5th September 2015

1) You really don’t need to work so much. From The New Yorker: ‘In white-collar jobs, the amount of work can expand infinitely through the generation of false necessities-that is, reasons for driving people as hard as possible that have nothing to do with real social or economic needs’.

2) This may (or may not) be news to you,  but People are having less Sex; in fact 20% less today, than in the year 2000. ‘Durex decided to run a global brand campaign to initiate a cultural conversation to try and tackle this issue, with the aim of creating a positive impact on our personal relationships’ (video)

3) ‘Fly with Air France’. According to Google, this spot for Air France is the most popular travel company video so far in 2015 with over 50 million views. In the runners-up spots, there are videos for Boeing Dreamliner, Turkish Airlines, a Legoland Hotel spot, and a video for Disneyland’s 60th Anniversary.

4) From Wired Magazine, 10 must read articles for September. Including – Apple’s plan to make original programming, 87,596 ‘women’ have signed up to Ashley Madison (post crisis) and  Google’s self driving cars are heading to Texas…

5) Explore Space for Yourself. This startup is working on creating a virtual reality experience that allows regular people to see what, until now,  only astronauts have had the opportunity to witness.

6) From Think With Google: Designing ‘TV’ Ads for YouTube – the first 5 seconds are key, after this viewers can, and often do, skip the advertising. The best way to tackle this problem,  is through Humour.

7) The Looming Problem That Could Kill Bitcoin. (The) ‘gloomy prediction stems from the fact that Bitcoin can’t process more than seven transactions a second. That’s a tiny volume compared to the tens of thousands per second that payment systems like Visa can handle.’

8) From @neilperkin – People’s lifespans are getting longer, but those of Companies are getting markedly shorter: … ‘the average lifespan of a company in the S&P 500 index has decreased from 61 years in 1958 to just 18 years today, a run rate that would mean that by 2027, more than three-quarters of the S&P 500 will be companies that we have not yet heard of‘.

9) Watch ants weirdly circle an iPhone when it rings.  They are almost as obsessed as we are…

10) …and finally , just in case you missed them, here are all TEN of Miley Cyrus’s VMA outfits ranked  from bad to worse.