HYPERTEXT WONDERLAND

I'll start by saying that  ...Burn, Piano Island, Burn   would make for the strangest television show. I'm thinking it'd set on a remote tropical island, very distant from modern society and possibly orientated around a tribal or maybe pagan culture, a bit like The Wicker Man . Here's my pitch. In the not too distant future, a plane carrying hundreds of sexy passengers crashes into picturesque mountainside. Dozens die but many survive. They're immediately greeted by the local denizens who come to their rescue not with smiles and bandages but with pointy sticks and terror. You see, these nomads think these survivors are demons sent from another world. The survivors do their best to run - a few can't because they have broken legs - and eventually set up camp somewhere on the other side of the island. The rest of the first season is dedicated to them learning how to fend for themselves without iPhones or Amazon Prime and also trying not to die by hands the ...

I’m looking for a new job at the moment which has got me wondering if covering letters are outdated. Judging from the positions I’ve applied for so far, I’d say a CV plus cover letter is very much the norm for what employers ask for. However the way we communicate online these days seems fundamentally ill-suited to these types of long form messages. It makes applying using a cover letter a strange and often awkward thing to do. To explain, think about how we communicate online with other people. It’s not through big passages of text, dropped into conversation with the subtly of a second-year philosophy student. No, it’s smaller. We now communicate in short forms sent in quick passages. Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, Telegram, Instagram. You name it. All of these are dominated by short messages delivered quickly, sometimes accompanied by emojis. This is what makes writing a cover letter feel verbose. I wonder if the person reading my cover letters have the patience to fi...