changes, Les Binet of adam&eveDDB wrote a great article on business survival, adaptation and recovery (free to view behind their form). He lists lots of questions every business should be asking themselves at the moment.

While Dr Michael Muthukrishna from the renowned London School of Economics has put the pandemic into the context of human and cultural evolution.

Sure, it’s a long read. But the next time someone asks you what’s going to happen after all this – because let’s face it, that occurs quite a lot these days – you’re going to have some mightily interesting things to say.

This pandemic has reminded us that in a highly connected, globalised world, a wet market in Wuhan can grind the world economy to a halt. In our connected age, other people’s problems are our problems, but their solutions might also be our solutions.

(Don’t tell me that isn’t going to impress your neighbo/ur over the garden fence.)

Today. For tomorrow.

Perhaps it’s time for some cathedral thinking?

The concept boils down to planning for the long term. About undertaking preparations that will only ever be experienced in their completion by those yet to be born.

Deep. And also wonderfully explained in this 9m video.

Yesterday. Today.

French photographer Arnaud Montagard set off on a journey across the USA  and took a seriously impressive set of photos reminiscent of times-gone-by.

Spot the iPhone.

The colour of money

Now, this is just genius. Behold the colour map, content graphs and naming of the world’s moolah.

If anything, the list of currency names alone is brilliant. Manat. Nakfa. Metical… Just me?

His Airness

And for those who enjoyed watching The Last Dance, the series around the career of Michael Jordan, this piece by ESPN on MJ at 50 will give you a further dose of His Airness. It’s so good (yes, I’m a fan).