If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

History of the entire world, I guess (thanks, D):

The 100 best photos with no photoshop (thanks, T).

50 best 1970s movie posters (thanks, A).

How to count past infinity:

Heartbreaking story about modern slavery.

The actual recording session of Waterloo Sunset.

Hello.

If you’ve been hoping for posts and/or podcasts, the last couple of weeks must have been deeply devastating for you.

I missed doing a podcast last week and I’m not going to do one this week. There are two reasons for this:

1. I’ve left Media Arts Lab. This meant that I had to get my Macbook wiped for security reasons. As a consequence (I now warn you, this is about to get quite dull) I had to reload Audacity, the programme I use to do the recordings. That was easy enough, but then it requires a second programme, appropriately entitled ‘LAME’, to export to MP3, the format I need to upload the file as a podcast. Uploading LAME is a massive arse. On the previous occasions where I’ve added LAME I’ve required the assistance of MAL’s IT dept. I didn’t fancy popping back just for that, or calling in the Geek Squad, so instead I’ve been familiarising myself with Garageband (If it’s good enough for Marc Maron…). I’m now ready for two recordings next week, so hang on till next weekend.
2. I’ve been inept at scheduling. I could have recorded Caroline Pay last week but I got the time difference wrong and it all went tits up. We’ll chat soon.

Sorry about that.

But here’s a post about the month during which I decided to take a break from social media.

A little context:

1. I’m only really on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. I could count Linkedin, but it’s not much of a distraction, so bollocks to it.
2. I intended not to visit any of the sites for the entire month. For reasons I detail below, this didn’t quite happen.

Let’s go through them, site by site:

Facebook: This is normally the biggest distraction for me, but I finally worked out why – If I commented on something I got myself in deeper because I wanted to track further comments and get into the conversation, possibly requiring more comments, leading to a never-ending cycle of comments and replies. Once I decided not to comment the lure to return became very weak indeed. There were a few times that I logged on, but this was because of messages people sent me on Messenger. For some reason my iPhone Messenger doesn’t work properly, so I had to go back into the proper site, which meant I saw my feed and scrolled down it a little. But without the comments (and likes) it had very little hold on me. So lurking instead of engaging worked well to stay up-to-date without dragging me in. Now that I’m ‘allowed’ back I just pop in once or twice a day for no more than a few minutes. It’s also worth saying that I used to feel a bit guilty about liking some things but not others, so I’d like most things just so I didn’t seem mean to people who liked stuff I posted. Where do you draw the line? I drew it quite a long way away. Now I’m not bothered.

Twitter: This is the one I tend to spend most time on. Not because I tweet a lot, but because it’s become a sort of quasi newspaper for me. I’ve curated a ‘list’ down to the kind of things I’m interested in (news, Arsenal, movies, advertising, humour, music etc.), and the links they provide often take quite a chunk out of the day. But that’s just like continually reading a newspaper that’s updated all day, so it’s really just a portal to other interesting things rather than something that’s interesting in itself. But I stayed off it for most of the month, returning only for regular information (a Tim Stillman Arsenal column on Thursdays; a weekend preview from Box Office Mojo on the same day), which didn’t keep me on the site very long. Now that I’m back my use has returned to the same level as before.

Instagram: This was the last social medium I joined, Before my ‘holiday’ I was posting maybe five pictures a week. Then I stopped and I didn’t miss it all and haven’t returned, even for a second.

Facebook and Instagram send you emails if you haven’t been back for a while, trying to tempt you to return. They didn’t really work on me, other than to remind me of their existence. The success of my holiday feels like a V-sign to all that.

Did it give me lots more free time? Not really. I learned that procrastination is procrastination, and that without social media I can still find many ways of not doing the constructive things I’m supposed to be doing (i found the questions and answers on Quora to be particularly distracting, although not so much now that I have Twitter back). But I do feel freer without them.

Overall, I think the pros might just have outweighed the cons, but it wasn’t as transformative as I was expecting. If you’re interested, give it a go. There were no withdrawal symptoms and the consequences were interesting enough to make the experience worth going through.

Fantastic trippy animation:

Photo explanation of the cover of Sergeant Pepper.

