World’s main security issue today is Russian poisoned public opinion

Picture from a July Racist @Redbull Obama event in Russia

Crosspost from Little Green Footballs.

I have posted before about how Americans seem to be unaware just how much Russians are being told to hate them.

In this article Andreas Umland, a Kyiv based analyst and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation, explains further how what we see in the West of Russian propaganda is just the tip of a very dangerous, nuclear armed iceberg.

Russia’s more and more neurotic collective mind represents a critical challenge to the integrity of the European and even world security system. Russian electronic mass media has turned from a platform of relative pluralism of interpretation and opinion, in the 1990s, into a dangerous propaganda and manipulation instrument. Over the last 15 years, Russia’s major TV channels, radio stations and newspaper have been resolutely re-designed to prolong as long as possible the rule of the kleptocratic clique around Vladimir Putin. Kremlin-controlled mass media achieves this aim through purposeful inception and radicalization of a fortress mentality among the Russian population. The Russian people are told, on a daily basis, that Russia is under a deadly attack from the US and its underlings across the world, ranging from far-away Australia and Canada to neighboring Estonia, Georgia and Ukraine. The propaganda machine’s constant repetition that NATO, the EU and their allies are after Russia’s lands and resources has made, for many Russians, the idea that they have to stick together for securing the physical survival of their nation a common place beyond dispute.

So far, the West has largely failed to address the core issue in its confrontation with Moscow - the deeply poisoned Russian public opinion. It does not systematically counter-act the constant spread of Manichean, conspirological and rabidly anti-Western misrepresentations of international affairs, by the skillful manipulators of Kremlin-controlled mass media. For instance, the English-language RT (Russia Today) state TV channel has, since 2005, been allowed to become a noteworthy factor in the formation of North American as well as West European public opinion, on the Wests contemporary domestic and foreign affairs. RT’s largely unchallenged pseudo-pacifist stance has only started to loose cloud, even among political radicals, with the start of the all-to-obvious Russian “hybrid war” against Ukraine. Especially, the downing of Malyasian flight MH17, by a Russian rocket on 17 July 2014, has dealt a blow to RT’s and various other Russian outlet’s international propaganda campaign strategies designed to muddle the waters of Western public opinion on the escalation in the Donets Basin. The Kremlin’s project to subvert the integrity of the West from within has largely failed.

Yet, a far more consequential and complicated challenge remains unmet - the ever stronger anti-Western infection of public opinion, inside Russia, by state-directed domestic television.

More: Neither ISIS, Nor Climate Change: The World’s Main Security Issue Today Is the Russian People’s Poisoned Public Opinion

40% young Russia: We’ll beat America in nuclear war

Crosspost from LGF.

Does America have a clue how much hate against them is being stirred up in Russia?

This kind of breakdown in communication was also noted by sociologist Karina Lipiya of the Levada polling organization.

“People generally do not want to hear another point of view,” she told Radio France Internationale’s Russian-language website.

Her Levada colleague Alexei Levinson noted how significant numbers of Russians were now entertaining thoughts that “until yesterday were unthinkable and unacceptable”.

As he wrote in business daily Vedomosti in April, 47% men said Mr Putin’s statement about being ready to use nuclear weapons “did not make them fearful”. A large proportion of young people (40%) also thought Russia could defeat the United States in a nuclear war, he said.

Mr Levinson linked these bellicose opinions to the influence of television.

Recent research suggests that Kremlin TV propaganda may have declined in popularity from a peak in the summer and autumn of 2014.

But Ukraine still dominates the TV news, and talkshows where guests rant about US plans for world domination continue to command large audiences.

For veteran TV critic Yury Bogomolov, this suggests that many Russian people have somehow become “addicted to propaganda” and now have an “appetite for aggression”.

“There is a cycle of hatred in our society,” he wrote in a blog on the website of independent radio station, Ekho Moskvy.

More: BBC Monitoring - How TV Propaganda Is Affecting Russian Society

Frankie Boyle and the Aborigines

If you enjoy laughing and have ever watched the British (knowing laugh) nihilistic comedian Frankie Boyle I very much doubt that you have never laughed at his jokes.

The joke about the Queen's vagina being haunted? If you heard it I would bet that something akin to laughter ensued.

Yet that and other comedic transgressions has resulted in transgressive Frankie being banished by the evil English establishment.

Except it hasn't.

