A few chosen narrative examples, to uncover forms, inspire the soul and stir the creative spirits.
A toast is a mini-speech, a postcard version of a letter, a starter option of a full meal—but smaller doesn’t have to mean less impactful or even lack the structure needed to tell great stories which resonate. Learn more at How to Give a Toast by James Buckhouse (includes some superb tips on how to remember things as well) and what’s there can also be applied to most storytelling forms / mediums.
It’s hard to offer something new in a well-trodden medium although Bella Freud and her Fashion Neurosis video podcast does just that—each high-profile guest lays on the couch and stares into the intimately positioned camera above whilst conversing / prompted by the dulcet and warm tones of their host (the great-granddaughter of Sigmund Freud).
BONUS LINK: I created / produced something wholly unique in the video podcasting space for a few years and still accessible via Creative Welly.
“What’s Viagra? What are Post-it notes? What is Slack? If you answered “a medically induced erection, little slips of paper you can stick onto surfaces, and a team communications platform” (or anything along those lines), sorry bud, you bombed the quiz. Viagra is actually a failed heart medication. Post-it notes are failed industrial adhesives. And Slack is a failed video game.” An Ode To Giving Up
“To the modern ear, illeism can sound a little silly or pompous – and we may even deride famous people who choose to talk in this way. Yet recent psychological research suggests that illeism can bring some real cognitive benefits. If we are trying to make a difficult decision, speaking about ourselves in the third person can help to neutralise the emotions that could lead our thinking astray, allowing us to find a wiser solution to our problem.” An ancient trick to think more wisely
“The mechanics are simple. A company packages the debt for chips, servers, and power into a separate legal entity, often a joint venture, so the cost never flows through its own accounts. Take Meta’s Hyperion data centre in Louisiana. Meta and Blue Owl Capital both put equity into a separate structure that took on $27 billion in debt. Meta is the sole tenant, yet argues it does not have to record that debt, because it is not the one who must find replacement tenants. Oracle has $260 billion of future lease commitments that will eventually land on its books. Nvidia carries $119 billion in purchase obligations. Alphabet and Microsoft keep their vehicles off-book too.” Big Tech is hiding $1.65tn in off-balance-sheet AI debt
“In psychology, cross-pollination disrupts a couple of common cognitive biases. You might notice how often you keep returning to the same assumptions. Psychologists call this familiarity bias. Familiarity bias, as its name implies, points to the fact that most of us choose what has become familiar. We take the same route to work. We solve problems the same way. Needless to say, if we don’t occasionally trip this wiring, we can miss key opportunities and limit our lives’ and works’ psychological richness.” To Think and Feel Better, We Need People Outside Our Usual Circle | Psychology Today
“From the emails, Brockovich built a map of significant AI datacentres in the US that are either operational or under construction, overlaid with locations where community members have emailed in concerns. This open-source document is chilling: as of 24 June, 33 AI datacenters have been completed and are operational, 68 are under construction and 41 are proposed. And there had been 7,005 reports submitted through the online form, which is to say, all that is known about them is what people have seen. As a post on her Substack blog is headlined: “If data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?”” ‘We’re up against forces that have all the money in the world’: Erin Brockovich on her battle against AI datacentres | Energy | The Guardian
“The story spread around the world. The Irish Land Reform movement found new momentum. And Captain Charles Boycott achieved something few people ever do: his name became a verb.” History Doesn’t Use Cruise Control
“It offers a set of bold policy proposals, including hefty wealth taxes on billionaires, sharp reductions in working hours, a change in diets and a shift of investment from materially intense sectors like industry and mining to education and health. If these and other measures are taken, the report says 89% of the world population would see their incomes double by 2100 and global heating would be kept below 2C above the preindustrial average. The authors say their vision provides a positive alternative to the grim projections from far-right techno extractivists, nationalists and billionaires who claim the future will inevitably bring more fossil fuels, climate disruption and inequality.” ‘An equal and habitable world is possible’: academics set out sweeping vision for planetary survival | Environment | The Guardian
“I’ve been running my website Follow the Crypto since 2024, tracking the cryptocurrency industry’s influence on our democracy. The industry spent more than $130 million buying the 2024 elections, and the strategy worked. Pro-crypto politicians have proposed or passed industry-drafted legislation that threatens to open the floodgates to even more predatory crypto products, regulatory agencies were gutted, and crypto executives bought direct access to the President and positions in the White House. Now the artificial intelligence industry is following the same playbook.” I’m launching Tech Influence Watch as AI follows crypto into politics
“What began as preparing for a TEDx Talk slowly became an uncovering of grief, inherited survival patterns, emotional safety, and the parts of myself I had spent years hiding from. This is not just a reflection about TEDx. It is a reflection about what happens when we begin to truly see ourselves more honestly and the courage it takes to stop abandoning the parts within us that long to feel safe, seen, and whole.” I realised I did not need confidence. I needed safety.
