Unofficial Partner

Horses, courses

A big night at the Big Belly Club on the South Bank. And a subject we don't do often.

The business of horse racing was the heading. The resulting podcast is out today.

There's a bit in the middle, where I make a trite statement about how power works and why change is so hard, and Brant Dunshea the CEO of the British Horseracing Authority puts me quietly in my place. 'Gosh Richard, I'd never have known that'.

It made me really laugh

Funny haha or funny peculiar?

"Analysing humour is like dissecting a frog. Nobody laughs and the frog dies." Barry Cryer, by way of E.B. White.

Chelsea's social team put out some #bantz in the moments after Arsenal's lost the UEFA Champions League final penalty shoot out.

It did the job, if the job was irritating Arsenal fans and making Chelsea look a bit small.

A while later, the fun police got hold of Chelsea's social account and posted an apology.

Like Richard Nixon...(bit of an overreach but bear with)...the apology was more revealing than the initial 'crime'. Between the two posts,

The uncreative path to Chat_UP's visual identity

ChatUP

We created Chat_UP as our bit of the AI conversation.

One of the fun jobs is to give the thing a visual identity. Something that will show up across social channels and in to live events.

Because Chat_UP is about AI, it felt right that the process start in Claude, my fast idiot assistant, which has a Canva skill connected. This should make the process quick and efficient, but actually poses more questions, which is sort of where we are with the models, which are pushing us to work harder to clarify what we mean. This process is

The lesson of Buzzfeed

The Bundle

For a few years in the 2010s my iPhone case had a yellow sticker with LOL written on it. I'd appeared at a conference with a woman from Buzzfeed, when Buzzfeed was the darling of media industry, whose business model suggested a way forward for news beyond the platforms; that's how long ago this was. Anyway, we were in the green room and she put some of their emoji stickers on a table and me and the rest of the people in the room descended on them, pretending we'd give them to our kids but knowing full well it was

Reading Convenience Store Woman while loafing in Japan

I read Convenience Store Woman while touring Japan, as it was the most obvious thing for a lazy pseudo intellectual to do (touring Japan suggests this was more than a holiday, which it wasn't. At least I didn't say 'travelling in Japan', like a gap year student, we can at least give me that).

Keiko is the woman in the title, she's 36, single and has worked in a 7-11 ish type shop in Tokyo for her adult life. The question the book asks is a good one: what is normal? Keiko's oddness - single, a permanent rather than temporary