Saturday 6th December

1) Compelling viewing. British cinematographer Danny Cooke has  captured the abandoned city of Pripyat in the Chernobyl Zone Of Alienation on film using a drone.

2) Totally Obsessed.  The Age of Cultural Manias ‘What is “it”? It could be Serial-unless it’s True Detective, the surprise album by Beyoncé, the first season of Girls, the last season of Breaking Bad, “Too Many Cooks”, or any of the other crazes that have possessed us in the last few years. Though they feel like manias in and of themselves, they are all part of a larger fad: obsession itself’.

3) An interesting perspective –  Strategy as Algorithm – ‘Fits with a thought I have had lately around how strategy is really about building algorithms (rules) that help drive optimal outcomes in decisions’ . By Noah Brier.

4) From Business Week on their 85th birthday –  85 disruptive ideas in 85 years.

5) This year, the UK is to be the first country in the world, where over half of all ad spend goes on digital.

6) Not feeling too great as the days grow shorter and the cold weather sets in? Here is  Google’s Misery Index – the times of the year when we feel most depressed ,anxious and stressed. Apparently …. ‘Christmas is the least miserable day of the year, with Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day not far behind … A seemingly random Wednesday in late April may be the worst day of the year’.

And here a ( somewhat) related story on how divorce rates ,contrary to most peoples perceptions, are actually falling. Divorce rates actually peaked , in the States, in the early 80’s.

More upbeat ( and makes perfect sense of course ) Google is to revamp its products with a 12 and younger focus.

7) Hint Hunt looks like an interesting spin on creative thinking and team building.

‘HintHunt® is a new simple and fun live escape game, designed for small groups of 3-5 people. You get 60 minutes to climb a mountain of puzzles and mysteries in a tiny room. The goal is simple yet challenging: get out in time! Else … you could be trapped inside forever! During this engaging and challenging game team members truly live and breathe in union for an hour’.

8) Here is an interesting and important debate, added to by the inimitably engaging Faris Yakoub (@faris) – Does Big Data inspire or hinder creativity?

9) Love this –  there are 213 reviews for the Grand Budapest Hotel on Trip Advisor. Unfortunately ( and unsurprisingly) the Tripadvisor algorithm cannot find any prices for this establishment….

10) And finally , this is great fun from Flowing Data – ‘How to use Pie Charts effectively’.  Worth a second look.