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I was lucky enough to spend this past weekend camping and hiking with friends at Lake Catani, up in the Victorian High Country. Mount Buffalo National Park is a stunningly beautiful part of Australia’s alpine region. Numerous hikes take you through seemingly untouched conservation areas.
Shortly before this trip, I read a piece titled Why Understanding Limits Is the Key to Humanity’s Future which was a great prompt for contemplating our impact on the natural world while there.
”It’s understandable that many people think we humans are just getting started, and that in a few more centuries we’ll be able to know everything, control everything, and move at infinite speed. This Star Trek mentality consists of a widely held conviction that it is our duty and destiny as humans to take over not just the entire Earth, but increasing swathes of cosmic habitat – even if we have to subdue some unruly Klingons along the way. Meanwhile, here on planet Earth problems are brewing. …
However … at least some of us can adopt an attitude fundamentally different from the dominant Star Trek mindset – an attitude geared to help us find an equitable way through the Great Unraveling that’s already begun, while laying the conceptual and cultural foundation for a truly sustainable society. The key will be a new(ish) attitude toward limits – a willingness to view them not as restrictions always to be fought against, but as boundaries that enable systems to work.”
As I was dipping my feet into the fresh, clear water of the lake, thoughts of limits and boundaries crossed my mind. Regardless of its beauty, the lake is a human artefact, built as a fresh water reservoir for a nearby chalet. The now defunct building was used as a resort for most of the 20th century. Both the lake and the chalet represent humanity’s expansion into the natural world: claiming the mountain for itself, opening it up for leisure and business.
A nearby car park full of SUVs bring visitors like me to this place ‘to enjoy nature’. And this sharp contrast perfectly describes the dissonance I felt – the tension between feelings of awe and wonder induced by the place’s natural magnificence and the realisation that my being there, to some extent, epitomises our species’ imposition on it.
– Kai
(I received some heartfelt emails from Turkish DD readers about the earthquake disaster unfolding there and in nearby Syria. Join me in donating what you can. There are plenty of helpful posts with charity suggestions, or simply give to your nearest Red Cross.)
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Apps & Sites
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If you could take the best of Facebook Groups and merge it with Slack, you may get something like Frond: a lovely-looking platform for threaded conversations with just enough features to encourage a healthy community. Now it just needs mobile apps to make it easier to use...
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I make generous use of the Reminders app that comes with the Mac/iPhone, but entering new reminders, especially time-sensitive ones, can be fiddly. This little app makes fast entry easy: open it and type in your reminder, tap on a date/time, then onto the next one...
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With this tiny macOS app you can create different settings for your Mac’s dock depending on what screen you’re working on.
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This is the latest of many mini-projects by Neal Agarwal: randomly explore the weird and wonderful things hidden in the depths of Google Street View.
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Worthy Five: Graciela a.k.a Okanaga
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A question worth asking:
‘How does the way we look at the future impact our actions today?’ Our visions of the future are images of the future, this reflection is important because if you imagine a positive future, you are likely to perceive signals in the present that are pulling you/us towards that future. You are therefore more likely to create it.
A Twitter account worth following:
Protopiafutures – on Instagram and Twitter – is diverse, radical, and visually gorgeous. It develops futures possibilities in a world where gender, race and other ‘labels’ are no longer barriers to flourishing but rather seen as a unique essence.
A book worth reading:
Fresh Banana Leaves by Jessica Hernandez is beautiful and real. It’s a harsh read for the ‘western world’ to grasp, but a much-needed one, as it makes indigenous peoples – who have been pretty much erased from mainstream narratives – visible again.
A podcast worth listening to:
The episodes of the Moneyless Society podcast are long but powerful. They describe a future without money, why it’s urgently needed, and how we can get there. I like how radical it is, and if you are not part of the wealthiest 1%, you would like this future, too.
A quote worth repeating:
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” by Albert Einstein. I like this quote because it pushes me to constantly change and be better.
(Did you know? Friends of DD can respond to and engage with guest contributors like Graciela a.k.a Okanaga in one click.)