Design fails (thanks, J).

Slo-mo pole vault:

Welcome to a supercut:

https://vimeo.com/168217512

And a temper tantrum supercut:

How McDonald’s french fries are made:

The cast of The Godfather reunited for a chat.

8 things Bill Gates learned at TED (thanks, B).

Touching video game about learning that your son has cancer:

Hi there,

This year’s Adcan competition is open for creative and filmmakers to do some good for themselves and others.

Its founder, Brydon Gerus writes:

With all the turbulence in the social and political landscape lately, there couldn’t be a better time to help creatives turn their skills and passion for different causes into direct action. So today we’re thrilled to announce that ADCAN has gone global, helping unsigned filmmakers break into the industry by having them create content for non-profits and charities in need!

We’ll be sharing more about the expansion of ADCAN soon but in the mean time, check out the 6 charities we’re partnering with this year, download the briefs and GET INVOLVED at Adcan.com. 

I couldn’t have put it better myself.

If you’re looking to break into the industry in a way that helps others, this is for you. Their partners include Anonymous Content, Rattling Stick, Partizan, Nexus, Psyop, Vice and many others. So it’s a remarkably quick route to the top of the industry.

Here are some of the films made to promote the launch. Good luck!:

Funny fuck-ups.

Great/shit pub review (thanks, J).

Kids react to AC/DC (thanks, T):

Real time Tokyo subway map (thanks, T).

Supercut of Omar:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpKfV8l-bdc

Fun stuff for the 10th anniversary of Record Store Day (thanks, S&P):

I was reading a question on Quora that asked what it was like to live on $7 of food for a week.

I found the answers very interesting. Some had gone through the experience through necessity, while others offered advice on how best to spend that money and make it count over a week.

So I decided to have a go myself (upping the sum to $10 because I like round numbers and it sounds just as hard).

I thought it would be an educational experience, giving me some insight into a world I’m entirely unfamiliar with.

Now, before I go any further I think it’s probably best to say that I’m very much aware that doing this for a week, with the safety net of being able to break it and grab a burger if it all got too much, and knowing that it would all come to an end seven days later, is nothing like the REAL experience of having to live on that little food for a week. I’m also aware that this could come across as some kind of crass poverty tourism. But my intention was purely to go through a new experience, one that millions have to deal with all over the world. I thought it would give me more empathy along with an opportunity to leave my comfort zone.

So it started with shopping. I decided to go to a shop called Target, which sells lots of different products in bulk, and at the lower end of the price range. Armed with advice from the Quora people, I chose 18 (non-organic) eggs for $1.99, a large container of oats for $3.49, a 2.5lb jar of (shitty) peanut butter, for $2.99, and the rest on bananas, which I bought at Trader Joe’s (a mid-range supermarket) because they were cheaper. So I had protein, carbs and fat.

Things I learned from this:

1. It would be easier in some ways to spend $20 over two weeks – not from an endurance point of view, but for the sake of variety. I had to choose between oats and rice, and I selected the former because I thought it would go better with the bananas and peanut butter. If I were doing this for two weeks I could have bought both and changed things up each day. Instead I lived off a lot of banana porridge.
2. I wasn’t able to take advantage of knowing when the sale prices were happening, or using coupons, or checking out the ‘must sell today at knock down prices’ section of various supermarkets. I suppose all of those things would have given me an advantage in spreading my money around effectively, but I wanted to replicate the lack of choice that surely faces many people in this position. Most won’t have cars, so they can’t check a variety of places for the best deals, and many would get their money at unpredictable times, so the ability to plan ahead may not be a luxury they could fully enjoy.
3. Fuck organic. I think there’s a lot of skepticism about what’s really ‘organic’, and the extent to which that is truly beneficial, but if you have $10 of food for a week that issue is irrelevant. Four organic bananas vs eight normal ones? Easy decision. I recall Delia Smith explaining that cheap, battery-farmed chickens and eggs were an obvious option for many families, much to the horror of wealthier people. I now see exactly where she was coming from. My peanut butter choice was an exercise in gaining bulk calories, but it’s full of the kind of crap I wouldn’t normally eat. ‘Good’ food is definitely an indulgence at this budget..

