Looking Sideways: 10 Things
Douglas Adams' rules on technology, orca salmon hats, and the dumbest article about surfing in living memory.
1. As close Looking Sideways watchers will have gathered, I’m in the middle on an extended break from my podcast and Substack, although I have generally managed to keep up the 10 Things cadence (even if I did miss last week).
The reason? A very busy work life, combined with a house move, has coincided with a period of reflection on whether the whole thing is still serving me as a creative outlet. And I’ve had such little headspace that I’ve not picked up a book for a month, which is when I know things are bad.
I’ve also been experimenting extensively with Claude Cowork, which really is a remarkable and perplexing tool, coming as it does with so many ethical and philosophical questions (not least the Parkinsonian idea that our work will always elastically expand to fit the time available for its completion, something far greater minds than mine have grappled with over the years).
Yet there’s no doubt it has been transformative in the way it has enabled me to operate my various businesses in the last two months.
One thing I have also learned in the twenty years I’ve been running my agency ACM is that the sooner you get familiar and comfortable with these tools, the better. I think Douglas Adams was generally right with his take on our responses to technology, which is why I’m comfortable sharing his peerless line on just this topic yet again.
10 Things is free, and always will be. But pulling it together each week takes more time and obsessive curiosity than is probably healthy.
So if you’d like to chip in without committing to a paid sub, you can now buy me a coffee (or something stronger) right here. Even a couple of quid helps more than you’d think.
And if one person came to mind as you were reading this, send it their way. Nothing helps a newsletter like this more.
2. Congratulations to my old pal and regular Looking Sideways guest Jon Weaver (aka The Anti Blueprint Project) on the launch of his excellent new Anti Blueprint Project podcast series. And not just because he gave me a very kind big-up in the intro to the first episode.
More simple ways to support Looking Sideways - use any of these codes and I’ll get a small commission 🫡
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3. This Guardian piece is the dumbest article on surfing I’ve read this year. Or possibly any year.
Like a geeky Victorian butterfly hunter, I’ve been collecting and mentally cataloguing this type of thing since at least the mid 1990s.
If you told me back then that mainstream newspapers would still be publishing deeply silly stuff like this in the year 2026, I doubt I’d have believed you.
4. One of the most enjoyable creative experiences of my life was working with my friend Andy Wilkins on the collection of songs and half-finished recordings that eventually became the Matt & Boog record ‘Duets’ we released ten years ago now (and which, to my delight, still earns me a tiny sum every year from appearances on various TV shows and adverts).
Andy is one of the most talented musicians I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with, and he’s just released a brilliant new record which has quite rightly been getting a lot of praise and attention (not least from the great and good of 6 Music). Have a listen above.
5. Another couple of things I greatly enjoyed listening to this week - this brilliant podcast about Staten Island's 1990s attempt to secede from New York, from Malcolm Gladwell's Revisionist History stable.
6. And this BBC Prog at the Proms gig, featuring Guy Garvey, Jane Weaver, Gruff Rhys, and more.
7. Another week, another piece about what the death of reading means for the fabric of civilisation
8. How tourism swallowed Bali's precarious water supply - and the centuries old cooperative system designed to ensure its fair allocation.
9. One particular internet rabbit hole this week lead me to a fascinating discovery - the trend among killer whales to wear salmon on their heads as fashion accessories. Quick, somebody call the Guardian's fashion desk
10. Among the hecticness: the joy of welcoming old friends to new places, as my oldest friends came to visit us in Normandy.
How is everybody getting on out there?