Advertising awards season has come around again. This week, the D&AD awards were announced, the most difficult to win. One of the standouts for the year was Droga 5’s campaign for The New York Times which won a Black Pencil (and probably a few more to boot). All of these videos are affecting and not only just showcase the value of a subscription, they also demonstrate the value of the work their journalists do. Amazingly powerful.
Speaking of taking the black, Game of Thrones wrapped up early this week. A lot of people had issues with this season. I had my issues too despite being a defender of how this season had panned out. But in Scientific American there’s a brilliantly detailed description from a writing point of view why season 8 (and recent seasons too) have felt different to the early ones. This is long but it exposes a change that people may not have noticed but they certainly have felt.
I have been a longtime follower of the ARIA singles and albums charts in Australia, but in recent years I’ve let it slip. Streaming music has distorted the charts and the singles aren’t relevant to my tastes in any way whatsoever. But it did delight me to hear a recent chart placing in the UK singles charts. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has produced a single to raise awareness about endangered birds. It’s literally 25 birds singing.
Stephen Hawking (and futurists like Ray Kurzweil) have maintained human evolution won’t keep up the pace of technology and we’ll either have to augment ourselves or become subservient to artificial intelligence. HBR looked into wearable AI that will augment human intelligence rather than be left behind by our new robot overlords.
The important inventions you didn’t ask for
I’m a big fan of inventors. This chap called RightCoastGuy is uploading his various inventions to Reddit and they’re all hilarious to me. Examples include The Cuisine Curtain to cover your mouth as you chew, blinds for sunglasses, and the iDangle to dangle your phone from he roof inches above your face so you can look at it while lying in bed. Dare I say, I think he' might be a genius.
