The Weekly Distillation No.19
Brains; AI; Students; Bundling; Culture; America; Bannockburn; Zlatan; Vaccines; Whisky
This newsletter is written for entrepreneurial organisational leaders and aims to help identify themes of our current context and provide questions, tips and tools that can help in navigating these times.
"The UK may sometimes be accused of lagging in some things my friends, but we will never be lagging in lagging." Boris Johnson
“Once again I seem to have got away with it” Silvio Berlusconi
“If Alexei Navalny goes to meet his maker, then I personally do not intend to pursue him in this world” Yevgeny Prigozhin
“I helped create a monster” Paris Hilton
“So though we are all struggling with this – and believe me, we are all struggling – let’s pull together.” Nicola Sturgeon
Skim it in a minute
Thematic insights from the news and the web to help you think about potential future and current contexts and how to be productive, creative and successful in your work now
Coronavirus
If you live in the UK, Lockdown is back and this time it’s better. #lockdown2. Restrictions on what you can buy in the shops and university students told they can’t go to the pub this weekend or go home to visit mum & dad - to which the Children & Young People’s Commissioner claimed that this may be an abuse of human rights. Really?
Only 49% of people said they would be “very likely” to get a vaccine if one was available, a UK survey by University College London found. But the people who looked after baby wellbeing for years, Johnson & Johnson, are now conducting a very large study of a single shot vaccine. Yes, that is Johnson & Johnson who had to withdraw Tylenol because it had been poisoned with cyanide and then years later pay large settlements for its alleged involvement in creating the opiod crisis in America.
The UK is accelerating, along with most of Europe and Israel. India appears to have topped out and globally case numbers are flat to slightly up. Europe is now the key battleground. Scotland has banned household meetings, students going to the pub, anyone going to the pub after 10pm and any sort of spectator sports. England has just said you can go to the pub - but only until 10pm. On the other hand, there is the Zlatan approach to life.
We know more about Covid than we did in March, tackling it is becoming more technical and targeted, and every week we are closer to the end of this thing. This too will pass.
How technology is changing our world
Photo by Jesse Martini on Unsplash
Starting at the ridiculous, government intervention (bullying?) forced TikTok, one of the tech successes of the last five years into the hands of an enterprise software company and a supermarket retailer. Bizarre.
We’ve all read about deep fakes but the broader application of avatars and digital versions of you are growing from how you attend conferences to who your therapist is and creating movies.
We’re still trying to create killer robots, thinking we can beat them, even while we’re asking them to stack shelves. Can’t possibly see how this could go wrong.
Elon Musk of cool cars & re-useable rockets and the Astra Nova School has been adamant we need to treat AI as being more dangerous to society than nuclear weapons. (He also thinks it’s probably we’re all just living in a computer simulation but let’s leave that aside). But who do we get to write the ethical codes? Google has offered to be the drafter of where life goes from here with AI. #donoevil indeed.
Sticking with Elon, he’s keen to get those brain implants working. This is interesting - having had relatives that had Parkinson’s disease, tackling neurological diseases would be a great step forwards. But who do you trust to be able to manipulate your brain? Don’t think it will happen? Think again.
The coffee is dead, long live the fake coffee. It’s better. Get defensive coffee lovers.
The future of work
Photo by Mollie Sivaram on Unsplash
Curation and bundling is becoming so attractive in a world of noise. Netflix bundles producers, Amazon bundles up Netflix, Android bundles up Amazon, Samsung bundles Android. Gateways, portals, trusted brands - this is a winning strategy for the next decade.
People are obviously leaving the city - I suspect not as much as the media makes out. But the idea of working elsewhere for periods is appealing. I tell people at least once a week about the remote worker visa in Barbados.
Failing to read the times was in evidence this week with a longstanding drinks publication being outrageously sexist and coming under fire. Cancel culture or cultural sensitivity? Mars announced it was changing the name of Uncle Ben’s rice. Debates are rising on critical race theory and unconscious bias training even whilst the direction of travel in the corporate world is pretty clear. No brand will stand against the movement at the moment.
You could always learn about teamwork from spies.
And I’ll take a criticism of being a hypocrite, but long hours backfire.
Has design thinking run its course for entrepreneurs?
A long read for the weekend
A light entry into the US election, from one side of the argument looking at what happens if Trump refuses to concede. Interestingly chaos seems to be the consensus position - which makes me wonder what if chaos is not the outcome and either the status quo or an orderly transfer of power happens? Does it actually all turn out better than we all thought, regardless of who wins?
The other weekly distillation
“the action of purifying a liquid by a process of heating and cooling.”
The westernmost distillery on the mainland of Scotland is the Ardnamurchan Distillery on the Ardnamurchan Pensinsula. Last time I was up there I got driven in a Tesla and the journey took so long we had to stop and recharge the batteries. Of the car. It’s pretty rural.
My favourite story associated with the distillery relates to Alex Bruce, the MD. One of the Bruce family, direct descendants of Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland 1306-1329. He (Robert, not Alex) stabbed to death Red Comyn in a church in my hometown, for which he was excommunicated by the Pope. And in 1314 Robert won Scotland’s most famous victory against the English at Bannockburn. And if you’ve seen Outlaw King you’ll know the story. It turns out the the Bruce family still hold Robert the Bruce’s family sword at their family house and on occasion they have to parade it in to a Burns dinner.
The distillery sits next to a 25,000 acre estate which, so I’ve heard, has Russian billionaires flying in and paying £25,000 for a day to shoot a stag. I once had the privilege of lunch at Mingary Castle on the Estate, an 800 year old castle that has been kept in great condition by the estate owner and is now a five bedroom boutique hotel.
The team at the distillery, and its owners Adelphi, are highly experienced and well regarded amongst the industry. They launch their single malt in October and this will be one of the most sought after single malts coming on the market any time soon.
It is the first Scottish distillery to adopt the use of blockchain technology to provide an incorruptible ledger of its complete supply and production chain. This offers a fully transparent diary of each whisky’s field to bottle journey.
The single malt photos aren’t even available yet - but I managed to get a hold of this one from a source.
The tasting notes are “Honeycomb, waxy peel, oyster shells, brine, strawberries with black pepper, bonfire embers”. Checking in at a healthy 46.8% ABV as well. Here’s the list of stockists around the world for when it is released.
If you’re in the UK and you want to participate in one of the first ever tasting events for the public, there’s an event on Oct 1st at 7.30pm - keep an eye on Royal Mile Whiskies and hope they get some more stock!
Congratulations to Alex, Keith, Gordon and the team for reaching this milestone.