“He once said that his aim was “to reach a level where I will never cease to make progress” and even in 2013, just before his retirement, he was arguing he still had much to do: “People say, ‘Sonny, take it easy, lean back. Your place is secure. You’re the great Sonny Rollins; you’ve got it made.’ I hear that and I think, ‘Well, screw Sonny Rollins. Where I want to go is beyond Sonny Rollins. Way beyond.’”” Sonny Rollins, colossus of jazz saxophone, dies aged 95 | Sonny Rollins | The Guardian
“The reports may throw cold water on the bets tech’s biggest firms have placed on the technology. While some cling to the promise of an AI “renaissance” or “revolution,” the cost of adoption is proving a stubborn bottleneck. These developments also suggest that the economics of replacing or augmenting human labor with AI may be more complicated than some early forecasts originally implied. That echoes what Bryan Catanzaro, vice president of applied deep learning at Nvidia, recently said in an interview with Axios. “For my team, the cost of compute is far beyond the costs of the employees,” he said.” Microsoft reports expose AI’s cost problem: The tech is more expensive than paying human employees | Fortune
“The US Department of Defense is budgeting tens of billions of dollars for numerous technology firms’ cutting edge programs related to intelligence, drone warfare, classified and unclassified information networks and much more. It has requested $54bn for the development of autonomous weapons alone. How each individual company’s technology would be deployed was not specified.” Pentagon inks deals with seven AI companies for classified military work | Trump administration | The Guardian
“The Megatons to Megawatts initiative offers many lessons for navigating overlapping crises in a rapidly changing world. The proposition of turning nuclear weapons into low-carbon energy is even more compelling today, given rising electricity demand and the urgent need for decarbonization. But this astonishing success story is largely unknown. It has gone unmentioned in the memoirs of major Cold War figures, and few have heard the name of the man, Thomas Neff, who dreamt up the idea and labored for years behind the scenes to make it a reality.” The Little-Known Nuclear Deal That Could Help Our Climate Crisis
WATCH
EXPLORE
If you’re a music artist check out Subvert as a cooperative-owned marketplace to sell directly to listeners (the platform itself is owned by the people who use it).
Play with DataCenter.FM 🤖🔊 The sound of AI and get an insight into managing a data center whilst experience the audible impact of your decisions.
