Hi ,

We changed to dayligh saving time in France and in the UK (maybe the US?), and I've had a long sunny day that started early with helping a friend move. I recorded a new podcast episode, published one, cycled, walked and enjoyed a sunny Paris while reading, and finally spending time to update the newsletter. Lovely day.I published new things on the Ice Cream for Everyone website this week, in case you want to check them out:A book review of The Fool: His Social & Literary History, by Enid Welsford - awesome read (cover pictured below).After many months of hiatus I am getting back into my 'main' podcast, I just published the sequel of my playing the solo tabletop roleplaying game Ironsworn. It's the third part. I give some other news in the intro, and talk about using randomised tables for creative inspiration, usable in many settings, certainly for brainstorm meetings or creative briefing sessions, for example.Playing Ironsworn solo RPG part 3: Random creative input. It's a series I started last year and had a couple of unfinished recordings, the first part is over here.That's about it for the brief weekly update. We tackled a fairly delicate question in last week's Teaching Tangents episode with James D'Souza: "Is it ok to remove (cut them out your life) toxic family members?"Our call for questions is still out here - it is a super simple one question survey, please take a minute to give us new kinds of questions! We feel we're circling around similar topics with student questions, and so trying to get different kinds of questions to discuss and answer. Thank you!Last but not least, while I have a little bit of teaching work, things are pretty slow going work wise, I recently finished a project, I have a little bit of time for personal projects as you can see above, and I'm looking for new brand & marketing strategy projects, so please keep in touch if I can help with anything, or if you hear of anything going on either in Paris or remotely wherever.Cheers,Willem

 Weekly Combo Typically a mix of playful and strategy flavours. 

Miserabilism 

(Tom Forth's blog, 10 min read)

Tom Forth apparently writes about data, research, technology and more. He is British, lived in France for many years, and still works with French clients apparently. He takes on naming and explaining what he calls the French "Performative Miserabilism" in order to skew and adapt perspectives on French statistics.He starts out with a Tweet where someone juxtaposed statistics from French and British people, and how many believe the COVID-19 vaccine to be safe. It goes on from there, and the author has a quite good take on French ways of saying one thing out loud, and then behaving in a very different way. Which I'd argue is also just plain human, and not just French - while stereotypical and generalising, it is kind of true there is this miserable way of looking at things for the French (while also really enjoying life and everything at the same time, which is also fascinating). I enjoyed reading and his perspective on the data is worthwhile.

(The Verge, 9 min read - or this 20 min Youtube video review by JapanPro is fun too)

This whole theme park section is entirely dedicated to Nintendo - mostly Super Mario themed, with two rides, many interactive games to be played, and generally what seems to be very cheerful and enthusiastic vibe all round. It doesn't seem to be particularly large, but it looks gorgeous. I'd love to visit some day (though I'm unlikely to make a huge priority, let alone the fact I don't know when I'd actually be able to travel that far). Still, fun news to contemplate a brand new Nintendo inspired theme park!