🚦 green means go.

🎉 something new.

🚶‍♂️ everywhere, everywhen.

welcome to sam’s brain drain, a weekly collection of thumb-stopping things to tap, read, & watch.

Aug 12

Edwin Hayward🦄🗡️@uk_domain_names

estimated reading time: 5m 36s.

☺️ happy monday.

there are just 3401 hours left until 2020.

⏳

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p.s. this uses stripe, so ya bet it’s secure af.

on the agenda this week: brexit, amsterdam, and farm machines.

📄 a note on brexit:

i can already see your eyes glazing over.

i feel you.

we’re all tired of hearing, reading and seeing news about brexit.

at this point it almost seems like a fictitious event that may or may not happen. october 31st could be a catastrophic day for britain, in the event of a continued willingness to crash out in a ‘no-deal’ brexit.

i won’t lie—as a dual citizen of both britain & ireland—i have some skin in the game.

i’m selfishly concerned for my friends & family that live there and also for the everyday british citizen that now realises just how bad brexit will be for everyone involved.

people have little choice but to accept the actions of a few ambulatory douchebags that have crippled a country with their anti-globalist demagoguery.

that being said, i’m not here to talk about the origins of brexit—or any potential solutions—but rather talk about what may happen just 80 days from now.

this leaked government document outlines all of the potential challenges for government, consumers and business within the first day, fortnight and month.

what’s being done to mitigate these potentially disastrous consequences?

sajid javid, chancellor of the exchequer, has made a fresh £2bn available in a boost to the uk treasury to prepare the public for october 31st (sky news).

these funds are earmarked for:

500 extra border force officers
avoiding delays in processing uk passport applications;
improving transport around ports and managing traffic disruption in kent;
ensuring continuing supplies of vital medicines and medical products;
an information campaign to help the public and businesses be prepared

a large part of the brexit campaign revolved around this (false) claim on the brexit bus:

we send the eu £350 million a week, let’s fund our nhs instead. vote leave

it seems almost comical now given that preparations for a no-deal brexit are now costing almost £600 million per week. news this week broke that there is a new, £300 million, government tender to supply planes tasked with air-lifting vital supplies into the uk in a no-brexit scenario.

trucks loaded with food and medicine could be flown in on cargo planes as part of ministers' plan to beat queues at dover in the event of a no-deal.
- the telegraph

the contract asks for companies who can transport goods that are "identified by the government as being critical to the preservation of human and animal welfare”.

as pointed out by edwin hayward on twitter, air-freight will not nearly be enough to sustain levels of imports pre- & post-brexit:

In 2016, the UK transported 484,000,000 tons of freight by sea, but just 2,511,000 tons by air (192x less than by sea). Therefore absurd to think of simply substituting air freight for sea freight (e.g. if we have to fly in food or medicines because of post-Brexit jams at ports)

i accidentally stumbled upon this genius solution, however:

ƋƞƬƟƞ ƦƋƋƬǶ Ϡ@antonraath

@denysbennett @rmathematicus @christopherhope @Telegraph Presumably it all works out if you do the calculations in Imperial measurements.

📚 word of the week:

“everywhen”:

meaning “always, or at any or all times”. everywhen usually appears in the phrase “everywhere and everywhen.”

particularly beautiful, i thought.

time stood still (that moment was eternal) and it was placeless (ubiquitous, everywhere and everywhen).
- roy bhaskar, the philosoph of metareality, 2002

🤪 mildly humorous:

Sarah Lazarus@sarahclazarus

every day we have to wake up, confront the most upsetting shit we’ve ever seen, and then walk around obeying laws and saying “it’s tomato season”

Rachel McCartney@RachelMComedy

To everyone out there suffering from anxiety: you are not alone there's someone behind you

Mallow News@MallowNews

The Home Alone reboot should take place in Dublin and feature a plucky child fighting two burglars with only his pluck, wits and the 32 people he co-lives with.

🧠 brain candy:

🚴‍♀️ amsterdam wasn’t always amsterdam:

the famed “bike capital” of the world was once as congested and car-choked as the worst western cities. so how did it became so renowned for its livability and sustainability? the simple answer: by narrowing roads and ending free parking.

after world war ii, amsterdam adopted the dominant vision of urbanism — elevated highways, wide boulevards, skyscrapers, and the car as the vehicle of the future. the seductive lifestyle of the automobile enticed dutch planners and politicians to demolish entire neighborhoods and pave wide roads. of course, amsterdam rapidly started facing problems all too familiar in american cities — growing congestion and pollution, increasing injuries and fatalities from crashes, and diminishing quality and quantity of public space, sequestered for the storage of private vehicles.
it wasn’t until the 1980s that a perfect storm of events — strong advocacy, violent citizen protests, and an oil embargo — forced amsterdam planners and politicians to advance an agile, car-reduction policy. for example, an intensive, neighborhood-based traffic-calming plan was implemented. the city also built out sidewalks and narrowed residential streets to tight, one-way lanes with humps, keeping speeds at 19 mph or slower.