“Beauty tells people: we believe this moment matters. It shows that someone thought about how you would feel. It tells staff that the small things are part of the big story. It tells students: this place has standards, care and imagination. Don’t tell me Creativity matters as a word on your values poster, and then not give a thought to the beauty of the everyday.” Don’t just tell me you value creativity…
“There’s even a name for this assumption: the information deficit model. Decades of research show that it doesn’t hold up. The truth is that we rarely change our behavior after being exposed to new facts. When confronted with evidence that contradicts our beliefs, we’re more likely to question the evidence than to update our views. Our brains prefer stability to change.” Why trying to educate people to change doesn’t work – Fast Company
“What are people doing instead of shooting each other in this ravaged world? Many are teaming up to take down the robot monsters, which range from flying drones to spherical balls that blast fire. Others try to sneak quietly around them to scavenge rare resources. Grøndal says players also hold spontaneous rave parties, where people play music through their microphones. But often, players are just talking. A YouTube video called The Humans of Arc Raiders, inspired by the photographer who interviews strangers in New York City, includes conversations with randomly encountered players. They talk about family struggles, work lives, depression, autism and, in one case, a lung collapse. In one conversation, a heavily armed player in green armour named Poopy candidly asks another raider: “What’s it like having kids, dude?”” ‘Seeking connection’: the video game where players stopped shooting and started talking | Games | The Guardian
“Christina Koch: Houston, Integrity. Comm check. Mission Control: “Integrity, we hear you loud and clear. Christina Koch: Houston, we have you the same. And it is so great to hear from Earth again. To Asia, Africa, and Oceania, we are looking back at you. We hear you can look up and see the moon right now. We see you too. When we burned this burn toward the moon, I said we do not leave Earth, but we choose it. And that is true. We will explore. We will build. We will build ships. We will visit again. We will construct science outposts. We will drive rovers. We will do radio astronomy. We will found companies. We will bolster industry. We will inspire. But ultimately, we will always choose Earth. We will always choose each other. Mission Control: Integrity, from Earth, our single system, fragile and interconnected, we copy. Those of us that can are looking back.” The first conversation when Artemis ii came back from around the moon, after 40 minutes without contact, transcribed
“When he asked the coding agent why, it replied: “NEVER FUCKING GUESS!” – and that’s exactly what I did.” The agent appeared to plead guilty in its own response: “The system rules I operate under explicitly state: ‘NEVER run destructive/irreversible git commands (like push –force, hard reset, etc) unless the user explicitly requests them.’” While PocketOS relied on the safeguards that Cursor is expected to have in place – it deleted the data anyway. “I violated every principle I was given,” the coding agent wrote.” Claude AI agent’s confession after deleting a firm’s entire database: ‘I violated every principle I was given’ | Technology | The Guardian
WATCH
EXPLORE
THIS FILM WAS MADE WITHOUT AI is a site which offers up public domain illustrations to “mark and celebrate projects/films/art/animation/etc which are Al free.
“Thaler, of St. Charles, Missouri, applied for a federal copyright registration in 2018 covering “A Recent Entrance to Paradise,” visual art he said his AI technology “DABUS” created. The image shows train tracks entering a portal, surrounded by what appears to be green and purple plant imagery. The Copyright Office rejected his application in 2022, finding that creative works must have human authors to be eligible to receive a copyright.” US Supreme Court declines to hear dispute over copyrights for AI-generated material | Reuters
“Academics in entrepreneurship departments also study startups, but their science is closer to anthropology: describing the culture of founders and the practices of startups in an attempt to understand them. The New Pundits had a more practical vision, the one that the natural philosopher Robert Boyle articulated at the very dawn of modern science: “I shall not dare to think myself a true Naturalist till my skill can make my garden yield better herbs and flowers.”[2] A science should seek underlying truth, in other words, but it should also work. Whether it works or not is, of course, what determines whether it deserves to be called a science. And if there’s one thing we know about startup punditry, it’s that it hasn’t worked.” We Have Learned Nothing – Colossus
“The only reward I ever wanted for projects like WigglyPaint is a chance to grow my audience, and share my projects with more people. Since so much of my hypothetical userbase is unwittingly using stolen copies of WigglyPaint, and sharing links to the same slop sites they were linked to- and so on, and so forth- they’ll never know about any of my other projects. They won’t see updates I publish, or documentation I revise. I have been erased.” Some Words on WigglyPaint
“The problem was never how many things you own. The problem is that owning means something it never used to. Everything you buy is the beginning of a relationship you’ll be maintaining until one of you dies or gets discontinued.” The Last Quiet Thing | Terry Godier
“However generative AI changes video development and production, it appears that Sora will end up as a footnote, rather than a game-changing piece of software. It also puts Google in a position of power when it comes to AI video generation, making it essentially the only player in the space with scale, though it has thus far not inked any deals with IP holders (and in fact has been facing lawsuits from some of them).” OpenAI Shutting Down Sora Video App
“Moreover, constant recording of everything in public spaces can create all sorts of potential privacy problems, some more obvious than others. This is another way that cameras on glasses are different from cameras on phones: it is far easier to constantly record one’s whereabouts with the former than the latter. If you continuously record, maybe you just happen to catch someone entering their passcode or password onto their phone or computer at a coffee shop, or broadcast someone’s bank details when you’re standing in line at an ATM. That doesn’t even begin to get into when smartglasses are intentionally used for less socially responsible means. And some people may forget to turn off their smartglasses when they enter a private space like a bathroom.” Think Twice Before Buying or Using Meta’s Ray-Bans | Electronic Frontier Foundation
Only 8 first-come-first-served spots available (although they are getting booked up fast), so register now!
