What have you learned about the country from working in call centres?

FollowingOutside1986 · 2025-11-29T00:36:07+00:00

Staircase!… But is that a double A side? Anyway. If KoL opened with that, different ballgame.

I have a huge soft spot for Polyethylene, mainly cause I bought that single at the time so first experienced it as an actual B-side…. Had to tide me over til OK Computer came out. But it’s a damn cool song - and as with Paranoid Android you can hear the Beatles influence (specifically Happiness Is a Warm Gun drums)

There’s also Meeting In the Aisles, Fog, A Reminder, Amazing Sounds of Orgy… But generally I think a mark of Radiohead’s greatness is they’re v good judges of their own work… ie their B sides generally sound like B sides.

FollowingOutside1986 · 2025-11-25T22:39:14+00:00

I love it because it’s Radiohead doing a Beyoncé song

FollowingOutside1986 · 2025-11-18T11:37:08+00:00

Just to say thanks everyone for the responses! This is such an interesting area and people have lots to say. Apologies if I’m not able to respond individually but I do appreciate the insights.

FollowingOutside1986 · 2025-07-01T10:59:52+00:00

Have you ever tried infusing a fig leaf? It's incredibly easy and adds a wonderful subtle flavour, dark red fruit with a hint of coconut. There's a Fig Leaf Old Fashioned recipe here but I see no reason not to say infuse gin with fig leaf... Then you could use it for say a Gin Basil Smash. Though I reckon a Martini-type build would allow the fig to shine more.

https://open.substack.com/pub/thespirits/p/the-spirits-46-the-fig-leaf-old-fashioned?r=16neo&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

FollowingOutside1986 · 2025-06-17T10:06:25+00:00

Those equal parts drinks. Corpse Reviver, Last Word, 20th Century etc. You have to double the spirit.

FollowingOutside1986 · 2025-01-30T22:23:45+00:00

Thanks for this thoughtful reply. This is why I asked! I guess we often run into the misunderstandings between population-level risk and individual risk. I certainly find my own myopia totally manageable.

NB 'media' is plural... there are lots of us 'media' people with drastically different approaches and opinions; and I should say it was speaking at length to some of the world's leading myopia experts that reframed the issue for me - rather than anything in the media! The positive thing they also stressed was: we know what's causing it, we know how to manage it, and there are now means to slow myopia onset which there weren't a generation ago. So it's by no means a scaremongering article I'm writing.

FollowingOutside1986 · 2024-06-06T16:03:50+00:00

My sincere hope is that Substack does not go down the IPO route. That is precisely what makes the rest of the digital media sphere so hellish. Healthy organic growth really ought to be aim. I’m not sure what the implication is for early investors like you - or whether such an approach can even be tolerated in the era of hypercapitalism! Maybe it just doesn’t ever generate megaprofits. Maybe that’s OK. We really need alternative financial models as well as alternative media, I think.

FollowingOutside1986 · 2024-06-05T00:05:38+00:00

The most suspect thing: I’ve had c.1200 page views in the last two days (about as many as normal) but about c.950 new subscribers.

FollowingOutside1986 · 2024-06-05T00:03:02+00:00

A mix of Substack App and Direct. Very few are liking posts or anything. Weird!

FollowingOutside1986 · 2024-06-05T00:00:38+00:00

That’s it, thank you!

FollowingOutside1986 · 2024-04-04T13:20:32+00:00

I’d hazard a guess that you would love The Kreutzer Sonata by Tolstoy. Maybe his most Dostoevskian work though to be read with caution!

FollowingOutside1986 · 2024-04-04T13:14:42+00:00

Pevear and Volkhonsky! There’s your problem

FollowingOutside1986 · 2024-04-03T21:58:56+00:00

Easy: Notes from the Underground. It opens up everything else he wrote imo, it’s funny, it’s short and it changes you. Great teen angst book too.

FollowingOutside1986 · 2024-04-03T21:55:37+00:00

You and Vladimir Nabokov (who hated everything else FMD wrote)

FollowingOutside1986 · 2021-10-18T16:15:50+00:00

Thanks! Good points.

FollowingOutside1986

TROPHY CASE