🏠 housing crisis grips ireland:

we’ve made it to the new york times! oh wait…

for generations, the irish took for granted that affordable, plentiful housing was the bedrock of their economic security and government policy. not long ago, ireland had one of the world’s highest rates of homeownership.
the last several years have torn up those assumptions, leaving the country in the grip of a worsening housing crisis. homeownership has dropped, evictions and homelessness have climbed sharply, surging demand for rental units has led to a shortage, and soaring rents are fodder for daily conversation, political campaigns and street protests.
in the last few years, dublin has become one of the world’s 10 most expensive places to rent, ahead of cities like tokyo, sydney and singapore. deutsche bank reported in may that typical rent for a midrange, two-bedroom apartment in dublin was $2,018 a month, 23 percent more than in 2014 — the biggest increase of any city in the top tier.

🏙 blueprints for civilisation:

using wikis and digital fabrication tools, ted fellow marcin jakubowski is open-sourcing the blueprints for 50 farm machines, allowing anyone to build their own tractor or harvester from scratch. that's only the first step in a project to write an instruction set for an entire self-sustaining village (starting cost: $10,000):

the global village construction set (gvcs) is a modular, diy, low-cost, high-performance platform that allows for the easy fabrication of the 50 different industrial machines that it takes to build a small, sustainable civilization with modern comforts. we’re developing open source industrial machines that can be made at a fraction of commercial costs, and sharing our designs online for free.

watch the ted talk or read more.

that’s all for this week. i hope you hold me accountable to keep this interesting 😝.

😌 see you next monday!

🦶 footer:

did you know that word of mouth is the only way something like this grows?

i would absolutely love if you told one of your closest friends to sign up.

they can sign up here.
you can also share this on facebook or tweet about it.

🚨 if you post a screenshot to instagram stories of your favourite part of the email & tag me (@sam.travel), i’ll repost the best ones.

👋 read some more of my posts:

🇺🇸 a note on death.

🧠 life's ebb & flow.

🎉 something new.

🎉 get social:

instagram: @sam.travel

twitter: @sammcallister

email me: smcallis[at]gmail.com

website: sammcallister.me

🇺🇸 a note on death.

hi & welcome to sam’s brain drain, a weekly collection of thumb-stopping things to tap, read, & watch.

Aug 5

eClaire (looking for hot/nice bf age 28-34)@themanburglar

estimated reading time: 4m 08s.

👋 it doesn’t feel right to shout ‘happy monday’ this week.

as such, it’s an understated beginning to this week’s newsletter.

📄 a note on death:

it’s difficult to write this week’s note on anything but the two mass shootings that occurred within twenty-four hours in the u.s.

twenty human beings killed in el paso, texas.

nine human beings killed in dayton, ohio.

i find it difficult to interpret numbers—especially when they concern people—so i drew a symbol to represent each mother, father, son, daughter, brother, sister that now lie dead. dead at the hands of white nationalist terrorism—and those who continue to enable it—in the united states.

america is a huge outlier among developed countries when it comes to gun deaths—in large part because it has so many guns, making it easy to carry out an act of violence.

the united states also has the weakest gun laws in the developed world. since 2013, there has been only one full calendar week—the week of january 5, 2014—without a mass shooting there. studies have linked stricter gun laws to fewer gun deaths. however, there is not a lot of data to work with.

why?

well, there is a reason:

the national rifle association (nra) and other influential gun rights advocates have long pressured political leaders to shut down research related to firearms.
political forces had effectively banned the centers for disease control and prevention and other scientific agencies from funding research on gun-related injury and death. the ban worked: a recent systematic review of studies evaluating access to guns and its association with suicide and homicide identified no relevant studies published since 2005.
- mother jones

one of the most positive things that i’ve seen, aside from the outpouring of genuine grief, is that people in the united states are being moved to action.

mom’s demand action is a grassroots organisation fighting for public safety measures that can protect people from gun violence.

shannon watts, a stay-at-home mother of five, was folding laundry in front of her television in 2012 when she heard the news that a gunman had walked into sandy hook elementary school in newtown, connecticut, and fatally shot 26 people, mostly children. as she watched coverage of the tragedy, her emotions turned from shock to despair to outrage. then she decided to do something about it.
- mother jones

you can donate to mom’s demand action here.

for further reading, mother jones has created an open-source database documenting mass shootings in the united states. they list only indiscriminate rampages in public places that result in four or more victims killed by the attacker.