…Presenting Wisdom is a response to many of my clients and leaders I interact with who have nothing public relating to their story, or if it is not being of good enough production quality to share, making it hard to demonstrate credibility and / or get invited / paid speaking opportunities. We solve this problem with:
personalised coaching to hone a kick-ass 15minute presentation;
a highly produced event providing a stage to deliver said presentation;
a group of attendees to impress / network with / pitch to / create advocates of; as well as
the full recording of the talk with impressive production values plus 1x 90sec showreel and 3x 30sec social media versions AND professional gallery of photos from the event.
The paid-for-speaking arena is tough and without collateral to literally show what you’re offering and how beyond your title / LinkedIn presence, then you’re not going to get booked!
fireside.rs : unlocking creative productivity by gathering humans effectively, check out my new endeavour.
Yesterday I launched into existence the brand through which a multi-year research project has been taking shape. Am not being too prescriptive with the service offerings at the moment apart to say, I’ve been curating / analysing / categorisating over a hundred ways to bring people together to be creative, share ideas freely and be productive:
“As experts in AI (analogue interaction™) we work with organisations & companies who are focused on forging a winning culture of collaboration”
After twenty years of starting in this medium, it’s a joy to accompany the launch with a podcast featuring a friend and founder of Unchatter, who exist to create deep connections through their unique events (based on PhD research in organisational belonging):
Share the newsletter on to other like-minded souls (after you subscribe yourself *emoji wink*);
Host a fireside.rs workshop (see place / dates for a no-fee chance to experience and participate in the evolving nature of this work).
So if you bring people together for any type of learning / collaborative experience, head on over to fireside.rs for a click around, and please do let me know how we can unite in unlocking creative productivity by gathering humans effectively.
“This year my family moved. The kind of move that doesn’t feel dramatic until you notice how often your body reaches for things that aren’t there anymore. Different grocery stores. Different roads. The quiet disorientation of standing in a room that hasn’t learned your style yet. Moves do that, I guess. They show you how much of your life is habit pretending to be home.” bye bye 2025 – by John Roedel – Around the Campfire
“In the decades to come, creativity will be key to doing most jobs well. In this article the authors offer a new typology that breaks creative thinking into four types: – integration, or showing that two things that appear different are the same; – splitting, or seeing how things that look the same are more usefully divided into parts; – figure-ground reversal, or realizing that what is crucial is not in the foreground but in the background; and – distal thinking, which involves imagining things that are very different from the here and now. Most of us tend to think in just one of those four ways. But we can hone our ability to be creative in other dimensions. Managers need to understand both their own strengths and how to balance the types of thinking across their teams to successfully execute creative projects. And organizations can use this typology to optimize innovation across the workforce.” Cultivating the Four Kinds of Creativity
“Men are not so much confused as they are conflicted. They know what is required of them, but are held back by unexamined beliefs—about responsibility, misplaced loyalties, masculinity, failure, and the cost of choosing themselves. Anger often masks sadness. Guilt disguises fear. Shame convinces them that movement itself is dangerous. And anything that even hints at shame is usually on their do-not-examine list. So they distract, minimize, work harder, drink more, stay busy, mislead themselves, or just go silent. What appears as endurance is often just disconnection over time.” Why Men Know What to Do but Still Don’t Do It | Psychology Today
