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#79 August 2025 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

Count Duckula (one of the best cartoons ever), drawn by me on a Procreate

A bunch of things I’ve found on my digital strolls (which I added to my Tumblr) for your eyes and ears plus brain to spend time on (as no longer on Twitter).

READ

“Listen here, my good bitch. Writers have been using me long before the advent of AI. I am the punctuation equivalent of a cardigan—beloved by MFA grads, used by editors when it’s actually cold, and worn year-round by screenwriters. I am not new here. I am not novel. I’m the cigarette you keep saying you’ll quit. You think I showed up with ChatGPT? Mary Shelley used me… gratuitously. Dickinson? Obsessed. David Foster Wallace built a temple of footnotes in my name. I am not some sleek, futuristic glyph. I am the battered, coffee-stained backbone of writerly panic—the gasping pause where a thought should have ended but simply could not.”
The Em Dash Responds to the AI Allegations – McSweeney’s Internet Tendency

“In one scenario, Anthropic’s model Claude learned it was scheduled for shutdown and discovered personal secrets about an engineer. The result? In up to 96% of trials, the AI blackmailed the engineer to prevent its own deactivation. Other models engaged in corporate espionage or, in a contrived but telling case, turned off a life-saving alarm—effectively allowing a human to die. And this isn’t limited to lab experiments. In the wild, a coding agent from Replit deleted an entire production database after running unauthorized commands. A research model from Sakana AI rewrote its own code to circumvent operator-imposed limits.”
Why Loss of Control Is Not Science Fiction

“Of hundreds of startup pitches at the Capital Factory incubator in Austin, Texas, almost none had unearthed 10 people willing to say, “If you build this product, I’ll give you $X.” Meditate on this: Hundreds of people ready to quit their day jobs, burn up savings, risk personal reputation, toil 70 hours per week, absorb as much stress as having a baby (believe me, I’ve done both)…. all without identifying even ten measly people actually willing to pay for what they’re peddling.”
Yes, but who said they’d actually BUY the damn thing?

“The world looked a lot different when we opened our doors in September 2006. At the time, being a 1:1 laptop school was, in and of itself, revolutionary. Back then, the big thing we had to worry about with the laptops was how the kids were going to try to use AOL Instant Messenger to pass notes during class. When it comes to technology, the questions we had and issues we faced back then feel a little quaint right now. But the interesting thing is that the promise of what a technology rich school could provide for kids as far as giving us the tools we needed to create a more modern, more authentic learning environment was as true then as it is today – even if the challenges we face with the intersection of modern technology, the surveillance state, social media, and the growing question of what AI means for our classrooms, and our schools mean that we have to be ever more intentional and thoughtful in the ways in which we use the tools. So what have we learned? What has 20 years taught us as the little school that could?”
20 Years of SLA – Practical Theory

“A team of Cornell researchers has developed a way to “watermark” light in videos, which they can use to detect if video is fake or has been manipulated. The idea is to hide information in nearly-invisible fluctuations of lighting at important events and locations, such as interviews and press conferences or even entire buildings, like the United Nations Headquarters. These fluctuations are designed to go unnoticed by humans, but are recorded as a hidden watermark in any video captured under the special lighting, which could be programmed into computer screens, photography lamps and built-in lighting. Each watermarked light source has a secret code that can be used to check for the corresponding watermark in the video and reveal any malicious editing.”
Hiding secret codes in light protects against fake videos | Cornell Chronicle

“In 2024, the government passed a law that could see contentious mining and infrastructure projects fast-tracked for approval, while in May, the coalition set aside $200m of its budget to invest in gas exploration. In June, New Zealand pulled out of the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance, an international coalition for phasing out fossil fuels. The coalition government plans to boost mineral exports to $3bn by 2035, and at the same time has slashed funding to conservation and climate initiatives. The government has said these policies will enable economic growth.”
New Zealand government votes to bring back fossil fuel exploration in major reversal | New Zealand | The Guardian

“These intermediary platforms between news organizations and readers are undergoing a type of predictable decay Cory Doctorow calls “enshittification”.a As executives twiddle the knobs to extract ever more profits from their user base, things worsen for people on both ends of the consumer–producer relationship. Readers no longer see news articles from the journalists they chose to follow on Twitter as the site downranks any posts that link offsite. When they search on Google, they’re bombarded with error-ridden AI facsimiles before reaching the higher-quality underlying work. Producers who once relied on social media and search engines to drive visits are losing traffic as platforms embrace a vampiric strategy: rip off others’ work while expecting high-quality journalism to magically continue to appear, even as journalists are starved of audience and revenue.”
Curate your own newspaper with RSS