📚 word of the week:

“stochastic terrorism”:

acts of violence by random extremists, triggered by political demagoguery.

originally defined by an anonymous blogger back in 2011 as “the use of mass communications to incite random actors to carry out violent or terrorist acts that are statistically predictable but individually unpredictable.”

🤪 mildly humorous:

given that humour is an effective way of regulating our emotional health, i’ve left mildly humourous in this week. in fact, take some extra tweets while you’re at it.

ah shit. I just remembered everything I have ever said and done. and it's not great

john@mrjohndarby

Me: if it's a boy let's call him Barry Her: ok Waiter: good evening Me: good evening Barry

Dan Mace@Dannmace

Adult version of ‘heads, shoulders, knees and toes’: Wallet, glasses, keys and phone

and some deliciously succinct responses to neil degrasse tyson’s awful hot take on the shootings in texas & ohio:

9 V O L T@9_volt_

@neiltyson please shut the fuck up

Smash Mouth@smashmouth

@neiltyson FUCK OFF!!!! There's your data!!!!

Lindsay Ellis | ~ * ~ Her Satanic Majesty ~ * ~@thelindsayellis

@neiltyson are you *trying* to be an actual ambulatory trashbag or

🧠 brain candy:

🚀 apollo 11, out of control:

beautifully written piece on how close apollo 11 came to never making its destination:

the console responded with error code “1202.” despite his months of simulations, aldrin didn’t know what this one meant; armstrong, equally baffled, radioed mission control for clarification. the stress in his voice was audible, but only later would the two men learn how bad things really were. in that critical moment, hurtling like a lawn dart toward the surface of the moon, the apollo guidance computer had crashed.

🌊 blue mind theory:

anecdotally confirmed by all who are lucky enough to live by the sea:

cuhk lead researcher professor martin wong and his team surveyed 1,000 people visiting a cancer screening centre in sha tin, a town in hong kong’s new territories. they asked participants questions about their contact with the sea and other bodies of water, their health and well-being. due to the nature of the screening, 80 per cent of respondents were aged over 50.
the research authors say their findings form part of a growing body of evidence worldwide that suggests contact with blue spaces benefits the health and well-being of people of all ages.

that’s all for this week. i hope you hold me accountable to keep this interesting 😝.

😌 see you next monday!

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did you know that word of mouth is the only way something like this grows?

i would absolutely love if you told one of your closest friends to sign up.

they can sign up here.
you can also share this on facebook or tweet about it.

🚨 if you post a screenshot to instagram stories of your favourite part of the email & tag me (@sam.travel), i’ll repost the best ones.

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👋 read some more of my posts:

🧠 life's ebb & flow.

🎉 something new.

🎉 get social:

instagram: @sam.travel

twitter: @sammcallister

email me: smcallis[at]gmail.com

website: sammcallister.me

🧠 life's ebb & flow.

hi & welcome to sam’s brain drain, a weekly collection of thumb-stopping things to tap, read, & watch.

Jul 29

Just imagine if giraffe necks started out short and made the lightsaber-on sound when they extended them.

estimated reading time: 5m 09s.

👋 happy monday!

i was asked last week why i start these emails with variations of happy monday. mondays represent the chance to have a new beginning 52 times a year. it’s not often we get a tangible opportunity—or excuse—to start afresh.

with that being said, welcome to the sixth (!) week of sam’s brain drain. i’ve spent the past few days getting back up to speed at work after some time away. i also haven’t slept correctly in more than a month, something i really need to work on.

to be frank, i just can’t seem to find enough time in my week to work a 9-6, write this weekly email & also find time to be creative too. that being said, a lot of people do a lot more than i do—and they do it well—so it’s no excuse whatsoever.

in store for you this week: a note from me on creativity, the meaning of life, & a quarter of a million flights in the air at once.

📄 a note on creativity:

h: “do you have an idea for your project yet?”
c: “no, i’m waiting for inspiration.”
h: “you can’t just turn on creativity like a faucet. you have to be in the right mood.”
c: “what mood is that?”
h: “last-minute panic.”
- calvin & hobbes

i’ve found myself on somewhat of a creative streak this week. it hit me like a strong coffee, an instant influx of energy pulsing through my veins. it makes my vision vividly clear. i know what i want to:

do,

say,

make.

i’m on a mission to capture the essence of what it is that really drives me to make new things. it definitely seems to spike after any trip, new person or experience. it is almost certainly like trying to reach the end of the rainbow. perhaps this isn’t something tangible that i can actually reach, however, i’m making it a mission to at least get to see more of these rainbows.

