Add to List - #41

Soft-boi tech talks and primary school club bangers

How many times do people give you a recommendation and you say: “Oh, really? Cool. I’ll add it to the list!” followed by you going away and not adding it to any list, anywhere?

Add to List is the Sunday round-up containing the small things that brought me joy, evoked an emotional reaction or became some short-lived stability in the past 7 days, all documented in one place for you.

Thanks for reading!

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Obsession

A tech talk on dating and death.

I have hung up my ‘tech gloves’ to pursue my writing career but this doesn’t mean I have given up thinking about data forever. It’s inevitable. AI is going nowhere. Data is a part of life. And, there’s lots about the tech industry I still find incredibly interesting.

So, I donned my metaphorical Patagonia gilet and headed to a tech talk this week at SPACE4 to watch

Afreen

Saulat and my Substack pal,

Michael Kibedi

, talk about two of our most inevitable human experiences, yet two of the most overlooked in the modern day digital landscape: dating and death.

Their well-researched presentations, filled with humour and nostalgia included screenshots of Bebo, MSN 2004 and, my favourite,

Iona David

’s ‘beam me up softboi’ account. Both presenters asked the audience searching questions about what the future holds for our digital lives, the value of our data, and the nature of digital existence.

The conversation was so warm and welcoming that the Q&A at the end turned into a collective discussion across the spread of the attendees. Plus, I got asked out for a drink at the end by someone new I met there. Talk about ‘let’s take this one offline’.

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Confession

This newsletter’s hashtag symbol.

I often forget the shortcut for the ‘#’ symbol on this keyboard. Instead of googling it, I copy and paste last week’s title every Sunday and change the number.

I was thrilled to read Bits - #10 from

Pandora Sykes

this week where she admitted she takes it from Google too. Anyone else?

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Shook 

Craig David’s latest song.

WHAT. IS. THIS. A remix of a primary school hymn? Vernon Kay made it his ‘song of the week’ on R2? Are we okay, people!? What is going on?

(If you are intrigued, I beg you to play the below on preview. I do not wish for this song to get a single stream as a result of this hyperlink).

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Cook 

Ramen from Hakata, London Bridge.

This week’s cooking has been really quite boring. Chicken, roasted veg, frittata etc. Nothing to write home (or in a Substack newsletter) about.

On Saturday though, I went to Hakata on Bermondsey Street with my best friend, Hannah. I enjoyed a spicy miso ramen with chicken, charred corn and tea-stained egg. The lunch was nourishing, in more ways than one.

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Book

Conversations on Love,

Natasha Lunn

While bopping between meetings and gym classes, I am still dipping in and out this rich, transformative collection. This week’s favourite extract comes from Mira Jacob’s section, ‘the unknowable corners of someone you love’.

“I used to worry about presenting myself in a certain light because I didn't want to give up the mystery of who I was and lose someone's interest. I didn't know that there are always new things you will learn about your partner and they will always be a mystery. They hold worlds and worlds inside of them that are inaccessible to you at certain points but can be accessed at others. And that's tremendously gratifying.

We have so many lives folded within this one life. We have so many secrets and longings and stages and alternate parts of our personality; our partners live with all of that. My partner and I will be sitting together, and he'll tell me a story from his life, or something he was thinking, that will be new and vitally interesting to me. I didn't know that was how love worked. I thought it was a book you read and finished, and once you got through it you knew the story. But you never know the story. There's always a new chapter.”

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Can’t Stop Scanning

Nobody Wants This (extracurricular reading pt. 2).

The Nobody Wants This hype has continued. Sharing a few favourites I’ve read this week:

• Why everyone in the entire world fancies Adam Brody right now -

  Polly Vernon

  “This, then is Jumper Boyfriend Man, as epitomised by Adam Brody in Nobody Wants This, which should more accurately be called, Everybody Wants Him, but - I know, I know, question remains: why is JBM doing it, for all of us, RIGHT NOW? What is it about him and our current circs, which means that we are, for once, all united in fancying him?”

• Everybody Wants This -

  Eleanor Biggs

  “As soon as I heard him say them, I snapped to attention. He thinks her work matters?? Oh my fucking god. If my own reaction was anything to go by, I can only imagine working women everywhere hitting the space bar and leaping out of bed with all the vim and vigour of Maria in the Sound of Music calling to her lonely goatherd. Frankly, the hot rabbi had given us all cause for celebration.”

• Lesson of a (hot) rabbi -

  Amar Patel

  “After reading all the giddy comments, it’s clear that Nobody Wants This is the snackable romantic yet kind-of realistic show that many viewers have been yearning for. Noah may not be the agent of change that many are calling for in the dating world but he might inspire a new breed of male leads in romcoms.”

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Forward Planning 

The new freelance groove.

I find Monday’s the hardest.

Monday blues aren’t such a thing. It’s more like Monday-what-the-fuckety-is-this-week-gonna-be?-a-write-off-or-a-write-on?

This week’s Monday

So, (after reading my weekend overflow saved Substacks) on Mondays, I pitch and apply for freelance work. Tuesday tends to be my most creative (at present). Wednesdays are networking/interview days. Thursday’s are write-up/edit/amend days. And on, Friday, well, it’s whatever is left over.

Hang on, did I just write a new Craig David song? Better call the producers. But, hold the hymns.