Oh no. We have the BBC commissioning a show headed by Boyle after the Scottish referendum and then another commission for online after the UK General Election. Some banishment. The Boyle election show was on the BBC iplayer homepage for weeks.

In his election show Boyle had two female comedians to bounce off and a 'Grime' commentator - aka a black British bloke. All of whom polished his mantle.

Now I can think of a number of bitchy conservatives who could have been a perfect foil to Boyle. Were they even considered? It would have made for great TV.

But why I am even asking this? Multi millionaire Boyle needs his 'safe space', bless. He has no history of stepping outside of his comfort zone but let's try. Here we go Frankie. Here's me puncturing your safe space.

The treatment of Australia and Australians by Boyle and his 'Grime' commentator Akala was colonialist and racist.

Boyle cherry picked a brief extract from Australian morning TV to showcase how Australians are all stupid fucking colonials and so so racist. This was as bad as the treatment of the 'colonials' by the Brits going way back has ever been. Barry Humphries, Private Eye and Humphries' Barry McKenzie character were satirising this Brit attitude in the 1970s (the 70s FFS).

We recently had the Gallipoli hundredth anniversary. Gallipoli in the Australian imagination is all about how the Brits have traditionally treated Aussies as subaltern. This stuff has form.

After his cherrypick, Boyle, backed by Akala, then underlined by calling Australia, quote, "the most racist country in the world".

Worse than Mali? Worse than Russia? Worse than India? Worse than Brazil?

Akala cited the utter revelation, to much of the audience I would assume, that Australian Aborigines 'used to be ruled by the Flora and Fauna Act'. This is actually a myth (the Act is) but the bigger point is that nearly fifty years ago Australians voted to end that mythical status, change the  Constitution and grant Aborigines citizenship by 91% in favour. Right now Australians are 85% in favour of proposals to change the Constitution to recognise Aboriginal people.

Why does Akala mention the (non existent) Flora and Fauna Act? To back Boyle's claim that Australia remains "the most racist country in the world".

Boyle's claim, with Akala's backing, does two things: it denies that white Australia has moved one centimeter on from the 1960s; it denies that Aboriginal and progressive activism has had any impact.

Obviously both are wrong. Clearly they are wrong. But both Akala and Boyle have an investment in denying the reality in Australia: their British audience will love to hear Australia called "the most racist country in the world" - and Akala and Boyle know it.

In order to make that claim both have to behave exactly like colonialists. Racist, British colonialists. And they have to fail to listen to Aboriginal people.

I wrote about this a few years back. Listening involves understanding that Aboriginal people have different opinions on how to advance the interests of their communities. (Of course they effing do.) There are some who want sovereignty to be central. (If Akala knew anything he would mention the absence of treaties.) Then there are others working with capitalism to create Aboriginal owned business and create jobs. And then there's the mass in between, trying to get on.

Outside of this we have white people like leftie icon John Pilger and environmentalists like newly minted BBC star Professor Tim Flannery who also have opinions. And don't they ever have opinions - and the whites always know better than the bad blackfellas.

Who is going to get the attention of the likes of Boyle/Akala (and countless other Brits)? Short answer: the white people. They'll know and trust someone like Pilger (Akala's comment is a 'tell' here) and have never heard of the likes of Professor Marcia Langton.

Langton has slammed Flannery and the "racist assumption in the green movement about Aboriginal people being the enemies of the wilderness." She is a leading light in the national debate around Aboriginal advancement and particularly the role of mining and is one of the most well known Aboriginal people in Australia. Yet when Pilger covered the area of Australia she has focused on in a film he flat out ignored her because she was an inconvenient black woman. What would you call that?

It is not going to even vaguely occur to Boyle/Akala what they're doing, namely that Aboriginal people in their world view may as well be regarded as 'flora and fauna' - invisible, lacking any agency. They're just going to be led by presumptions and ignorance and what white leftie icons say, for that is what it is.

Invisible: Two examples

Daily Show archive blocked for UK: Channel Four display several layers of stupid

UK fans of America's leading satirical TV show got a shock today when they discovered they could no longer view the show on its website.

The website has forums where overseas fans of the show have been venting their rage at the block. Not just UK viewers but those from Ireland who can no longer watch the show on the UK licensee Channel Four's website yet also remain blocked from watching it on the show's website, apparently because C4 hasn't bothered to tell the Daily Show's channel, Comedy Central, that it's blocked the Irish. People in the rest of Europe have no such problems.