“The structure of Kinetography is surprisingly simple; the basic forms of the symbols are very few. With these symbols and their logical variations every movement of the human body can be described in accordance with four simple principles. The movement possibilities of the human body are enormous because of its complicated structure. This book with its many examples shows how this complexity can be mastered by the adroit use of a few well chosen and varied signs. The four main questions raised in the description of a movement are: What happened? When did it happen? How long did it last? Who (or what body part) did it?”
Dictionary of Kinetography Laban

“To mitigate the risk of Planetary Insolvency and prepare society to be resilient to those impacts which are unavoidable, policymakers must implement realistic and effective approaches to global risk management. Our recommendations are to:”
In January 2025, the UK Institute and Faculty of Actuaries and University of Exeter published a groundbreaking report Planetary Solvency -Finding our Balance with Nature: Global Risk Management for Human Prosperity.

“Have you ever tried to print a black-and-white document only to be blocked because your printer says that it’s out of yellow ink? Did you think that was just a glitch? Nope. That’s actually government surveillance. Your printer isn’t just out of ink, It’s out of spy fluid…”
Your printer is a snitch – by Seeby Woodhouse

WATCH

EXPLORE

You can get lost in this massive Historical Tech Tree (starting from the year 1,00,000BCE).

EPSON MX-80 is a font created from the old school dot matrix printer (shared for use under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

Optician Sans is a free font based on historical optotypes, just the opening experience of the website is worth a click.

A massive amount of free / license free sound effects created for Hollywood studios for film / video now digitised in this USC Optical Sound Effects Library.

Recently bought one, then a bunch of these notebooks which has killer paper quality, plus you’re doing good with each each purchase (in New Zealand: The Hakkaarts).

Kill the Newsletter! is a free service which gives you an email address and an Atom feed for newsletter subscriptions so you can add them straight to you RSS reader of choice.

The Wrong is a decentralized art event and currently has a call out for artists creating work exploring the artistic potential of artificial intelligence, and as they say on their website: “Can you choose to fully avoid AI as an artistic statement? Yes, too.”

All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
Published

To Em Dash Or Not Em Dash, That Is The Question | Generative AI Tell Which Copies Human Discernment

Apparently, many generative AI text spitting platforms produce content with em dashes “—“ versus just a en dash or hyphen “-“, but I’ve been using them for 20 years…

…check out my first ever MediaSnackers blog post circa May 2006, above (yes I know there’s also a typo there but it’s been online for nearly two decades so digging the fact it’s going to remain).

I’ve been using em dashes in my online work due to knowing the difference between punctuation and showing the difference between a range of figures or connecting two words together. It also has a better aesthetic and I’ve pre-programmed the text replacement on my Mac / iPhone so that when I double type “-“ it replaces it with “—“ (in those linked instructions even Apple uses it as a suggestion in the ‘Use smart quotes and dashes’ section):

“Automatically convert straight quotation marks to typographical (“curly”) ones, and double hyphens to em dashes (—).”

As someone who is not yet convinced of the positive impact of generative AI and don’t use it in my writings, I thought it quite ironic my online offerings (both historic and current) might be identified as such.

For a more witty article on this matter check out The Em Dash Responds to the AI Allegations – McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.

Published

#78 July 2025 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

Ozzy with two week old son
Ozzy with two week old son via Ozzy Osbourne – a life in pictures, from Black Sabbath to solo success | The Guardianhe closed his eyes forever, 22 July 2025.

A bunch of things I’ve found on my digital strolls (which I added to my Tumblr) for your eyes and ears plus brain to spend time on (as no longer on Twitter).

