David Emery OnlineDowsing is a technology for intuition amplification
So my unfounded, imagined mechanism starts like this: thinking about water, and stepping into a location where there is increased water likelihood, one may become primed to look down, which is physically represented as a microscopic movement or twitch of the fingers. (Which could of course be a random twitch because that happens too.)
—Matt Webb
I am absolutely fascinated by the idea that pseudoscience ideas like dowsing could—due to the deep and strange and mysterious ways our bodies are cobbled together—actually work on some level.
See also: homeopathy. I don’t for a second think that sugar pills with a microscopic amount of something in them have any effect, but—sometimes they do. Which means that our brains and our bodies are conjuring up that response out of nowhere, because the taker believes that they do.
And maybe—to build on Matt’s point about amplifying our own bodies intuition and natural responses—paracetamol, aspirin et al often work in the same way; it’s not the active ingredients that make you feel better, it’s the action of taking it. See also: when I give one of my kids a plaster for the most minor of scrapes.
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The Jurassic World Exhibition
There is an amazing weaponisation of consumer psychology at this end of this. You walk through room after room of dinosaur set pieces, each slowly ramping up in terms of scariness. Brachiosaurus first, velociraptor later, etc. Then, just at the point where your kids are getting a little tired after bouncing around petting anclyasauruses, in the last room—no spoilers—they terrify the pants off them.
And spit you out, tears akimbo, in an extremely well stocked gift shop.
Visit ➔Bubble
I have two main ways of getting to work. One way – my normal way – involves a slightly soulless walk, slightly mediocre coffee, and a slightly less crowded tube train at the end of it. The other way features rammed carriages but significantly better flat whites.
I was in the later establishment just over a week ago. It was a Friday. One of the more characterful features of the place is that it typically plays loud, high BPM music more frequently found in places like, I don’t know, Fabric I guess? I don’t really go to clubs any more, but this is the sort of music I assume they still play.
In short, it is not the sort of accompaniment you expect with your morning coffee. Once I was in there and they were playing – at their traditional ear splitting volume – The Teaches of Peaches (by Peaches). Watching the ripple of confusion spread through the queue as people figured out that yes, they had heard that lyric correctly, was quite a beautiful sight to behold.
Back to that Friday. There was no music playing, and a glum look across the faces of all the staff. You can probably guess...
Read more ➔Don't try this in Los Angeles
It’s well known that LA is a car town, but it doesn’t really hit you quite what that means until you get there. To someone from Europe well versed in how cities can sprawl – or not – you think “sure, everyone drives in LA, I get it”. But you really don’t. It’s woven so deep into the very fibre of the place’s being, into its soul, that it creeps into everything and everyone.
When I first go to a city I normally try and walk to as many places as I can to try and figure out what makes this place tick; what makes this place different from anywhere else. You can’t do that out the window of a fast moving taxi cab. You miss things, intangibles. New York: the noise. London: old and new, poor and rich, all next to each other. Paris: (to be clichéd, because sometimes clichés are well observed) the attitude.
Don’t try this in Los Angeles.
The first time I went there I did, and what looked on the map to be a 30 minute walk turned out to be a 45 minute walk past street after street of low-rise, widely spaced houses punctuated by never ending...
Read more ➔Disconnected
As I write it is 9pm the night before the first day of school.
It's sort of fascinating how that feeling that was drilled into you as a child lingers on well into adulthood, isn't it? I have a good, fun job that I enjoy immensely but yet here I am, the last weekend at the bloated end of the Christmas break full of the creeping dread.
Hopefully I haven't forgotten my maths homework.
Maybe this dread, this mild sense of malaise, is because the December break is so vital, especially if you work in the creative industries, and especially if you do it right. Now when I say "right" I don't mean fleeing the country for a blast of sun like a migrating bird making full use of the fact it has wings (or saved up air miles), or sloping home to your parents to remind yourself what being a teenager was like (but with a real ID rather then a fake one that said you were actually Canadian).
No, what I mean by doing it right is to disconnect. Turn off your email. Don't "check in". Don't put an out of office on that says "I'm on holiday but checking my...
Read more ➔The Haircut
For men of a certain age, and with a certain quality of hair, there comes a time when going for a haircut takes on an additional level of seriousness.
You watch the barber intently. Look out for the “look”. The look that indicates precisely the same thing as that sharp intake of breath from a car mechanic: “I have news that you know is coming but you’re not going to like it”.
This time, maybe you’re fine.
You escape haircut intact, demeanour preserved. But you know one day, you’re going to get the look – or even make the look yourself for those of significant conviction – bite the bullet and accept that you have finally succumbed in the battle with your receding hairline.
It’s. All. Got. To. Go.
Your haircut is important, isn’t it? For something so easily changeable it becomes a persons signature, defining them in a multitude of differing ways. Even changes aid that definition; sticking with one style for a long time says as much about a person as changing it all the time. Conservative and comfortable, experimental and indecisive. Something in between.
For the record, this time: no look.
* * *
This is my last week working for Beggars Group.
It’s been...
Read more ➔Arts
Permit me, if you will, to wonder out loud for a moment.
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the “arts” and how they intersect, join and influence each other. Music and films and art and theatre and videogames. Videogames are probably the easiest to isolate and look at the influences; as a young industry they’ve cribbed their ideas and concepts from what’s pre-existed, most obviously from movies.
Compare not only the release of a big franchise game like Grand Theft Auto to that of, say, a new Tarrentino flick – with the vast marketing campaign, launch events née premieres, reviews, et cetera – but also the content itself, overflowing with cut scenes, known actors voicing key roles, and story lines half-inched from things you’ve watched before. Not to say this is a bad form of entertainment, of course, but it’s doesn’t major well for new experiences.
A good argument could be made that maybe now, with the rise of the burgeoning indie game scene and the popularity of platforms such as the App Store with their low barriers to entry, we are starting to see the games industry find its true feet and step out from the shadow of mediums that have...
Read more ➔The Busy Trap
If you live in America in the 21st century you’ve probably had to listen to a lot of people tell you how busy they are. It’s become the default response when you ask anyone how they’re doing: “Busy!” “So busy.” “Crazy busy.” It is, pretty obviously, a boast disguised as a complaint. And the stock response is a kind of congratulation: “That’s a good problem to have,” or “Better than the opposite.”
This rings so true (or at least it would if I had time to read it…).
Visit ➔'How I Met Your Mother': Your Face Here
The news is this: thanks to groundbreaking technology, it is now possible to sell ads in old episodes of TV shows by digitally inserting things like TV screens in bar scenes or billboards on sidewalk scenes, and having those digital screens carry timely ads, for example, as EW noted, for the release of 'Bad Teacher' in an episode that was shot in 2009.
Great technology and all, but do advertisers seriously think they get a return on investment from taking the time to insert a product into the background on a rerun of a TV show?
I mean, really?
Visit ➔The Collapse of Complex Business Models
Diller, Brill, and Murdoch seem be stating a simple fact—we will have to pay them—but this fact is not in fact a fact. Instead, it is a choice, one its proponents often decline to spell out in full, because, spelled out in full, it would read something like this:
“Web users will have to pay for what they watch and use, or else we will have to stop making content in the costly and complex way we have grown accustomed to making it. And we don’t know how to do that.”
I could have quoted the whole of this to be honest. Really interesting.
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