There's no statement from either Channel Four or the show about this out-of-the-blue block but it appears from past Daily Show statements on their forum that they only do the blocking on the request of a country's license holder. Incidentally, I was able to leave a comment on their website and I see that the show's producers do respond to comment. Channel Four offers no such option, there is no comment space offered for the show and they have no forum or similar space for viewers to talk back to them.

What is particularly sad/appalling about Channel Four's actions is that all online video from the extensive Daily Show online archive is now being blocked for UK - yet Channel Four is only showing the past week's shows online! Do they even have rights to episodes from before they started showing the Daily Show, because I can't watch clips from 2000.

What is so stupid about this (and it has multiple layers of stupid) is that I have been posting clips on my blog which promotes the show Channel Four have rights to! Now none of those embedded clips work and so the show gets no (free) promotion from me or the many others who embed clips.

When the Daily Show's sister program The Colbert Report was being shown on a UK cable channel you couldn't watch clips on their website - but you could watch clips embedded on other websites. This makes complete sense as if you liked what you saw it promoted the cable channel's show and made it far more likely that you'd bother to subscribe to it. It also makes it appear that C4's block request included blocking embedded clips.

At the same time that one bit of C4 takes this completely stupid action another makes clips from C4 news freely available, even ad free!


Here's another stupidity. I have watched clips from US shows which have served up country specific ads. On sites like HuffPost I get UK ads. So if you can recognise I'm from the UK you can monetise it to the benefit of the UK license holder. Hardly rocket science.
 What C4 are doing is tragic for the Daily Show itself as it is going to lose a significant chunk of its UK audience. All - one would assume - in the name of driving viewers back to watching the show on More4 ON TV!

I hope that the show's resident Brit, the hugely popular John Oliver, learns about it and tells Channel Four to stop behaving like idiots.

Of course people can watch Daily Show clips if they know how to get around the block by hiding their computer's ip address. This means C4 lose out on any hope of ad revenue. I won't even bother linking to how because a simple Google (or a look on the Daily Show's forums where they allow comments explaining how) will tell you what to do. So not only are C4 idiots but they think the rest of us UK fans of the show are too.

Addendum: Tony Lee has commented on the cross-post of this on the Online Journalism blog that:

Channel 4 denies the above.  I wrote them and got the following response:

Thank you for contacting us regarding THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART.

We would advise that although we do indeed hold UK broadcast rights for the series, the overall rights to the series are owned by Comedy Central themselves. Content on their website, as with other American networks, is blocked to residents not in the US. These blocks are placed by the channel themselves, not Channel 4.

It is the same with content on UK broadcasters website being blocked to those outside the UK. The reason for this is copyright and broadcasting licence terms.

We would suggest that you therefore direct your complaint on this issue to Comedy Central. You can do so via the following link:

http://www.comedycentral.com/help/questionsCC.jhtml

Channel 4 is not responsible for third-party websites.

Thank you again for taking the time to contact us here at Channel 4 and for your interest in our programming.

Regards,

Rachel Salinger
Channel 4 Viewer Enquiries

This is the exact opposite of what Comedy Central say on their forum - so I will post this statement there and see what they have to say for themselves.

There is an actly petition:

petition @ComedyCentral to  lift the IP block for #dailyshow video online UK http://act.ly/mr RT to sign #actly

Addendum two


A fix has been posted on the Daily Show fan forum (ironically) http://forum.thedailyshow.com/tds/board/message?board.id=support_2008_oct&message.id=2897#M2897 (and it works)

When Aussie TV beats British TV

Marketing is one of the biggest influencers on our world, yet when did you last see a TV show devoted to it?

Australia's ABC (the equivalent of the BBC or PBS) has the Gruen Transfer, a fantastic show which is a 101 on how to do two things: make the subject extremely entertaining and also make US stop and think about how this huge industry works and affects our lives.

Where does the title come from?

In shopping mall design, 'the Gruen transfer' refers to the moment when consumers respond to 'scripted disorientation' cues in the environment. It is named for Austrian architect Victor Gruen (who disavowed such manipulative techniques). Recently, the Gruen transfer has been popularised by Douglas Rushkoff.

The show is hosted by comedian Wil Anderson with a panel of advertising industry experts. The two regular panelists are Russel Howcroft of George Patterson Y&R and Todd Sampson of Leo Burnett. Apparently the concept has been sold to TV production companies in the UK, Denmark, France, Italy, Portugal, South Africa, and Spain.

Here's an example of how they combine entertainment with stuff to make you think. Each week they ask two agencies to 'sell the unsellable'.



