Our Fantasy Dinner Party Guest List just grew

Canapes perennially at the ready for Dave (Trott), Rory (Sutherland) and Bob (Hoffman). Extra place setting now for Russell (Davies). He wrote this defence of powerpoint.

Rare, no?

And now for a short quiz:

  1. Your presentations always get remarked upon for their wit, style and creativeness.Yes – liar 😉
    No – have a read of this: how to do great presentations.

From an embittered, pretentious creative

Why creative people have lost their way.

Creativity in our [ad] industry is not dying because creative people are becoming less creative. It’s because they’re increasingly being asked to behave like business people and to put business interests ahead of creative work.

All knowing, all seeing, all confused

Now for AI.

Of course you know everything about it.

So do I.

Apart from perhaps everything I thought I knew…

“Stop pretending you really know what AI is, and read this instead”

Let’s consider for a second what we talk about when we talk about AI. Because I’m not sure many of us really know—or, at the very least, we’re not talking/arguing/worrying about the same things.

The Toilet Paper Principle

Staying on the tech theme, Tim Hartford writes about what we get wrong about technology – with a lovely Blade Runner allegory at the beginning.

Toilet paper seems a long way from the printing revolution. And it is easily overlooked — as we occasionally discover in moments of inconvenience. But many world-changing inventions hide in plain sight in much the same way — too cheap to remark on, even as they quietly reorder everything. We might call this the “toilet-paper principle”.

One for Obsessive Compulsive data nerds

How close can 2 houses be that have identical house numbers and street names? (And why are they all located in the north west of England?) Here’s a great tale about someone who obsessively sought out an answer. Funny.

The country that doesn’t exist

To finish, some lovely photos from Transnistria. You know the place. Famous for… oh you know.




From the archives

If you like The100, maybe even found it vaguely enjoyable (steady now),
you can have a ganders at our previous issues. Fill your boots.

06 February, 2026

The100: Data saturation, picture power and unusually large hippocampuses

What do you think? Neil Perkin had some smart thoughts on the role of AI in workplace learning. Now…

23 January, 2026

The100: Intentional inefficiencies, the boldness trap and business hotel rooms

The era of Maximiniflation has begun In his latest serving of sense, Mark Ritson has been writing…

09 January, 2026

The100: Uncertainty, technical debt and The Upside Down

The year of the horse Happy New Year and all that jazz. Welcome to another year of poking bears and…