In this issue: BLACK SWANS PAMPERED PETS MUSICAL CARS ADOLF HITLER BUT NO BATS (well...) And much, much more... ------------------------------------------------------------ ____ ____ ___ _____ ____ ______ ______ * / __ )/ __ \/ | / _/ | / / |/ / | / _/ / / __ / /_/ / /| | / // |/ / /|_/ / /| | / // / / /_/ / _ _/ ___ |_/ // /| / / / / ___ |_/ // /___ /_____/_/ |_/_/ |_/___/_/ |_/_/ /_/_/ |_/___/_____/ *Feeding hungry minds since 2004 ------------------------------------------------------------ Brainmail email issue 108 ------------------------------------------------------------ Brainmail is a free monthly (usually) newsletter dedicated to intellectual miscellany and ephemera. A low-fi file of cerebral snacks and fortuitous facts for your delectation and delight. Do share. https://brainmail.nowandnext.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------ : INSIGHTS & IDEAS > Post-pandemic pets The popularity of pets, especially cats and dogs, appears to have risen significantly during the pandemic. But with owners constantly at home, an animal psychologist has suggested that doting owners start preparing their pets for the inevitable return to normality. First-world problem? Ref: The Times (UK) 21.4.20 > Army prints The US army has developed a giant 3D printer to print ultra-strong, large-scale, steel components for weapons and military vehicles. Ref: New Scientist (UK) 17.4.20 > America's most wanted The New York Public Library recently announced a list of the most-borrowed books of all time. In first place, The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats (borrowed 485,583 times). In second place, The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss (469,650 times) and in third place, 1984 by George Orwell (441,770 times). Ref: Smithsonian magazine (US) 14.1.20 > Fast fashion The UK is the world's second-largest exporter of used clothing after the US, according to the UN. However, many of these clothes end up as landfill, especially in Africa. Fast fashion is now the largest industrial polluter after aviation, according to one study. Ref: The Times (UK) 14.4.20 > Heaven knows we're miserable now An AI analysis of 150,000 songs released between 1965 and 2015 has found a decline in positive words such as "love" and "joy" and a simultaneous rise in negative words such as "pain" and "hate." Ref: The Times (UK) 7.2.20 > Listening for traffic The composer behind soundtracks for movies such as The Lion King, Dunkirk and Gladiator has been hired by the car company BMW to make hybrid and electric cars sound "beautiful". Ref: The Times (UK) 20.4.20 > Ghost ships Since 2015, Buffalo Automation has been developing autonomous systems for pleasure craft and large-scale shipping transport. The company is now seeking to develop driverless boats to ferry passengers on rivers in major cities, such as London and New York. Ref: Wired (US) > Disney World The Walt Disney Company has stopped paying 100,000 staff, but is on track to pay out executive bonuses and shareholder dividends to the value of $1.5 billion. The company's tag-lines include 'making people happy' and 'where dreams come true.' Ref: Los Angeles Daily News (US) 20.4.20 > Black swan Who imagined this? Oil prices below zero for the first time in history. Demand for oil has declined so far so fast, due to coronavirus, that markets have entered a parallel universe where traders paid customers US$40 a barrel to get rid of crude oil. Ref: Straits Times (Singapore) 20.4.20 > Google recipe search What are people searching for right now, apart from a vaccine, obviously? The most searched-for food items, according to Google Trends, are (in descending order): Banana bread, pizza dough, hand sanitiser (yummy!), French toast, chocolate cake, dalgona coffee (me neither), chicken breasts, carrot cake, ground beef and, finally, fried rice. No mention of bats then? Ref: Sydney Morning Herald (Aus) 20.4.20 ------------------------------------------------------------ : THE NUMBERS During the pandemic, sales of alcohol in the UK have risen by 291 per cent. (I'll vouch for this one personally.) Ref: Daily Telegraph (UK) 18.4.20 The average woman in the UK wears a typical item of clothing seven times before it is replaced. Ref: The Times (UK) 14.4.20 Economic output in the UK has fallen by 35 per cent since the onset of COVID-19. Ref: Financial Times (UYK) 19.4.20 Retail spending in China, which accounted for 80 per cent of Chinese economic growth in 2019, fell by 19 per cent in Q1 2020. Ref: Daily Telegraph (UK) 18.4.20 China's economy shrank by 6.8 per cent in the first three months of 2020, the first recorded decline since 1992 when official records began. The IMF expects Chinese growth to rebound from 1.2 per cent this year to 9.2 per cent in 2021. Ref: The Times (UK) 18.4.20 A 2014 study by the London School of Economics and the Alzheimer's Society estimates the health and social care costs of dementia in the UK to be £26.3 billion per year. Ref: FT (UK) 1.6.19 Number of people that visit John Lennon's childhood home in Liverpool: 12,000 per year. Number of Beatles singles sold in the US: 1.6 billion. Ref: Saturday Review (UK) Classical music represents 2.5 per cent of US album chart music sales. For music streaming services, the number is 0.7 per cent. Ref: Harper's magazine (US) The home delivery food market is worth £7.5 billion per year. (This figure is BC - Before Coronavirus.) Ref: Daily Telegraph (UK) 22.11.19 Only 0.1 per cent of land in the UK is densely built upon. It has been estimated that 94.6 per cent of land in the UK is still not built upon at all. Ref: Royal Statistical Society (UK) ------------------------------------------------------------ : LITTLE KNOWN FACT In 1938, Adolf Hitler was shortlisted for the Nobel Peace Prize. I kid you not. Ref: The Guardian (UK) 7.12.02 ------------------------------------------------------------ : WORD DETECTIVE: VUCA VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) was a phrase coined by the US Dept. of Defense to describe the geopolitical environment after the collapse of the Berlin wall in 1989. VUCA seems perfect for our crazy times. I would say, "What's next: a plague of locusts?" but that's already happening in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya. Aliens anyone? ------------------------------------------------------------ : QUOTE OF THE MONTH "Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." – John Donne, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, 1624 ------------------------------------------------------------ : BOOK OF THE MONTH The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan ------------------------------------------------------------ : PODCAST OF THE MONTH Ologies with Allie Ward: Based on interviews with experts in strange and niche fields. Start with "Astrobiology (ALIENS)". https://www.alieward.com/ologies ------------------------------------------------------------ : WEB SIGHT OF THE MONTH Charity Shop Exchange: a British website that's fighting isolation with unwanted books and DVDs. https://charityshopexchange.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------ : ARTICLE OF THE MONTH Predicable Surprises: The Disasters You Should Have Seen Coming by Max Bazerman and Michael Watkins (Harvard Business Review, 2003) https://tinyurl.com/y7faf932 ------------------------------------------------------------ : STILL HUNGRY? Not a lot of people know this, but brainmail is put together using some of the leftover bits from the What's Next trends report. So if this snack-sized newsletter is leaving you a bit hungry, go to nowandnext.com for something more substantial (and that's free too). ------------------------------------------------------------ : BRAINMAIL LIVE If you are looking for an interesting speaker for your next conference, workshop, or event ask your speaker agency about Richard Watson or contact him direct via nowandnext.com. Richard, who is based in London, is the creator of brainmail (along with Matt Doyle and Phil Beresford, both of whom had the good sense to stay in Australia). ------------------------------------------------------------ : SMALL PRINT Material subjectively collected and curated by Richard Watson, who lives at nowandnext.com. That's all folks. Back soon...