What I see in different shades of gray, from behind my reading glasses
Leo Babuta offers a few:
How do you start [to declutter your life] when you’re facing a mountain of clutter, and another mountain of commitments, and piles of files and mail and email and other digital information? The answer became clear, as I got started: start simply. Keep it simple as you go. Simple, each step of the way.
Ordering the events of a life over a timeline is how social media & the CV do this. Cathy Haines, writing in the School of Life, wonders
So what if we tried an experiment and mapped our life as we really experience it to be: a map without measurements? One that gives space to events according to their significance rather than their length in clock-time?
I grew up to the adage that when America sneezes, the world catches a cold. What happens in America does have an impact on the rest of the globe’s denizens. Which is why I read this article with interest. Benjamin Wallace-Wells deciphers economist Dr. Robert Gordon’s two predictions for the American economy:
Perhaps it isn’t that our success is a product of the way we structured our society. The shape of our society may be far more conditional, a consequence of our success. Embedded in Gordon’s data is an inquiry into entitlement: How much do we owe, culturally and politically, to this singular experience of economic growth, and what will happen if it goes away?
Jaron Lanier, author of “Who owns the future?”, says we’re being enslaved by free information. He explains in this interview.
Evgeny Morozov takes the opposite view – he thinks there are many simpler ways to protect the middle classes. Pushing technology companies to provide better working conditions — it was only last year that Amazon agreed to install air conditioning in its warehouses — and closing numerous tax loopholes would be a good start. Lanier’s solution, alas, is an odd and unfortunate distraction.
Researcher Nicola Buckland discovers evidence that smelling oranges can do the trick:
She asked women to smell fresh oranges and chocolate. Later, she told them to help themselves to the aromatic fruit and chocolate treats. It turns out that women in the study who were trying to diet ate about 60 percent less chocolate after smelling the oranges (compared with how much they ate after smelling the chocolate).
‘What is life, but a form of motion and a journey through a foreign world?’ – wrote George Santayana in 1964. Claire Evans is a musician, & spends a lot of time on the road, travelling. She contemplates the meaning of travel:
Travel is inherently narcissistic. Even if we’re looking to be knocked off our axis, we’re still in the business of self-improvement. People want to go to faraway places and return changed. A lot rides on this expectation. We hunt for perspective, for miraculous connections, but when these moments happen, we don’t always recognise them — or we look in the wrong places.
Watch Nightvision, a kickstarter project by Luke Shepard:
Over the course of three months I journeyed with a friend through 36 cities in 21 countries with the ambition of capturing some of the greatest European structures in a new and unique way. Comprised of thousands of carefully taken photographs, strung together and stabilized in post-production, Nightvision aims to inspire appreciation for these man-made landmarks
A nicely done music video, inspired by Rip Van Winkle.
Dave Winer articulates. Read it.
We can’t change any of these things. We will have an economic collapse. The climate will disrupt our lives in unimaginable ways. And hackers will rule us. All this will happen.
Charlie Stross had a recent blog entry about this too.
George Carlin referred to this a long time ago. Will anyone listen?
Slapping the rifle against the chest, in the course of performing ceremonial duties, caused the enlargement of the left breast in the men, as this Guardian article exposes. The comments thread is hilarious too..