During last season's penultimate show one agency took the pitch of 'fat pride' one step too far for the ABC's lawyers and produced an ad which didn't get shown. It also didn't win the panelists over - and I agree with them. Here's the ad along with a panel discussion which was only made available online.

It's interesting that the professionals get that the in-your-face abuse of other groups represented in the ad's content, in order to say discrimination-is-discrimination, smothers the overall point. As straight non-Jewish blokes they didn't viscerally feel this but knew it was there. The poofter joke does smack me in the face and totally downgrades what the ad-maker is trying to achieve.





In the best traditions of publicly funded broadcasters failing to police their distributed content, both series can be found on YouTube.

Postscript: I spoke too soon, this has been removed for 'copyright violations'. The spot where the pitch and the discussion was supposed to be hosted - http://www.antiprejudicead.net - is down. The pitch's existence seems to have been removed from the ABC entirely. The pitch itself is still on YouTube, but the debate has been removed.

Now I know Aussie TV and it has some crapolistic shows which make the worst of UK TV look Shakespearean. But it also has a whole terrestrial channel, SBS, devoted to largely 'foreign' programming.

The only non-English speaking UK (non-cable) TV programming we see is out-of-the-park brilliant Wallander and the occasional French film on BBC4. The former is only being shown here three years after Swedish broadcast because we deigned to make an English version of it. We have a shrunken world view as a result of bad programming.

Another thing Aussie TV has is lots of US imports which our rather Little-Englander viewpoint keeps away from primetime. This means that all Aussies know one of the best comedies of all time - Seinfeld - well and - because of the BBC's antics - Brits only know of it through word-of-mouth.

Another thing many a Brit has commented on is how bad UK TV comedy has got over the past few years and in one area this has got politically serious: satire. Yes, there are plenty of Radio Four series which take the piss in a sharp, upset-the-government way, but apart from the (rather weak) Bremner, Bird and Fortune what have we got which stacks up?

By contrast Australia has The Chasers War On Everything (which comes out of a preceding rich satirical TV tradition). This show is so sharp it has landed its stars in serious legal trouble on numerous occasions.

Can you imagine any current UK comedy show doing this?

People + Power - Iran: Inside the protests

This is a really excellent account from a reporter from Al-Jazeera English in Tehran of the protests. Starting from the election results announcement she follows students and protesters and gets a unique perspective.

23' well spent to watch.

BBC making a big gay effort on 40 years since Stonewall

It makes a nice change to be praising the BBC on LGBT content but this week they are carrying some excellent programming.

This is an interview with Martin Boyce, about his memories of the night it all kicked off, 40 years ago on Sunday.



BBC Radio 2 has Stonewall: The Riots That Triggered the Gay Revolution on Tuesday, with legend Tom Robinson.

The BBC News website has an excellent feature, 'Stonewall gave me new gay role models', by David Carter, author of Stonewall: the riots that sparked the gay revolution.

Justin Wells had Armistead Maupin on his 'Americana' Radio 4 show yesterday, reflecting on 40 years of 'Gay Power'.

Today on Thursday had on Jim Fouratt, who was there in 1969.

Let's just hope it isn't another several years before we get such a feast.

A SocMed history moment

This has caused quite a stir. The White House press corps seem mightily upset that some blogger upset 'protocol' and got in a question to Obama.

Only it wasn't just some question, or just some blogger.

Huffington Post's Nico Pitney, who's been doing near 24/7 stellar work aggregating and blogging news from Iran, got a question at the press conference, delivering a query from an Iranian reader about whether Obama would ever now recognize an Ahmadinejad government

As Arianna noted, the press pack hated it. Here's the moment.



Pitney talked first about the live-blog he's been running to Rachel Maddow.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Here he speaks to C-SPAN's Washington Journal explaining the question and how he got it, and how he 'orchestrated' its delivery with the White House.



This is a historical moment. A question from Iranians, via social media, gets asked of the US President. Mark this one down ...

Our answer to Maher, Colbert and Stewart?

I just love David Mitchell. Not only is he a brilliant comedian who can do slapstick as well as satire but he's a great writer whose columns never fail to hit the spot. He's smart, witty and not shy of being political. He hosts The Unbelievable Truth on Radio Four expertly. His appearance on Question Time saw him displaying all these talents with no script writer.

I'd vote for him.