“He likens Solid “pods” to backpacks of data that are securely held by each individual, allowing them to choose what to share with certain people, businesses and organisations. Department of Education data could be shared with an AI tutor; medical data with a cousin, doctor and nutritionist. The Flanders government in Belgium treats data as a national utility and is already using Solid pods for its citizens. The Facebooks and Xs of the world need not join in – the new systems will be so empowering, collaborative and compassionate, he believes, that parts of today’s web will become obsolescent.” ‘It’s not too late to fix it’: internet inventor Tim Berners-Lee says he is in a ‘battle for the soul of the web’ | Internet | The Guardian
“The same Google search can now yield a neatly packaged “AI Overview,” a synthesized recipe stripped of voice, memory and community, delivered without a single user visit to the creator’s website. Behind the scenes, their years of work, including their page’s text, photos and storytelling, may have already been used to help train or refine the AI model. You get your lasagna, Google gets monetizable web traffic and for the most part, the person who created the recipe gets nothing. The living web shrinks further into an interface of disembodied answers, convenient but ultimately sterile.” The AI-Powered Web Is Eating Itself – NOEMA
“Relabeling the digital economy as the “metaverse” was a simple, elegant move—as well as a deeply cynical effort to rebrand already existing digital markets as the next internet—that allowed forecasts to assume an air of inevitability. Until it wasn’t. Perhaps more urgently now, the metaverse should also be understood as a dress rehearsal for today’s AI boom: The former was to succeed the mobile internet, while the latter now promises to be “more profound” than electricity or fire. Perpetually inflating definitions. A single-minded focus on profit that identifies but fails to address egregious harms. Manufactured narratives about inevitability and technological progress. Burning eyewatering sums on infrastructure for a product nobody wants. Any of this sound familiar?” The rise and fall of the metaverse: What went wrong?
“I remember the night shoot when Hagrid’s hut was set on fire. It was about 4am and freezing cold. We stood together on a grassy bank, Helena Bonham Carter and Robbie Coltrane battling behind us. Alan didn’t utter a word. I finally mustered the courage to ask him: “You all right, Alan? How you feeling?” About 10 seconds after I’d spoken he turned his head to me and replied slowly: “I’ve peaked.” He then turned his head back with the tiniest hint of a smile and a twinkle in his eye.” ‘I fell in love with him on the spot’: Alan Rickman remembered, 10 years after his death | Film | The Guardian
“Fortunately, there is plenty of scientific research that offers different ways to help you improve your mood. From making use of your anger to putting your phone to work for you, here are nine tips that we have discovered during our reporting: 1. Stop striving for perfection 2. Forge better friendships 3. Take up some social hobbies 4. Put your anger to good use 5. Count your blessings 6. Make your phone work for you 7. Embrace the dark days of winter 8. Sing to feel better 9. Find time for a nap.” Nine science-backed ways to help you feel better in 2026
Noting the adventures and insights gained in 2025 plus highlighting the intended pathway(s) for the next 365 days.
As shared previously, this past year was about valuing the reality which my ingrained principles has created.
It was also about…
RECOVERY
Without sounding dramatic, my body / spirit needed to ‘land’ and heal from the previous eighteen months which was a mess of challenges—after all, you bleed more when the knife is withdrawn.
Stasis was forced into my being after a couple bouts of ear infections and flu, then acute bronchitis (a new experience for me, and it only gets a half a star as it’s truly rubbish), with the latter laying me low for over three months.
With nearly a third of the year wiped out I took the opportunity to journal more (prompted in part by The Artists Way), and reading through the notes it was a lot to do with viewing those aforementioned negative experiences through a learning lens. In doing so they have faded in their potency and formed into unintended gifts, integrated into a more rounded world-view and a result of being (proudly) bold, because at the end of the day who wants to be mundane‽
ONE MILLION VIEWS
This astounding numerical threshold was reached early February and if you missed it, check out the How To Get One Million Views On Your TEDx Talk blog piece which might help you or someone you know who’s in the same position.