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Books & Accessories
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An ecological manifesto for a new era
With an impressive 4.75 stars on Goodreads, this book by Australian environmentalist and community activist Tim Hollo promises fresh, optimistic ideas to individually and collectively address the many crises we’re facing. “Whether you’re a concerned community member, or someone who is already active in social or environmental campaigning, this book will inspire and inform you, and get you fired up to co-create a common, more equitable future. A living democracy. Hollo presents lessons for communities, organisations, political parties, and individuals, and a recipe for combining all these ingredients into transformative collective action.” (Looks like the printed version is currently only available in AU/NZ.)
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The demise of marginal languages
Colonialism and globalisation have caused the world’s linguistic diversity to decline, with more languages going extinct every year. This book digs into how minority languages came about, how they can persevere and what happens if they don’t. “In Speak Not, James Griffiths reports from the frontlines of the battle to preserve minority languages, from his native Wales, to Hawai’i, Tibet, southern China and Hong Kong. He explores the revival of the Welsh language as a blueprint for how to ensure new generations are not robbed of their linguistic heritage, outlines how loss of indigenous languages is the direct result government policies both past and present, and examines how technology is both hindering and aiding the fight to prevent linguistic extinction.”
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Overheard on Twitter
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Client: tell me, what was the inspiration behind this design?
Me: the deadline
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Food for Thought
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A really interesting peek inside the corporatisation of law degrees at Harvard Law School. The amount of corporate sponsoring of everything – from food and booze to t-shirts and lecture rooms – by big law firms is quite astounding. “Research shows that over 50% of law students who come into law school saying they want to work in public interest leave with jobs in big law. Robert Granfield found that, at Harvard, 70% of incoming law students expressed public interest aspirations but only 2% of 3L law students planned to leave with public interest jobs. The space between the two is pumped with money from big law firms in the form of cocktails, free pizza, and embossed water bottles.”
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Humanity’s view of ‘limitlessness’ – in growth, in resources, in innovation – could be one of the flaws that will eventually lead to its own demise. This piece examines why we are struggling to think in limits and what perspective shifts could enable us to embrace natural boundaries. “Indigenous wisdom, which should be our guide, persists in traditional societies fighting for cultural survival. Everywhere else, the dominant industrial worldview holds that talk of limits is dreary, scary, unimaginative, and uninspiring. Where limits are undeniable, as with carbon emissions and climate change, we try to finesse them with clever math (carbon credits, anyone?) and sophisticated technology.”
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I’m increasingly convinced that Romanticism has made us overly reliant of and emotionally overinvested in our romantic relationships – to the detriment of all other relationships in our life. This (quite selective/biased) piece lists a bunch of recent research showing that friendships are critically essential to health and happiness. “A six-year study of 736 middle-aged Swedish men found having a life partner didn’t affect the risk of heart attack or fatal coronary heart disease – but having friends did. A 10-year Australian study found that older people with a lot of friends were 22 percent less likely to die during the study period than those with few friends. Notably, having a social network of children and relatives did not affect survival rates.”
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Aesthetically Pleasing
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Here’s a lovely coffee table book for your inner computer geek: Open Circuits is “a photographic exploration of the beautiful design inside everyday electronics. Its stunning cross-section photography unlocks a hidden world full of elegance, subtle complexity, and wonder.” Friends of DD enjoy a 25% discount.
Become a Friend to access specials like this.
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Sydney-based artist Tom Butterworth carves sandstone into beautiful everyday objects, such as vases. “Each piece is handmade using only upcycled Australian sandstone.”
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Antarctica is a modern Swiss variable sans serif typeface that conveys simplicity, minimalism and purity.
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Notable Numbers
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The US life expectancy for the year 2022 was 76.4, a decrease of more than seven months from the previous year, making it the shortest life expectancy in nearly two decades.
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According to the US National Safety Council’s analysis of census data, the odds of dying in a plane are about 1 in 205,552, compared with 1 in 102 in a car.
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After a report claimed stock manipulation and fraud was taking place, India’s Adani Group saw $108bn wiped off their market value. Billionaire founder and chair Gautam Adani himself has lost $48bn of his personal wealth.
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The Week in a GIF
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Reply or tweet at DD with your favourite GIF and it might get featured here in a future issue.
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