Declare ads & things that caught my eye this week

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Declare ads

YouTuber Tom Scott delves into the marketing industry and laws that force influencers to declare ads. It is worthwhile watching regardless of how involved you are in marketing. Scott points out what he considers to be inconsistencies in the principles of when to declare ads. In particular, he focuses on the role of product placement in film and TV programmes and the way that is handled.

Future of

Wired contributor and author of What Technology Wants, Kevin Kelly has spent the COVID lockdown putting together some great talks on YouTube on the future of different aspects of technological progress.

Kelly’s opinions are usually well thought out and the videos are better than sitting through a few conferences; especially TED conferences.

SolarWinds

World Affairs put together a great panel to discuss the recent SolarWinds hack and the impact it has had across both enterprises and governments.

Celebrity Zoom Bombing

I was listening to a podcast about a University of Sydney research paper on Zoom based culture building. TL;DR – it doesn’t work unless participation is truly voluntary. Most of them are painful. Lights and Shadows were commissioned to help help promote fun in a company corporate culture. Usually did creative events, but for COVID-19 they had to get creative in Zoom.

Somehow they managed to get celebrities, or convincing deep fakes to bomb existing Zoom calls.

Strong Enemy

The strong enemy is Chinese Communist Party-speak for the United States. China increasingly sees its relationship with the US to lead to eventual war. Xi Jingping has been talking more about the strong enemy in speeches aimed at the PLA to get them ready for inevitable conflict with the US. Sinocism has this great essay on it all.