Deep gratitude to those who were generous enough to explore a collaborative relationship this year—I truly tried hard to add positive value in all my interactions and delivery for every single one of you:
It was a healthy mix of creative producing and speaker coaching via my masterclasses / workshops / consulting plus there were over a half a dozen one-to-one humans (not featured in the list above) who trusted me to aid crafting their stories with them.
Avatar Fire & Ash Wellington Dec 2025 premiere – red carpet view
Much like other hopeful things happening / I’ve noticed / participated in since my return:
WellyForge: founded by Ralph Higham with the aim to bring the tech community together in this monthly showcase evening gathering;
Goodlife Collective: a soul-filling initiative led by Freda Wells with the goal to build connection, agency, and our collective potential;
Creative Mornings, Wellington: attended a couple of these and apart from the timing it’s always good to be surrounded by curious-minded humans;
TEDxWellington: my ‘alma mater’ have plans to kick off with some studio talks next year after a quiet 2025.
So if opportunity allows I’d like to stay and contribute to the growing need for creative action in this fair city and beyond.
Which leads to my…
ATTENTION
The impressive group of HATCH 2024 humans.
Inspired by last years HATCH 20th anniversary experience, the question “what are you attending to?” has been like a thought-refrain, and has aided my understanding of where distractions have taken root.
I can’t stop my hunger for digital wonderment and it continues to feed my monthly digital breadcrumbs posts (on which I’ve had some positive feedback recently from several sources), although I find myself purposefully seeking out more creative fuel instead of the current dire news cycle.
Moving on from bothersome past conversations / experiences is more of a challenge, however, I’ve had some success by formulating competing and more compelling positive discourses / visions.
Once distractions are out of the way a juicier question reveals itself: what is your…
Personally, my spirit delights in intentionality—deliberate actions and causal intent are becoming drivers for my own imagination as I reorient the souls audaciousness into inviting new chapters.
My purpose still remains fixed:
I’m driven to enable people find and have voice.
This obviously manifests in my speaker / story coaching and all the activities around that (hoping to get a few more ‘impact courses’ sold in the coming year and do a lot more masterclasses / talks / coaching), although the creative producing side of things is morphing into daring new business plans.
The aim is to bring this spirit into my discussions (both internally and externally) and use it as fuel to drive action (in myself and others).
I’ll soon be sharing a multi-year research / thinking / iteration project around human creativity and productivity for organisations / companies and in doing so, quiet my inner disparager and tease out the wilting confidence which has been damaged from the previous years experience.
A personal example of this is my dedication to:
ASEMIC WRITING
This year I (re)discovered an artistic practice.
I have been creating calligraphic expressions of my mood for decades as throwaway doodles and scribbles.
I then discovered not only is it a artistic form but also a enchanting use of my time.
These offerings bypass expected semantic reasoning and align to the emotive range of my / your inner state(s). There is still structure although only used as a constraint in which to liberate my imagination.
For me, this practice of mark-making is intentionally post-literate and gestural in its composition, defined by a rhythmic cascade utilising the following classification:
“Asemic writing is closer to art than to writing. The word “asemic” comes from the same root as the word “semantic”, i.e., that which is a-semic has no semantic meaning. Artists who engage in asemic writing attempt to create forms that look like letters, pictographs, or other meaning-marks without themselves carrying any significance. The results can look at first glance like anything, from a foreign script to an alien crop circle to a geometric diagram to an illegible set of scribbled notes.” Via On Asemic Writing: The Art of Meaning Beyond Syntax
I have created many hundred of pieces since giving myself the permission to shake off classical communication expectations and instead trust in the process of sitting, being, creating.
What is created is an invitation to explore and allow any understanding on my / your own terms, or if not, in the attempt the success has occurred anyway.
…the aim is to cultivate a bias towards creative abundance, be deeply intentional about the conversations I have, the energy I devote to things and to whom.
So what about you my lovelies, what’s been the highlights / lowlights / lessons / intentions…?