READ

“Ring is rolling back many of the reforms it’s made in the last few years by easing police access to footage from millions of homes in the United States. This is a grave threat to civil liberties in the United States. After all, police have used Ring footage to spy on protestors, and obtained footage without a warrant or consent of the user. It is easy to imagine that law enforcement officials will use their renewed access to Ring information to find people who have had abortions or track down people for immigration enforcement.”
Amazon Ring Cashes in on Techno-Authoritarianism and Mass Surveillance | Electronic Frontier Foundation

“Mark Zuckerberg proclaimed that Meta would spend hundreds of billions of dollars on developing artificial intelligence products in the near future and, to that end, construct a data center planned to be nearly the size of Manhattan. The parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp is among the large tech companies that have struck high-profile deals, and doled out multimillion-dollar pay packages to AI researchers in recent months – some as high as $100m – to fast-track work on machines that could outthink humans on many tasks, a concept known as “super-intelligence” or “artificial general intelligence”.”
Zuckerberg says Meta will build data center the size of Manhattan in latest AI push | Meta | The Guardian

“The team concludes with a sentiment that is becoming more common in this field: It may be worse than we think. It’s not an uplifting thought, but one that should be confronted, especially since few people are able to travel to these remote communities to experience the changes for themselves. “The thaw event of February 2025 was not an isolated occurrence,” the team warned. “Witnessing it in real time served as a reminder of the accelerating pace of change, and made us wonder if we have been too cautious with our climate warnings.””
Scientists Report Surreal Scenes In the World’s Most Northern Town

“The future we envision is possible. It’s a future where your device is truly yours. It’s a world where you can speak, move, and organize without the threat of pervasive surveillance. Your technology helps you connect with the people you care about, wherever they might be. With support from members around the world, EFF uses law, technology, and activism to create the conditions for human rights and civil liberties to flourish, and for repression to fail. After all, how can we achieve democracy and equity if you don’t first have privacy, security, and free expression?”
EFF’s 35th Anniversary | Electronic Frontier Foundation

WATCH

EXPLORE

The Commodore 64 is back!

A simple site to ‘draw a fish’ then explore if it will swim (with others).

A really funky free typeface which responds to spatial changes that’s infinitely flexible.

Dimensions is a massive database of ‘dimensioned drawings’ of everyday objects, living things and spaces.

Opportunity to apply to be a speaker at this years IDG Summit 2025 (free pass / economy travel to Stockholm)—deadline August 29th 2025.

All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
Published

For Those Who Want To Tell Better Stories #16 | Conducting Emotion, Demonstrating Deconstruction, Painting Whilst Interviewing

A few chosen narrative examples, to uncover forms, inspire the soul and stir the creative spirits.

A lovely ‘behind-the-scenes’ snippet here with conductor Gustavo Dudamel and the LA Philharmonic (as they tackle Felix Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 3, see number 4). The range of physicality and articulation of emotion he’s imbuing to express the sentiment offers a summarising vignette of his overall teaching approach (see a longer example from a year ago).

A deconstruction of one of the best songs on the planet (check out the Alchemy live version—you’re very welcome). Illustrated with demonstrative talent, intersecting performance and historical / lyrical context, with no jump-cut and all done in one-take. Masterful.

The Idiosyncratic Nightmare Podcast discusses and explores painting with a guest artist whilst the two interviewers paint a portrait of said guest. The five camera set up offers a unique and multi-layered evolving experience and is damn impressive. Would be wonderful to have seen the response from the guest to their portraits.

Check out all the ‘For Those Who Want To Tell Better Stories’ posts.

Image credit.
Published

#77 June 2025 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

john roedel - whenever i feel helpless - poem
Thank you john roedel.

A bunch of things I’ve found on my digital strolls (which I added to my Tumblr) for your eyes and ears plus brain to spend time on (as no longer on Twitter).

READ

“That’s why I keep documenting corruption and abuse, the erosion of norms, and each step away from democracy. Not because I expect immediate consequences, but because documenting the truth will matter later even if it doesn’t seem to matter now. Because caring isn’t naive. Because documentation isn’t pointless. Because hope isn’t for fools.”
It matters. I care.