I've discovered he has a YouTube channel where he delivers some excellent monologues like this one on TV rudeness:



I've never understood the appeal of shows like Dragon's Den either. I guess I like my wit more on the Gore Vidal level than the Ballantyne.

All his skills make him, IMO, just about the only candidate to do a UK version of the Daily Show or, even better, Real Time with Bill Maher. That is, world class political satire.

Maher just had Gore Vidal on his show and, rare for Vidal, more than held his own with him. Similarly ranty Marcus Brigstock once tried the Daily Show format and failed miserably.

Postscript: Jon Stewart is god

The Indie has a piece today asking Where’s our Jon Stewart?

This is in response to the, apparently, international fallout of Stewart's ball-shattering interview with business cable channel host Jim Cramer.

The article (rightly) largely laments the demise of British TV satire. But in the wake of the Cramer interview I think some of the other comment I've read is right: we don't need another 'hard-hitting' interviewer. Stewart delivered better than Paxman or Humphrys has ever done (more wit, less arrogance) but we still have far better interviewing than the US MSM has had for years.

The article also laments that chat shows like Graham Norton's don't have the political content that someone like Letterman has, but, again, they're not filling some MSM void. Plus Norton pushes the envelope on a different sort of 'politics'.

What we do lack for sure is decent TV satire. On radio we have it in spades.

Family Guy Spoofs Christian Bale

Oh my. That was quick.

Sortof safe for work.

NSFW: Every swear word ever uttered on The Sopranos in chronological order

the sopranos, uncensored. from victor solomon on Vimeo.

27 minutes of f*****g.

Priceless. And somewhat, er, dedicated.

For the, er, 'socio-political' context of f**k, looking forward to this doco.

Notes on a Dirty Island

Bill posing with Wombles

Notes on a Dirty Island was a really good Panorama fronted by Bill Bryson about litter.

Yeah, I can't link to a persistent video and - of course - I can't embed.

[Shakes fist] C'mon BBC!

You will find it on iplayer and a google video search, but not for long. Otherwise, here's the sole YouTube clip.

In an otherwise excellent report there was one aspect very noticeable by its absence - the responsibility of business. The sole aspect which covered this was about bottles and cans and how a deposit scheme is opposed by industry because it's "not profitable". And seeing someone like Joan Ruddock parroting this industry line summed up nu labor's creepiness like nothing else.

The issue isn't just lazy, chavvy Brits. It's also the producers of products taking some - any - responsibility for what happens after they're sold. Think rubbish around fast-food outlets and you can see the area Bill chose to ignore.

This was the only thing which marred an otherwise excellent. rare raising of this usually ignored agenda.

Oh jeez! Not the sheep!

Dutch ad for free chocolate condom giveaway in equivalent of Radio Times. Very popular with Gene Robinson, apparently.

"Shut the hell up"

Anyone who thinks American news is a monolith, Keith Olbermann is an exception. On his MSNBC show he goes on this quite fantastic rant against Bush, which I commend to you:

• To Bush, "freedom is just a brand name,"
• To Bush's statement that he was "told by people" that there were WMDs in Iraq: "People? What people?... Mr. Bush, you destroyed the evidence that contradicted the resolution you jammed down the Congress's throat, the way you jammed it down the nation's throat."

Substitute Blair for Bush and - yes - this is relevant to us.

Every Simpsons couch

Best HIGNFY in years

I was in tears from beginning to end. So totally f**king hysterical it hurt. Blessed is a national treasure.

Part One

Part two

How embedding video will help the BBC

The BBC has said that it is investigating embeddable videos as part of their upgrade allowing videos to be played in-page.

The screenshot above is of 'Survivors of the Titanic' audio, a radio interview from 1936 with the most senior surviving officer Commander CH Lightoller from the huge archive. It's a really good example of how allowing embedding instead of the current 'share it' options will potentially massively boost their traffic — wouldn't it help sell this content and encourage further clicks to yet more previously 'hidden' content if you could click and play this audio right here? And as they are to show ads to overseas viewers (for which the technology is now fairly well developed) embedding will, potentially dramatically, increase their revenues.

The Titanic is a subject of huge enduring interest and the BBC's online archive is stock full of gems. I wonder what the actual number of plays where it's currently located, buried in the archive, gives it. When I went to Digg it, I saw no-one had done this before. Hardly surprising.

People do create viral BBC content already.



The top one - Amy Winehouse on Jools Holland's show has 8.5m views. Currently, Mitchell + Webb clips are viral, and that show is thus being promoted on BBC World.

