Beams lives in your macOS menu bar and shows you upcoming meetings, which you can join in one click. It also allows you to reserve focus time in between meetings by automatically updating your Google Calendar and Slack status. (Seems to be in beta still.)

A simple app for distraction-free writing and the ability to publish your text on Twitter, Medium, LinkedIn or your own dedicated blog in a few clicks. Friends of DD enjoy a 15% discount on the annual Pro plan. Become a Friend to access specials like this.

Have you ever been looking for a quiet restaurant or cafe to catch up with friends without having to shout across the table? Soundprint is an app and directory allowing users to record and share venues that are quiet.

A wonderful little project that explores the many dots (i.e. galaxies) in the observable universe. “This map shows a slice of our Universe. It was created from astronomical data taken night after night over a period of 15 years using a telescope in New Mexico, USA. We are located at the bottom. At the top is the actual edge of the observable Universe. In between, we see about 200,000 galaxies.”

The Myth of Normal →

‘Health care’ in a toxic culture

After sharing my thoughts on a podcast about the dysfunctional aspects of our health care system, a reader recommended this compelling book. An investigation into how little we recognise systemic issues as contributors to general ill health. “Over four decades of clinical experience, Maté has come to recognize the prevailing understanding of ‘normal’ as false, neglecting the roles that trauma and stress, and the pressures of modern-day living, exert on our bodies and our minds at the expense of good health.”

Shift Happens →

The history of keyboards

It quickly became one of Kickstarter’s most successful publishing projects, and for a good reason: Marcin Wichary has long been fascinated by the keyboard, doing extensive research and writing for several years, which he now publishes in a two-volume, 1200+ pages book project. “The book contains over 1,300 photos, including both historical photographs of keyboards in use, as well as modern, beautiful photos of all kinds of keyboards. I carefully considered the inclusion and appearance of every picture, and more than 1/3 photos appearing in ‘Shift Happens’ were taken exclusively for this book by me and others.”

Until now, I happily ignored pretty much every piece of commentary on ChatGTP I’ve come across. This is my first piece of thoughtful analysis and what a wonderful, elegant analogy it provides! If, like me, you have avoided the craze about AI-powered writing because it feels so arduously trendy, make an exception for this one. “Some might say that the output of large-language models doesn’t look all that different from a human writer’s first draft, but, again, I think this is a superficial resemblance. Your first draft isn’t an unoriginal idea expressed clearly; it’s an original idea expressed poorly, and it is accompanied by your amorphous dissatisfaction, your awareness of the distance between what it says and what you want it to say. That’s what directs you during rewriting, and that’s one of the things lacking when you start with text generated by an A.I.”

Much has been said and written about how our attention – in large parts due to technology – is stretched to its limits these days. Still, this interview with Johann Hari, the author of Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention is insightful, especially from a collective (climate) action perspective. “Dr. Charles Czeisler, who’s the leading expert on sleep in the world, said to me, ‘If we did go back to sleeping as much as we need to, as much as we did a century ago, then that would cause a huge recession as people would consume an hour less every day.’ In other words: If our physical needs were met, it would cause an economic crisis.”

As covered in DD before, the car industry loves the popular support of its greenwashing campaigns, i.e. turning every combustion engine car into an EV. However, there are more and more warning signs that we’re heading straight towards another environmental calamity, unless we acknowledge that the future of cars must be fewer and smaller cars. “Most of the benefits come from changes that few mineral demand forecasters consider: reducing the number of miles people drive and the number of cars driven overall. This is tricky because it requires something people typically don’t love – change. To become less car-dependent, people would have to change their habits for getting around, shift their preferences for the kinds of cars they drive, and question how many trips they take and why. At the core of the project is the idea that, contrary to what some carmakers would like you to believe, simply replacing one kind of car with another won’t save the world from its climate change mess. Consumerism got us here; it can’t get us out.”