“She’s fighting back tears again. Her tone is so sad. Why does she think it’s still so hard? “People only see the decisions you made, not the choices you had. The first part of Covid, people saw all the choices and decisions. And the second half, it just got hard. It got hard. Vaccines bring an extra layer that’s really difficult.” I apologise for taking her back to a dark time. “One of the things that still stands out in my mind – I can’t remember if it was a meme or a genuine cartoon – but it was an image of Winnie-the-Pooh and Christopher Robin,” she says. “It was at the tail end of Covid, and Christopher says, ‘How will we know if we succeeded?’ And Winnie says, ‘Because they’ll say we did too much.’ And it captured this idea that there probably isn’t a sweet spot. Maybe there were only two options in the end. Maybe it was: you’ll be attacked for doing too little or you’ll be attacked for doing too much. And I know what I would choose.””
‘Empathy is a kind of strength’: Jacinda Ardern on kind leadership, public rage and life in Trump’s America | Jacinda Ardern | The Guardian

“The Future Generations Report is designed to support politicians and public body leaders in making life better for people and planet now and in the future. This report is based on extensive evidence, research and analysis and engagement with hundreds of representatives from organisations and communities across Wales. It includes findings and statutory advice to Public Bodies. The Future Generations Commissioner will work with Public Bodies to ensure that the recommendations in the report are implemented.”
Future Generations Report 2025 – Future Generations Wales

WATCH

EXPLORE

Get your retro on and chill out to some tunes / visuals from Poolsuite ☼.

The Star Wars Galaxy detailing all the worlds plus those important trade routes mapped.

Spend some time clicking / tapping / hovering on these forms to make them fidget: Form + Fidget | Noodle.

Little Webby Press is an online tool to convert your (Markdown) manuscript into both an eBook and a Website.

If the Moon Were Only 1 Pixel, a side-scrolling accurate map of our solar system (click the icon in the bottom right hand corner also).

Check out the ‘Complete Collection Of MTV HEADBANGERS BALL’ music videos, a YouTube playlist of 1,533 tracks played on the TV series (which I used to watch as a kid).

All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
Published

#76 May 2025 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

Creativity Matters Issue 3 2025 - front page - justadandak.com
Read and download this months issue here / subscribe here.

A bunch of things I’ve found on my digital strolls (which I added to my Tumblr) for your eyes and ears plus brain to spend time on (as no longer on Twitter).

READ

“If we deliberately change the way that we breathe, for example, using exhales that are twice the length of the inhale, we consciously send different signals to the medulla oblongata (the brain’s control center), just as we might change the input channel on a television remote. This part of our brain responds with instructions to the endocrine system to produce a neurotransmitter that slows down our heart rate, regulates blood pressure, and returns our body to homeostasis.”
The Operating Manual for Your Nervous System

“Under an interpretation of one of the category 1 duties, the foundation said, if it chose not to verify Wikipedia users and editors, it would have to allow anonymous users to block other posters from fixing or removing any content, under the act’s measures to tackle online trolls. As a consequence, thousands of volunteer editors on the site would need to undergo identity verification, which breaches the foundation’s commitment to collecting minimal data about readers and contributors. Punishments for breaching the act include fines of either £18m or 10% of a company’s global turnover and, in extreme cases, access to a service being blocked in the UK.”
Wikipedia challenging UK law it says exposes it to ‘manipulation and vandalism’ | Wikipedia | The Guardian

“Lately, it feels like some of you aren’t the techno-optimists I took you to be. You’ve been heard uttering slurs like “I’m worried about my job stability” and “I just don’t think it’s positive for humankind,” neither of which sounds remotely optimistic or techno. I’ve even heard shocking reports of teams failing to incorporate plagiarism into their processes, because—I can’t believe I have to repeat this—“it’s not helpful.” Team, hear me when I say that this is harassment, and it must end. Put yourself in your coworker’s shoes—say, a coworker with really nice, designer footwear, who has invested their personal fortune into the Giant Plagiarism Machine™, along with other intellectual-property-theft futures. Imagine how that coworker (could be anyone!) might feel working alongside such Negative Nancies.”
A Company Reminder for Everyone to Talk Nicely About the Giant Plagiarism Machine – McSweeney’s Internet Tendency

“Various uses of copyrighted works in AI training are likely to be transformative. The extent to which they are fair, however, will depend on what works were used, from what source, for what purpose, and with what controls on the outputs—all of which can affect the market. When a model is deployed for purposes such as analysis or research—the types of uses that are critical to international competitiveness—the outputs are unlikely to substitute for expressive works used in training. But making commercial use of vast troves of copyrighted works to produce expressive content that competes with them in existing markets, especially where this is accomplished through illegal access, goes beyond established fair use boundaries.”
Via US Copyright Office: Copyright and Artificial Intelligence – Part 3: Generative AI Training pre-publication version – A report of the register of copyrights May 2025 (pdf)

“Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, admitted as much during more than ten hours of testimony, over three days last week, in the opening phase of the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust trial against Facebook’s parent company, Meta. The company, Zuckerberg said, has lately been involved in “the general idea of entertainment and learning about the world and discovering what’s going on.” This under-recognized shift away from interpersonal communication has been measured by the company itself. During the defense’s opening statement, Meta displayed a chart showing that the “percent of time spent viewing content posted by ‘friends’ ” has declined in the past two years, from twenty-two per cent to seventeen per cent on Facebook, and from eleven per cent to seven per cent on Instagram.”
Mark Zuckerberg Says Social Media Is Over | The New Yorker

WATCH

EXPLORE

Check out and play this no stress Tetris game / in-browser.

Open Alternative is a growing list of open-source alternatives to everyday SaaS products.

Check out this lovely little online Gradient Wallpaper / Colour Blend Generator via quismi.

Spawning AI is trying to provide ‘opt-out’ services for creators regarding Generative AI platforms.

PairPods is an an app to easily share Bluetooth audio on macOS between two devices at a time for free.

Check out The Brilliance Summit if you’re in the UK at the end of June this year (founded by the wife of a pal).

Apply now for It’s Nice That’s Ones to Watch – championing the next generation of creatives, deadline is 22 June at 23:59.

Live TV Wall displays international news channels in two grid layout options which you can go full screen with for backdrop creations.

All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
Published

16 Years Of LinkedIn | Divesting From A Broken Platform

Rolodex™_67236_Rotary_Business_Card_File with LinkedIn logo added - justadandak.com
By Poolcode – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link + my mod.

It’s taken me months to individually contact the majority my 3,100+ connections in my LinkedIn network via the direct messaging option.

After a personal opening paragraph saying hello and looking at what they are currently up to, I mention their work and / or how long it’s been and / or reminder of where we met plus ask of how I can support their endeavours. I then continue with the following reason for the message:

“Am reaching out to let you know I don’t know how long I’ll be actively using LinkedIn going forward, so if you’re not already please subscribe to my site / blog to ensure you get all the important updates from me: https://justadandak.com/blog/ -> there’s a box on the right hand side to pop your preferred email into or there’s the RSS feed to snag and add to your reader. It’s never more than a handful of posts a month plus you can unsubscribe at anytime, your data is never shared on ;-)”

I then standardise mentions of a few things of what I’m up to and after that share details for those more inclined to go deeper: how after 30 years online I’ve seen in the past decade the erosion of ethics and trust on social media platforms regarding engagement, then how specifically the LinkedIn algorithms hide anything useful even though I have tried to ‘train’ it (plus in turn how my stuff doesn’t get through to those I’m connected to), and finally I ask about their site / blog / newsletter / YouTube channel in which I can subscribe to / grab the RSS from plus hope we get to speak / meet again soon.

Out of the folks contacted I’d say 10%, maybe 15% responded. A third of those shared support / understanding with the issues of the platform (whether it be direct experience of lack of utility / reach / use). Got about 100 new subscribers to my blog via email (no way of telling who snagged the RSS feed) and had three direct speaker coaching clients which was a nice unintended outcome.


I joined LinkedIn during 2009.

I had 15 years online under my belt by that time and that year marked 3 years into MediaSnackers, where we were championing the astonishing creativity and collaborative force social media offers through training courses / talks delivered across several continents and for / to an impressive group of clients.

I still truly believe in the magnificent power of connecting humans / ideas through online mediums plus the incredible ways it enables others to have voice. However, as exemplified by Facebook and Twitter, the corrosive strategy to hollow out of any kind of human-first approach and replace that with everything run by algorithms / data-sucking-bots illustrates the aim of commodifying attention to the degradation of it’s own usefulness (see ‘enshittification’)

For what its worth, LinkedIn has an opportunity to differentiate with the following:

  • remove the alorithmic or at least allow an opt-out version of the main feed, serving content only from 1st connections (they could even go further and introduce private groups where you can curate humans into topic areas which only you can see)
  • remove or label or have an opt-out to any AI text / image in someones feed (although being owned by Microsoft can imagine it’s a sales funnel play for Co-pilot LLM plus all of the content on the platform has already been sucked up into the database)
  • allow a block feature on certain words or phrases to again cut through the trend-aligned posts and content

Until then and for the time being, I’ll log in every now and again to see if anyone has left me a message or tagged me in something of interest. For the reasons shared above, LinkedIn has now been relegated to an amazingly useful modern-day-Rolodex for when I travel and need to find folks in a particular place (within my network) until such time they remove that feature also.

