Christmas Greetings From Mia Khalifa

Mia Khalifa who lost her job due to speaking up for Palestine as I outlined back here, wishes us a great Christmas. I've been researching the industry she worked or maybe still works in with other partners. I don't know her status on that topic and I don't care. What I do care is that Mia is OK as I've been on the end of those death threats from the same gang, but I think we know the answer after watching her video clip. I have so much more that I'll be sharing but you might want to bookmark some of the links in essential resources I've added as I'm on Google's platform and remain here at their pleasure.

In fairness they've been very very good to me on quite a few issues and I'm grateful for that although they don't approve of me sometimes and that's fine.

I've already explained that Mia's no dummy but I think the video reveals to us a lot more about her character and it's clear she's charming and fun. There's a lot more fascinating information to write up and there's also a very troubling side to the business which nobody has published with evidence yet, and I'm going to do that when the time is right, which is as soon as people are ready to learn the information. Now is too early, but not for much longer.

God Bless The Chinese Covidiots?

We haven't changed our mind. 

Why did you?

Following what’s happening in China from afar, I can’t feel anything but pure loathing for those in the West who not so long ago held up the Chinese Zero Covid approach as an exemplar.

— Yuan Yi Zhu (@yuanyi_z) November 27, 2022

When it's in China it's "brave",

when it's in the west it's "cOnSpiRacY tHeorY!1!!" pic.twitter.com/6BPRpIyUkq

— Dispropaganda (@Dispropoganda) November 28, 2022

Never Forget | 911 15th Anniversary

Motorbike Selfies

A video posted by ❤️алена❤️ (@blood_and_milck) on Jan 25, 2016 at 2:54pm PST

Rare Earth Coltan - The Smart Phone Material 5 Million Died In The Congo For

Ten minutes ago I didn't know why the DRC war happened or what Coltan was. Now I know.

The war beginning in 1998 that pitted the armies of Congo, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Angola against those of Uganda and Rwanda induced the largest humanitarian disaster since World War II, with an estimated four million Congolese lives lost. Congo's first national elections since 1965 have taken place, but true peace and democracy remain elusive goals.

Follow Your Instinct

Just follow it. The ad is in your hands (don't forget to click in the Youtube video to direct the narrative - It's a new format)

Via Digicynic

What's your magic?

There was a time when this sort of solid gold presentation was only possible to people who ponied up 500 quid at a conference, but is now available through the generosity of folks like Iris and Contagious with their 'Under The Influence' talks (held reasonably enough in London pubs) and of course Iain Tate of Poke who are probably the hippest and thought leading digital agency in London. This is magic.

My Talk At Under the Influence from iaintait on Vimeo.

Chain Surfing

Via three billion

White Swans

I've been borderline garrulous recently about a potential new model for the marketing communications business which is classic recombinant culture theory that I nicked off Faris. It would take some balls from an agency and even more from their respective clients to seriously implement but in principle it's about mixing and remixing some transmedia planning along with fair chunks of the book, The Black Swan which I talked about at length here.

To save a wee bit on time I want to cut and paste from that post:

"Our view of history is always explaining backwards as best we can. This is a linear approach that cauterizes the true story. Even more breathtaking is the idea that viewing history by working backwards is a fallacy, because history is actually always moving forward."

I ran this by Johnnie Moore the other night (you should check out his ace podcasts) at The Endurance pub in Soho while Piers was in town, and without even ruminating for a second, Johnnie cheerfully fired back that Kierkegaard wrote something similar as follows:

"Life is understood backwards, but is lived forwards"

This was the first seductive simplification that knocked me for six, and I scribbled it down quick on my hand because I knew it was, as are many of Johnnie's thoughts and occasional silences on lots of stuff, really important. It was lovely to see the ink on my skin the next day to remind me to give him a shout about it. I just did. Thanks Johnnie :)

So it's not like I've really discovered anything new, or I'm responsible for inventing anything seminal, but earlier today, as once again I ran the thoughts I've been bundling together on "transmedia-planning-meets-black-swan-mashup" by a generously attentive listener who works in the strategy game, she encapsulated the bit about The Black Swan that takes ages to explain. Describing narrative fallacy and how it leads to the illusion of predicatability that many draw from so called dependable data is not easy, and is actually probably just me trying to be too smart for my own good, but in essence Tania my listener, chipped in and captured the thrust of my long monologue with a lovely expression which she and her colleagues call 'the upside of risk'.

That made for two very seductive simplifications.

That'll do for the time being as I've still got lots of things about China that I'm practically bursting to blog about. So in the spirit of some timely recombinant culture media here is that White Swan I saw walking down the road in Marlow. The file wouldn't open from the Sony mobile phone when transfered to a Sony Vaio PC which Rob has nothing to do with, so instead, I've squirted a Nokia N95 mobile phone video on to it. I may come back and rotate it to portrait, if I find someone who can actually do important stuff like that, but in the meantime here's a White Swan doing a 'Black Swan'. Or put another way, a bird walking down a street that is right up mine.