Their top viral - 640 blog posts is a lot and that's how the ViralVideo Chart ranks - is the Panorama show 'Sex crimes and the Vatican' from 2006. It has been deleted in the version appearing in the chart - but has reappeared elsewhere in an embeddable version. The subject area appears heavily policed on YouTube - see the number of deletions in this list - but less so on Google Video. It's hard to understand why one arm of Google removes and another allows. But with the appearance of sites like LiveLeak, policing distribution is much harder anyway.

I'm not sure whether the BBC had any role is asking for copyright material to be removed in that instance some while back but there is so much copyright material already being distributed now that the conclusion can only be that it's policy not to bother policing it. Though some have been - a Doctor Who clip and something from BBC London about the London 2012 Olympics Logo — deleted on YouTube but there on LiveLeak, the Doctor Who clip simply reposted to YouTube. Perhaps policed (not at all effectively) by others than the BBC. And perhaps that's the point, the resources needed can only come from dedicated people like the Scientologists.

What can only hugely benefit them is deliberately encouraging viral distribution, rather than forcing people back to a website to view, or hiding the viral options alongside other, less valuable, distribution methods like email. Some of the US Networks, especially NBC, are doing exactly that and get the benefit from their own ad plays, wherever the video's playing.



What these networks do is police though. They want you using their embed, not something taped off TV. This allows not just ad play but also cross-promotion and anything else you might develop and throw down the pipe - the pipe you control. Is the BBC going to be thus changing their policy and throw resources at policing once they get embedding started?

This is early days - even for, for example, networks like NBC who are leading the pack they don't seem to be encouraging complimentary marketing like these parodies of Heroes on their official site and thus helping foster a community.

The BBC said back in March, in an aside, and reinforced this in response to my comments, that allowing embedding would "eventually" happen. The BBC has so much great content, including huge amounts of archive content of huge interest like their holdings about the Titanic, which is of wide, world-wide, interest that, especially with them adding in ad plays to monetise, they just can't lose.

And it's not just attracting overseas viewers but also through UK social networks - what a great way to get the benefit potential of BBC news content being seen by younger people for example. I think this should come right up their list of priorities from asides about 'eventually' to 'by around this date' ...

NB: Neither ITV or Channel Four have any interest in allowing embedding. More fool them.

Previous: Embedding video: why isn't it obvious to the MSM?

Did the detox happen?

Well I managed a week without posting but only one day with no computer or TV. I did read a lot (Matthew Parris, Edmund White and history of Islam and C19th homosexuality) and potter around the garden between showers. Completely turning off would require being somewhere without access to anything, I think. That wouldn't bother me but if it's there ...

The excuses:

• I really wanted to check the reaction to the Philadelphia Primary, video + blogs, just listening to the BBC radio news would have me gnashing my teeth, wanting to see what's really going on.
• Same with Zimbabwe news, which is largely on blogs although the BBC has been much better than with Kenya plus Zimbabwean blogs are much thinner on the ground.
  
• I just don't watch much TV but do watch shows online, like the Daily Show and the fantabulous Bill Maher's RealTime and catch-up on BBC iPlayer (my rare forays into Channel Four's online offering just emphasise how thin it is but missing ads is great). You can't watch yesterday's Daily Show online, so you have to catch it before it expires (or wait three months). I need my satire break and UK shows don't cut it (even Bremner, Bird + Fortune most of the time). About the only 'appointment to view' TV for me for months was Glenn Close in Damages and the close-up to Tigers show.
• I needed to check email to see if a friend was OK.
• 'Detoxing' for me includes SimCity.
  

I wasn't reading much online, though, or checking feeds and as I learnt from my break last year - you don't miss that much that's mind-numbingly vitally important.

I did see my backyard birds finally start using the water that's there for them and I love this every year, the babies starting to appear. This year they haven't nested in the planters though, thank god. Seeing plants 'come back' (and what hasn't + needs replacing, I have a habit of putting several plants together and eventually one bully takes over) is lovely too + it's been warm enough to spend time outside. Boring, I know, but that was the idea of the detox I think?

Why the posts will be less this week

Adbusters is a great Canadian group, most famous for their fab spoof ads like these ones.






They've run 'TV turn-off week' for a few years and it's transmogrified into 'Mental detox week'.



And I'm going to try it! Do the garden, read, spring clean ... forget checking the feeds for a few days. Should be interesting because I do have a routine which revolves around this machine :{

As they put it:

Simple, but not at all easy.