It’s back-to-school and regular work programming vibes here in the UK. I hope everyone’s had a great summer. I’ll be in Marrakesh, Morocco next week to speak at PURE Life Experiences, an invitation-only conference for people in the luxury travel sector. Say hi if you’ll be there!

We’re planning some exciting things before the end of the year for the alumni of our Creative Crush podcast - so if you are or know a creative-minded B2B CMO or senior marketing executive who’d like to be on the show, drop us a line.

Wasafiri Magazine, which I’m a trustee of, is launching their latest issue on the theme of Solidarities on 23rd September in London, along with English PEN. If you’d like to hear some of the issue’s writers, including Tahmima Anam, Palestinian Iraqi writer Zena Agha and British-Syrian writer and activist lisa minerva luxx on how acts of solidarity can change our understanding of literature, and how storytelling has a role in liberation, sign up for a free ticket. Right up the street for any of our readers who like what we are doing with Futures in Draft.

💻 DATA POINT: McKinsey’s latest report on AI use in enterprises is out (requires a free sign-up to read the whole report). It finds that larger enterprises are now moving beyond experimentation, with 44% saying they are scaling their use of AI, up from 38% a year ago. Chatbots are the most widely scaled, with AI agents much further behind. AI high performers are more likely than others to engage in AI best practices, such as understanding how and when they need a human in the loop, and senior leaders committing to and using AI.

How The Heck Do Record Players Work? (awesome data visualisation)

What Is Social Media When It’s Not Social Anymore? (4-min read)

What We Tell AI (collection of confessions)

How A New Kind Of Video Business Cashed In On America’s Divided Politics (17-min watch/read)

How A Blanket Of Dough Becomes An Ethereal Pastry (scrollytelling piece)

What Is Neuralese And Why Is It Bad? (9-min read)

“Enshittification” Isn’t Real (9-min read)

The Life And Legacy Of Gloria Steinem (photo gallery)

The World Wide Wander (in-person and online event + resources)

📣 Mal Kaur On Why Adele Is Her Creative Crush (24-min watch) 📣

How The Heck Do Record Players Work? (awesome data visualisation)
The whole of this series of explanations in PerThirtySix for non-technical readers about how devices and apps work is worth spending some time on, but the latest one is about record players, and for any music lovers is truly fantastic. Make sure you take the time to press the ‘play’ button for each explanation section.

What Is Social Media When It’s Not Social Anymore? (4-min read)
Friend of Storythings John Peabody on ‘social media’ losing the ‘social’ aspect of the term over the years, and creators + algorithms taking priority over what us millennials (or older) knew as social media back in the day: media from friends and family. He also makes a good point about the window for brands being able to create shows being wide open for now, but probably not for much longer.

What We Tell AI (collection of confessions)
Honestly sometimes I’m not sure what my relationship with AI is - so reading these digital post-it notes from anonymous people about how they use it, and for what reasons, was really interesting for me. Of course these sorts of projects are always fascinating in general! It started as a research project with a box in Dolores Park, San Francisco, and an invitation for the public to anonymously submit their contributions. A true ‘snapshot of these strange times’ as the website says.

How A New Kind Of Video Business Cashed In On America’s Divided Politics (17-min watch/read)
An exclusive in Semafor covering how, over the last few months, YouTube growth hackers are hiring paid actors to create videos taking aim at progressive politicians. They are “sensationalized, low-quality content, reaching millions of viewers with nearly identical videos taking aim at progressive politicians including Zohran Mamdani, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker. Notably, while the videos are presented as laypeople giving straight-to-camera ideological news recaps, they feature actors and spokespeople paid small amounts of money to read nearly identical scripts laced with misleading claims and outright falsehoods.” Ugh.

How A Blanket Of Dough Becomes An Ethereal Pastry (scrollytelling piece)
You’ll need a New York Times subscription to read this, but it is such a lovely antidote to the AI-related pieces that I had to include it - thanks to Matt for sharing it. The photos and videos are gorgeous, all pinned on a heartwarming story of generations of women who have kept the tradition of making pastel de Tentúgal, a type of billowy dough, alive in Portugal since the 16th century.

What Is Neuralese And Why Is It Bad? (9-min read)
One of the geekier pieces we’ve published lately (thanks again to Matt for sharing on our Slack!), but an important one. Matt’s TL;DR is worth reproducing in full as a summary: "Neuralese is going to be the thing everyone in AI is talking about in the next few months. It's basically a higher, more abstract language that AIs can use to reason. It builds on 'chain of thought', where AIs wrote English phrases to record and build on their reasoning. That was good, because researchers could look back at their thoughts to understand how they came up with their answers. Neuralese is a faster and more efficient technique for AI reasoning, but it's more opaque for humans to read.”

“Enshittification” Isn’t Real (9-min read)
This is being circulated in many tech circles, and if you read it you’ll understand why. To be clear, Storythings do NOT agree with this piece for many reasons: it reads like someone with an axe to grind wrote it, it sounds naive, and ignores several very real facts about today’s social platforms: they do put product monetization over people (most of them have to, because of their VC funding) and they do cause real harms. The theory of ‘if you’re over 35, just vote with your fingers, go take of your kids (yes, it actually says that!) and get off the platforms’ is so ridiculous it’s sort of hilarious. I would laugh if I wasn’t gobsmacked at the audacity.

The Life And Legacy Of Gloria Steinem (photo gallery)
We lost Dolly Parton last week, and now Gloria Steinem. We are truly losing some feminist icons this year. This is a comprehensive gallery that chronicles Steinem’s life and work, and reminds you of how much she really achieved.

The World Wide Wander (in-person and online event and resources)
Sometimes you just need to go outside, talk to people who are as curious as you are about life, and revel in being alive, whilst planning for the future you want.

📣 Mal Kaur On Why Adele Is Her Creative Crush (24-min watch) 📣
On Creative Crush this week we have Mal Kaur, founder of her consultancy Mal//keting and fractional marketing head, and also till recently VP Marketing at Genesis Global. Mal is a fan of Adele, and explains why she has loved her music since her time growing up in Singapore.

Michael Bhaskar, who works on AI Futures at Microsoft, announced the launch of a new publication, The Humanist Review of AI. It’s a beautiful-looking print and digital publication that you should have a look at. I’m a bit jealous of it, in a good way of course!

LEARN MORE IN MICHAEL’S POST HERE>

Drop us a line if you have anything you’d like us to share in a future edition of this newsletter, or of course if you have any comments or suggestions for us!

Have a great weekend!

Matt, Anjali, Hugh, and the team