The100: Productive arguments, lingering fatigue and trailercore

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In praise of terrific arguments

We shouldn’t avoid robust, passionate, biased argument. In fact, under the right conditions, it can be the fastest route to truth. A good scrap can turn our cognitive flaws into collective virtues.

Disagreement is vital to advancing human understanding, argues Ian Leslie (see what I did there).

As the Wright brothers rightly said: 

Honest argument is merely a process of mutually picking the beams and motes out of each other’s eyes so both can see clearly…

Of course, sometimes it’s just important to say sorry, as Fussy did to Unilever. Heartfelt or not (cynical? What? Me?) it’s mighty fine publicity. And a nicely weighted response from Mr Jope.

Spreadsheets 102

It’s understandable that scientists picked up Excel and started to use it. It’s powerful, it’s flexible. It’s ubiquitous. It may not be the right tool, but it’s the tool that’s right there.

Things can be easily overlooked when assuming something will do something that it doesn’t. It’s how 16,000 positive covid cases disappeared from a UK contact tracing database… (if only they’d known about this outfit).

It’s not just you

I really soaked-up the words in You’re still exhausted by Anne Petersen. As she says, the last year-and-then-some (a.k.a. year+)  was:

…unsatisfying sameness, so familiar we forgot to try and even name it. But it was isolated, extended, slow-motion trauma.

I was lucky enough to get away for 2 weeks (hope you have/will too). It was a total switch off from work; and the media… Olympics excepted. 

I read 12 books and slept. 

My head feels different now, but I didn’t realise how exhausted I was. Anne again: 

…the pandemic was and remains exhausting in so many invisible ways – and we still haven’t given ourselves space to even begin to recover. Instead, we’re just softly boiling over, emptying and evaporating whatever stores of energy and patience and grace remain.

Your flight is delayed

Words none of us ever like to see*. But if you’re venturing to an airport soon, especially with disruptions still afoot, there’s a site that allows you to plan and adapt to your layovers a little better. 

It ranks airports based on their facilities should you ever find yourself significantly delayed. It even has some handy tips on how to cope if you need a few zzzs (for example, don’t stay in departures, go to arrivals). 

How Heathrow isn’t listed as the worst airport is a mystery to me. 

_{*Unless you were a member of the WMT UK team forced to spend an extra 24 hours in California, courtesy of Virgin Atlantic… you can imagine our disappointment:}

Ski skewered

Well shared, but still a rather excellent thread on the history of Ski (a former market dominating yogurt in the UK). Genuinely brilliant. @garius is worth a follow on Twitter if only for occasional random things such as the Pepsi Crystal employee training video. Marvelous. 

All roads don’t do that

Can’t ignore a good map, especially an interactive one (no, really).

This time it’s a map app that can answer your long held question of “how long did it take the Roman Legions to travel between Londinium and Roma” (British-based legions often tried to usurp Rome’s emperors, don’t you know). Choose the locations, the method of travel, even the season, and it will show how long it would take, the route, and how much it would cost. Ace. 

Trope or tripe?

Trailercore was a term I hadn’t heard before (h/t storythings). So imagine my delight to know there is a word for movie trailers that use slowed down, sombre versions of  famous pop songs. 

There are loads of great examples. You almost wonder if awareness of it might make some auteurs stop doing it, as prevalence is the death knell of cool. (Hasn’t happened in advertising – see John Lewis for further details – but we live in hope.)