as it stands, my sense of inspiration over time looks a bit like this poorly drawn graph:

i’m not alone in this. it’s a delicate balance. you have to have just the right balance of stress & contentedness in order to be in the correct state of flow.

a goldilocks state of creativity.

you might be thinking, “sure - creativity is important but, to be honest, i’m too busy working to care”.

as our burgeoning knowledge economy advances, creativity in all facets of life is becoming increasingly important. richard florida, an american urban studies theorist, hypothesises that people working within the creative industries are the key driving force for future economic development:

creativity and innovation is all we have, in the face of the accumulating crises of our time, in which financial instability, credit crisis, staggering production, and sudden fluctuations in oil prices and in all measures of value compound the larger and longer term global problems of environment, energy and poverty. only new, creative approaches to knowledge, to the organisation of knowledge, and the free exchange of ideas can solve those problems.
- creativity and the global knowledge economy (peters, 2008)

for context, here is some of what i made this week. it’s an attempt to mix two very different media together: analog film photography & the ui of iphone’s imessage chats:

👇 temptingly tappable:

✈️ air traffic:

last wednesday was the busiest air travel day ever tracked. an obscene number of flights were recorded in one day - almost a quarter of a million.

flightradar24, a swedish online service that monitors air traffic, tweeted that it registered more than 225,000 flights on wednesday, july 24, between 12 a.m. and 11:59 p.m. it’s the highest number tracked in one day since the company’s inception in 2006.
- mental floss

📍 pinterest:

on an increasingly polarised and echo-chamber-esque internet, pinterest feels like the good place. the platform is commonly used as a source of inspiration for everything from recipes to interior design. however, the company noticed something peculiar. people were coming to pinterest to find “vegan lasagna” and “hair ideas,” but increasingly they were also searching for pins related to “anxiety” and “stress”. they’ve built a clever product that they hope will help address this:

when you type in an anxiety-related query—something like “work anxiety,” or “dealing with stress”—pinterest will now display a box above the stream of pins. "if you're feeling sad or stressed, here are some resources that may help improve your mood," it says, above a disclaimer that notes pinterest’s exercises are not a replacement for professional care. you can click into the box to see more, or scroll down to just look at the pins.
if you click in the box, you'll find a dozen exercises created in collaboration with brainstorm, a mental health innovation lab at stanford's school of medicine, and two other mental health organizations. a grid shows options for exercises like “refocus your attention” and “recognize your strengths.” some, like “relax,” are guided meditations with audio. (the exercises live inside of the pinterest app, but the page is designed be a separate experience. everything that happens in there is private, the company says, and none of it affects the pin recommendation algorithm.)

🧠 brain candy:

i’m leaving you with just one piece to read today, as it’s quite long. please, give this the time it deserves, it’s important.

🙇‍♂️ on the meaning of life:

naval ravikant—ceo of angel list & investor in companies such as uber & twitter—on investing, decision-making, happiness & the meaning of life:

the only way you’re going to find something is if you stick to it at an irrational level and try a whole bunch of things. this kind of makes an idea a commodity, but the judgment and execution incredibly rare. how do you evaluate if someone is picking the right idea and if they have the capacity to execute on that idea?

the best founders i’ve found are the ones who are very long-term thinkers. even decisions that maybe they shouldn’t care that much about early on, they fix it because they are not building a house, they’re putting bricks in the foundation of the skyscraper.
life is going to play out the way it’s going to play out. some good, some bad.
most of it is actually just up to your interpretation. you’re born, you have a set
of sensory experiences, and then you die. how you choose to interpret those sensory inputs is up to you, and different people interpret them in different ways.

listen to the podcast or read the pdf transcript.

🤪 mildly humorous:

RM@dorsalstream

MehGyver@TheAndrewNadeau

[First sunset] HIM: HER: HIM: HER: HIM: HER: HIM: Is that… you think that’s a problem?

that’s all for this week. i hope you hold me accountable to keep this interesting 😝.

😌 see you next monday!

🦶 footer:

did you know that word of mouth is the only way something like this grows? i don’t promote it via advertisements.

i would absolutely love if you told one of your closest friends to sign up.

they can sign up here.
you can also share this on facebook or tweet about it.

🚨 if you post a screenshot to instagram stories of your favourite part of the email & tag me (@sam.travel), i’ll repost the best ones.

do it.

👋 read some more of my posts:

🎉 something new.

🎉 get social:

instagram: @sam.travel

twitter: @sammcallister

email me: smcallis[at]gmail.com

website: sammcallister.me

😏 new emoji?

hi & welcome to sam’s brain drain, a weekly collection of thumb-stopping things to tap, read, & watch.

Jul 22