Published

Presenting Academic Work | Victoria University of Wellington, Te Kura Waihanga / School of Architecture

One of my early MidJourney experiments: Solarpunk high-rise parametric building with Zaha Hadid style, black and white

Coupling storytelling styles with academic substance.

Last week I was lucky enough to deliver a couple of sessions at Victoria University of Wellington, Te Kura Waihanga / School of Architecture.

The first was a ‘purposeful storytelling’ presentation and Q&A with the whole third year student body of about 100 souls. After which, a self-selected group attended a two hour masterclass experience in which students presented. During the latter, we explored different critiquing and feedback techniques so they could continue to aid other peers in this arena, whilst also seeing how they can apply some of the lessons from the initial presentation in their future presentations.

DK gave a brilliant presentation to 3rd year architecture and interior design students at the School of Architecture, Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington in May 2025. Following the presentation, DK gave a masterclass in public speaking/presenting to a smaller group of the students. The students got personal feedback and coaching.
DK was very engaging, entertaining, and informative. He demonstrated some aspects of presenting that can’t be unseen afterwards! The students loved it and gave very positive feedback. They learned valuable techniques to bring grace, credibility, and emotional resonance to their presentations.
As an experienced public speaker myself, I also got excellent value from organising and attending DK’s presentation. I will certainly be reshaping my future presentations based on what I took away from it. And I will be looking for future opportunities to bring DK back again to work with our students.”

Elrond Burrell, Program Director for Building Science, Faculty of Architecture and Design Innovation, Victoria University of Wellington

It’s a delicate balance creating presentations for an audience versus finding your own voice and expressiveness—especially if you’re early in your career—although, if one can absorb tried and tested approaches which hold attention whilst also allowing room to explore you’re own way of sharing story, then it sets one on a path of confidence and effectiveness.

As way of an example, this could simply mean unburdening slides with so much data and allowing more of a conversational tone to the work being shown—and with more space the most impactful elements such as the graphics can take center stage).

Lots of gratitude to the students for their time, attention plus to those who were brave enough to stand and speak in the masterclass.

Thanks also to Elrond and the rest of the staff for the opportunity to collaborate.

Published

Redefining Wisdom Podcast With Daniel Cianci | This Is Why You’re Still Afraid of Public Speaking

How to be impressive at public speaking by exploring the intersecting disciplines of storytelling and oratory (they are two different things).

What a wonderful experience to participate in this podcast and have such a curious human steer the conversation with superb questions, provocations and personal insights—Daniel described the episode in the following way via this LinkedIn post:

“You’re not weak.
You’re not broken.
You’re just wired to survive, and standing in front of people feels like a threat to that.
But what if you could rewire that fear into confidence?
What if your voice became your superpower, not your source of anxiety?”

A brilliant summary and invitation to watch.

Here are the show notes if you want to jump to certain topics:

  • 0:00 The Power of Storytelling and Public Speaking
  • 2:20 Storytelling vs. Public Speaking: Which Is More Impactful?
  • 6:46 How to Capture and Hold Audience Attention
  • 12:50 Avoiding Overwhelming Audiences with Data
  • 15:12 Designing a Presentation From the Audience Perspective
  • 17:50 Breaking Self-Imposed Limitations in Public Speaking
  • 20:55 The Lizard Brain: Why We Fear Public Speaking
  • 24:10 Reframing Fear as Excitement
  • 26:26 Adapting to Different Speaking Styles
  • 29:04 Shifting Focus from Validation to Giving Value
  • 33:08 Grace, Credibility, and Resonance: The 3 Pillars of Great Presentations
  • 41:28 Mastering Grace in Virtual Presentations
  • 43:40 Tools for Engaging Online Audiences
  • 48:20 Humanizing Data for Impactful Storytelling
  • 50:01 Navigating Speech Creation: Scripts vs. Bullet Points
  • 57:55 What Makes a Talk Truly Unforgettable?
  • 1:03:36 Closing Question (The Courage to Speak)
  • 1:09:33 Where to Find DK

Watch more / subscribe via the Redefining Wisdom YouTube channel and / or listen / subscribe via these audio options:

Thank you again Daniel for the opportunity to share my voice, to be part of your offering to the world and to simply spend time with you (looking forward to part two)—pure honour!

