Every Wednesday I share five things I've liked and think you might like too. Here are this week’s Five Things…

1. Pithy wisdom for a new year. Start small, start now.

2. According to BPI, 68.1 billion songs were streamed in the UK during 2017. That's an increase of 51.5% on 2016 and 1740% (😮) on 2012!

3. From following much of the media coverage last year, you might have incorrectly assumed only bad things happened in 2017. Quite a few good things happened too: 13 Things That Happened In 2017 That Will Actually Cheer You Up, Ten Silver Linings in 2017.

4. Who'd have thought watching bubbles freeze would be so satisfying.

5. Spotify has me starting 2018 in style with its Classical Meets Electronica playlist: "Classical music reworked by contemporary musicians, who made clever deconstructive use of the material to create soothing and graceful electronic/ambient works." SOLD!

That's all for this week. If you enjoyed it, subscribe and you'll get the next one delivered to your inbox.

ps. Happy New Year! Have a fantastic 2018 😎

Every Wednesday I share five things I've liked and think you might like too. Here are this week’s Five Things…

1. An interesting article on the increasing use of found sounds and field recordings in music. Inspired by this, I think I'm going to record a lot more of the sounds I hear out in the world around me in future! A project for 2018 perhaps?

2. Another great observation from Derek Sivers: Obvious to you. Amazing to others.

3. Word of the week, Apophenia: "... the tendency to attribute meaning to perceived connections or patterns between seemingly unrelated things."

4. Your estimated lifespan as a grid. I think this pretty cool, but I could see how you might find it a little depressing!

5. This week's music recommendation is Particles by Ólafur Arnalds (featuring Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir). I can't wait to see Ólafur play the Royal Albert Hall in May next year.

That's all for this week. If you enjoyed it, subscribe and you'll get the next one delivered to your inbox.

ps. As it's Christmas, I'm going to take the next week off — what a treat! This means there'll be no Five Things next Wednesday. But fear not, Five Things will return the following week!

Every Wednesday I share five things I've liked and think you might like too. Here are this week’s Five Things…

1. Is it better to be a critical thinker or to be intelligent? Good question!

2. In the past week there's been a lot of chatter about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. If you're curious to learn more, here's a great crash course in both from Rob Reid and Fred Ehrsam on the After On podcast.

3. A new optical illusion has been discovered and it's a good 'un...

4. A great twitter thread on the concept of intellectual compounding.

5. According to Spotify, in 2017: I listened to 34,355 minutes of music, my most listened to genre was Compositional Ambient, my top artist was Ben Lukas Boysen and top song was Silhouette by Julia Holter.

That's all for this week. If you enjoyed it, subscribe and you'll get the next one delivered to your inbox.

Every Wednesday I share five things I've liked and think you might like too. Here are this week’s Five Things…

1. Listening to a lecture or in a meeting? Put that laptop away!

2. Food for thought from Marcus Aurelius: "People look for retreats for themselves, in the country, by the coast, or in the hills. There is nowhere that a person can find a more peaceful and trouble-free retreat than in his own mind …. So constantly give yourself this retreat, and renew yourself."

3. This is a good list: 52 things Tom Whitwell learned in 2017. Number 48 is pretty inspiring "In 1990, more than a third of people on Earth lived on less than $1.90 a day, adjusted for local prices. By 2013, barely 10 percent of people did." 

4. I thought you'd find this useful: So You Just Bought a $450 Million Leonardo da Vinci Painting. Now What?

5. I'm really enjoying Four Tet's latest album New Energy.

That's all for this week. If you enjoyed it, subscribe and you'll get the next one delivered to your inbox.

Every Wednesday I share five things I've liked and think you might like too. Here are this week’s Five Things…

1. An interesting piece on why we perceive some works of art or literature to be greater than others. Being exposed to something more frequently influences how good we think it is (the mere-exposure effect). However, it's not the only factor. Being repeatedly exposed to something we think lacks quality can lead to us liking it less. — "Great art and mediocrity can get confused, even by experts. But that’s why we need to see, and read, as much as we can. The more we’re exposed to the good and the bad, the better we are at telling the difference."

2. I like the sound of this: Kiss the Good Times Goodbye (an auto industry veteran on the future of cars).

3. Who'd have guessed the innovation of reading silently to yourself could have such a big impact on society: "'In the still largely oral world of the ninth century, if one’s intellectual speculations were heretical, they were subject to peer correction and control at every moment, from their formulation and publication to their aural reception by the reader.' As Saenger writes, asocial reading helped facilitate intellectual rigor, introspection, criticism of the government and religion, even irony and cynicism that would have been awkward to read aloud."

4. This video of a Japanese game show (apparently called Slippery Stairs) has been doing the rounds on Twitter this past week. What an emotional rollercoaster!

5. Don't you just love it when you completely forget about a song that you really like, and then you rediscover it? Here's Snarky Puppy performing Shofukan.

That's all for this week. If you enjoyed it, subscribe and you'll get the next one delivered to your inbox.

ps. There'll be no Five Things next week as I'll be on holiday. But fear not, Five Things will return the following week!