Surveillance Software, Wales, Zoom Nonsense, Letters

This week we heard that there has been a surge in demand for the "surveillance software" that allows employers to check that staff are working from home, rather than shirking from home, or, perhaps, wasting endless hours staring into space while caught up in existential terrors. (When I die will I really be dead? I know I will be, but how can this be so?)

Turning Point
Alexander Johnston (1815-1891)
Photo Credit: Croydon Art Collection [CC BY-NC]

... one of the things that the software tracks is the websites you are visiting and, in some instances, it will even tell your employer which of these sites are "productive" and which are "unproductive". So, essentially, your boss will have access to your search history, which, I know, is everyone's worst nightmare.

In fact, when I put it to slave niece - see past references - that this is now how it works, she said: "My God, that's tantamount to looking directly into your soul!" And there is some truth in that. It's all there. The pain, the longing, the unfilled desires, the frustrations of everyday life.

I once borrowed a laptop from someone and it fell open at their search history - sometimes laptops just fall open like that, there is absolutely nothing you can do about it - and learnt more about him in 20 seconds than I had in 20 years...

(Deborah Ross, The Times, 2020)

George Orwell was spot on. Big brother is watching you.

Wales

Rugby Player
Sylvain Kinsberger (1855-1935)
Photo Credit:World Rugby Museum [CC BY-NC]

The former England rugby player James Haskell misses the warm reception he used to get before matches in Wales, especially crawling through a searing sea of fans in Cardiff who were throwing projectiles at the England bus. He told the Henley Literary Festival that when he made his debut there, aged 21, he saw a granny waving at him and he reciprocated, at which she flipped him a less hospitable gesture. There's just not the passion in southwest London, he complained. "The worst you'll get at Twickenham is someone might spill port on your trousers."

(The Diary, The Times, 2020)

Zoom Nonsense

Sheep
Richard Ansdell (1815-1885) (follower of)
Photo Credit: Grundy Art Gallery [CC BY-NC-SA]

... Charity shops say customers are increasingly concerned about the colour of a novel's cover rather than its contents, in the quest for a perfectly curated shelf.

The trend is partly fuelled by the number of people working from home. Many people, realising that their bookshelves will come under intense scrutiny on video calls, are keen to impress their colleagues with a tastefully co-ordinated background. The hashtag #rainbowshelfie is becoming increasingly popular on Instagram.

Charity bookshops say some customers are leaving with armfuls of books in every shade with the intention of arranging them by the colour of their spines.

... A bizarre social media trend for displaying novels back to front has also led to requests for books with weathered pages and of uniform height, to achieve a fashionable but well-read impression.

... The rainbow trend rose to prominence earlier this year when the TV star Ben Fogle was mocked for his bookshelves, which had been arranged by colour. The Duchess of Sussex was also revealed to be an early adopter of the trend when she posted a photograph on Instagram of her shelves while still working as an actress in Canada.

(Louise Eccles, The Sunday Times, 2020)

Follow the flock! What truly bizarre, sheep-like behaviour. 

*If you thought the fashion for home bookshelves organised by colour was silly then you will have been appalled as I was to read in The Sunday Times that people have now started actually buying books based on the colour of their spine.

"Books with block colours on their spines seem to be really 'in' at the moment," said the manager of the Oxfam bookshop in Tonbridge, Kent.

"The orange Penguins are very popular and people will come in for them specifically because it matches the living room."

It's all to do with Zoom meetings and people wanting books behind them to make themselves look clever. But there's the rub - as the Danish kid in the brown book put it - because owning books doesn't make you look clever any more, it makes you look stupid.

All truly literate people read on a Kindle or similar digital device. Read that way, books are much cheaper or free, which is important to people like us, who read three or four hundred of them a year. And when you read that many, how could you possibly store them on your walls. Halfway through a moderately literate life you'd have no room to eat or sleep.

Which is why I've given all mine away. Every single one. Left them on the garden wall on sunny days to be hauled off by young people who needed a lot of green ones for the bathroom or something paisley for the downstairs loo.

... Scanning the review pages on a Sunday morning he can buy every book that takes his fancy with a finger poke, without having to remember to go to a bookshop later, to be jostled by a load of bone-thick interior decorators looking for the beige section.

And don't give me "books are beautiful", because that is only ever said by people who have never opened one. Same goes for the morons who profess to enjoy the smell of a book, or the feel of the paper, or its heft in their hand...

(Giles Coren, The Times, 2020)

*Plastic surgeons claim that more people are coming to them for cosmetic procedures because wearing masks and appearing on Zoom has put more focus on their eyes and ears.  Requests for blepharoplasty to restore shape to the eyelids, and otoplasty to pin back protruding ears has soared, the industry says.

Marc Pacifico, vice-president of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, said that demand for Botox had also increased.

"We have certainly seen an increase in interest at my practice for upper facial procedures such as upper eyelid lifts and frequently get unsolicited comments from patients saying that 'My eyes are on show all the time now' because of facemasks," he said.

Ullas Raghavan, a surgeon at Pall Mall Cosmetics, in Manchester said that "our eyes are often the only element of our face on display, and sadly our eyes tend to age more rapidly than the rest of our features ... leaving us with eye bags or hooded eyes that can make us look older than our years once we don our PPE."

(Kat Lay, The Times, 2020)

Is it any wonder that there is such an increase in anxiety when people feel the need for these cosmetic procedures? (See Zoom Face, Nov 6)

Letters

Sir, Cad and bounder are often used interchangeably. But there is a difference. A bounder is a man who goes to his best friend's house and discovering that his friend is out seduces his wife. A cad does exactly the same but visits only when he knows that his friend is out.

(Andrew Curl, Standford, Hants, The Times, 2020)

Sir, Andrew Curl provides an example of the difference between a cad and a bounder. I prefer the definition attributed to Harold Macmillan.

"In war a bounder is a chap who goes to the Front, wins the VC, then seduces his colonel's wife. But a cad seduces his colonel's wife and never goes near the Front."