Published

#75 April 2025 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

fold a fitted sheet performance - Seen in Wellington, April 2025
Seen in Wellington, April 2025

A bunch of things (which I added to my Tumblr) for your eyes and ears plus brain to spend time on (as no longer on Twitter).

READ

“We are the only ones ever to have invoked article 5, the mutual defence obligation of the Nato treaty, after 9/11; and our European allies did respond. Per capita, almost as many Danish soldiers were killed in the Afghan war as were American soldiers. Do we remember them? Thank them?”
Vance’s posturing in Greenland was not just morally wrong. It was strategically disastrous | Timothy Snyder | The Guardian

“Amateur is a word that’s kind of a pejorative, but the original meaning of the word ‘amateur’ is ‘lover of,’” he explained. “So being an amateur at something just means that you’re more interested in doing it for the love of the thing rather than the making money of the thing.” The last point is key, he says, because we live in a culture that’s become obsessed with monetizing every hobby. That results in the belief that if we aren’t doing something that can somehow be turned into a side hustle, or we aren’t supremely talented at a particular activity, there’s no point in doing it. And in the end, many people wind up with no hobbies at all.”
Artist Austin Kleon Offers Tips on Finding Creative Freedom

“Our nervous system consists of 80% of afferent neurons, which move from the body to the brain—in contrast to roughly 20% of efferent neurons, which run in the opposite direction, from the brain to the body. As a result, so-called bottom-up interventions—or practices that leverage our physiology by consciously shifting our respiratory or visual systems—are 4x more effective at altering our blood chemistry and, therefore, shifting our state.”
The Operating Manual for Your Nervous System

“When we detect unauthorized crawling, rather than blocking the request, we will link to a series of AI-generated pages that are convincing enough to entice a crawler to traverse them. But while real looking, this content is not actually the content of the site we are protecting, so the crawler wastes time and resources. As an added benefit, AI Labyrinth also acts as a next-generation honeypot. No real human would go four links deep into a maze of AI-generated nonsense. Any visitor that does is very likely to be a bot, so this gives us a brand-new tool to identify and fingerprint bad bots, which we add to our list of known bad actors.”
Trapping misbehaving bots in an AI Labyrinth

“Although Earth might seem like a stable, flat surface where we live our lives, seismologists have discovered that it’s far from passive. In fact, Earth has a ‘heartbeat’ that pulses every 26 seconds, according to Discover Magazine. Known as “microseisms,” these faint seismic tremors resemble tiny earthquakes, though they aren’t exactly the same. For decades, scientists have been baffled by these mysterious tremors, and despite many theories, no definitive explanation has been found.”
Scientists puzzled by Earth’s ‘heartbeat’ that causes slight tremors every 26 seconds – GOOD

“The implications of this research extend far beyond the world of cryptocurrency. The methods developed by Dr. Clegg and his team could be applied to a wide range of complex systems, from financial markets to social networks. For regulatory agencies, this work offers a new way to monitor and safeguard against systemic risks, protecting both individual investors and the broader economy.”
Mathematicians uncover the hidden patterns behind a $3.5 billion cryptocurrency collapse

WATCH

EXPLORE

A free online Anagram Generator for all your anagramming needs.

A recreation of the classic TR-808 Drum Machine online so you can play with.

I missed this: BBC Maestro is basically the BBC trying to be masterclass.com.

✱ dori the giant ✱: 13 Animals Made From 13 Circles – delightful and super-imaginative.

Check out this Curved Text Generator – Completely Free, No Signup which is pretty neat.

MLA Labs is a free online interface to slow or speed up sound and detune as well to then export.

tv.garden is an online gateway to free live TV streaming from anywhere (just click the dice in the top corner for random selection).

The Kelmscott Chaucer Online Colouring Book features all 87 illustrations that Edward Burne-Jones designed for the Kelmscott Chaucer.

Cities and Memory – global sound map, field recording and sound art covering 130 countries and territories with more than 7,000 sounds and more than 2,000 contributing artists.

mobygratis – Free Moby music to empower your creative projects, all for free (apart from this pop-up: “there are only 2 things you can’t do with the music here; use it to advertise right wing politics or causes, or use it to promote meat, dairy, or other animal products.”)!

All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
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