I added a further rule where I could accept food that was offered to me, or partake of free food if I had the opportunity to do so. I don’t know how many $10-a-week people get to eat snacks at work, or leaving dos, but I thought there was probably a bit of that going on. And I didn’t just stockpile tonnes of office trail mix as that would have corrupted the experience too much and been less realistic, but I did have the odd handful here and there. I could also use ‘reasonable’ extra ingredients, by which I mean stuff I could swipe from a fast food restaurant (salt, pepper and ketchup), as well as a bit of butter.

So what was the eating like? Interesting from the experiment point of view and very dull from a cooking perspective. But I did discover a couple of beneficial things. For example, I normally have a rasher of bacon and three scrambled eggs for breakfast. I chop the bacon up, fry it, then add the eggs, which cook in the bacon fat. However, this time I had to cook the eggs in butter, and my god they tasted SO much better. So I now have a new way of cooking eggs that will improve them immensely. I also had to have my banana and porridge with none of the maple syrup or honey that I’d normally add. And it was a little blander, but like removing sugar from my tea, it actually turned out to be fine, and healthier.

On the downside, over the course of the week my bananas got a bit riper than I would have liked, and I worried that they wouldn’t last me the whole seven days. And eating half-bananas (opening the banana, eating half, then keeping the other half in the fridge for later) is a new experience for me, but was very necessary to allow me to eat porridge with half a banana twice a day. And the peanut butter tasted a bit shitty (partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, corn syrup), but not too bad. It was only the repetition of these dishes that made them less pleasant. The other downside of the peanut butter is that it gave me rotten indigestion, so I gave it up on Thursday, binning 1.5 of the 2.5 pounds. But I didn’t replace it with good quality peanut butter because that didn’t fit with the budget, and if people who really eat on $10 a week make a mistake they don’t have the safety net to rectify it. Instead I became even hungrier and wished I’d bought some rice, or more eggs, with the peanut butter money.

Of course, the other big problem was the number of calories I was consuming. Three eggs a day is 166 calories, while two bowls of half a banana plus porridge was probably another 200-300. Add in a bit more banana and peanut butter and I was probably coming in at under 700 calories a day. So I was fucking hungry, and by Friday I was finding it hard to think clearly. It might have been the lack of food, or the heat here in LA, but I couldn’t rouse myself to do anything in the afternoon. Yes, my hunger was self-imposed, but it gave me a good idea of how debilitating it is to operate with a constantly growling stomach. It’s harder to work, to drive, to engage in conversations, and all of those difficulties affects other areas. If you can’t concentrate at a job interview, or you scrape a car while you’re parking you’ll have other consequences to suffer, increasing the hardship. This is definitely one reason why it takes a big effort to break the cycle of poverty. But because hunger is invisible and comes with a stigma it’s also hard to get sympathy for those circumstances.

In the end, after a VERY welcome catered party on Saturday night, I kind of cheated on Sunday, eating three more eggs than my original purchase and going out for a bowl of chili at lunchtime. So I really managed six days, but I could have done the seventh with a gun to my head.

So it was interesting as an idea, boring as an experience and effective as a method of weight loss – I shed nine pounds in the first four days, partly because I didn’t ease off on popping to gym or going for runs. Most days I burned 1200 calories by 10am, so the 700 I replaced  them with barely touched the sides.

I don’t think I’d do it again (unless I wanted to lose ten pounds in a week for some reason, or I suffered a catastrophic loss of finances), but I’m glad I went through it. Being hungry is fucking hard for lots of reasons, many of which aren’t apparent until you go through a week of it with no choice (I know I had some choice, but I stuck to it because otherwise there would be no point in the entire exercise).

By the way, I’m also in the midst of another experiment: April has been a month devoid of social media (well, 99% devoid of social media). What has that been like? I’ll explain early next month.

The awesome script for the pilot of Breaking Bad.

Fold a T-shirt in five seconds:

Could NY sitcom characters afford their apartments?

A dictionary of things we don’t have words for.

You never actually touch anything:

Every single possible combination of letters arranged in 410 page books would have the story of your life and death, wouldn’t it?