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I’m back from an extended weekend of camping – this time in one of Australia’s most beautiful locations, Wilsons Promontory National Park. It always feels jarring and slightly overwhelming, this re-tethering to the online world and the collective consciousness of our time. I managed to read mostly fiction while away, except two articles that I bookmarked for this trip and that accompanied my thoughts during hiking.
The first is by conservative columnist David Brooks. In How to Stay Sane in Brutalizing Times (free archived view here), he proposes ‘scepticism of the head and audacity of the heart’ as a way to counteract our culture of embitterment and suspicion:
“Most people – maybe more than you think – are peace- and love-seeking creatures who are sometimes caught in bad situations. The most practical thing you can do, even in hard times, is to lead with curiosity, lead with respect, work hard to understand the people you might be taught to detest.
“That means seeing people with generous eyes, offering trust to others before they trust you. That means adopting a certain posture toward the world. If you look at others with the eyes of fear and judgment, you will find flaws and menace; but if you look out with a respectful attitude, you’ll often find imperfect people enmeshed in uncertainty, doing the best they can.
“Will casting this kind of attention change the people you are encountering? Maybe; maybe not. But this is about who you are becoming in corrosive times. Are you becoming more humane or less? Are you a person who obsesses over how unfairly you are treated, or are you a person who is primarily concerned by how you see and treat others? ‘Virtue is the attempt to pierce the veil of selfish consciousness and join the world as it really is’, Iris Murdoch wrote.”
The second piece, Ambiguous, Unusual Couplings by Jeanine M. Canty, describes what we have to gain by being able to be in close, respectful relationships with people who differ vastly from ourselves. She calls this ‘unusual coupling’.
“The fierce individuality encouraged within our Western, and particularly US, identity has turned us away from community orientation, from empathy and service to the whole, toward a series of self-oriented, transactional relationships. Paired with the convenience of tailored social media, news, and other forms of information, we can live in a reality that mirrors the opinions and people we want around us and easily weed out those we do not. People, communities, and genuine issues become disposable.
“[Unusual coupling] is about being able to hold the ambiguity of differing viewpoints but still coming together. In healthy relationships, we experience periods of challenge, dislike, boredom, apathy, and conflict, yet keep choosing to come back to the work of connection. In our current culture, it’s all too easy to end a relationship when things become difficult. We can find new people to spend time with that do not yet know our faults or disagree with our opinions. …
“Research has shown that in order to expand our worldviews, we need to have experiences that disrupt them – disorienting dilemmas. A disorienting dilemma occurs when we have an experience that does not currently fit into our worldview and provides the opportunity to experience cognitive dissonance and, if mindful, to work with the dilemma and expand our perspectives.
“As we enter into unusual couplings and develop the skills to work with and expand our worldviews, we may begin to notice that the truths that we hold so dearly are not so cut and dry. There are reasons why we live inside constructed worldviews and there are reasons why other people do as well.”
– Kai
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Alice is foresight for our ever-changing world. For over 30 years, we’ve been probing ‘out-there’ ideas at the intersection of art, science, technology, culture. Alice believes there is room for theory, the fantastical and even the weird. Even empirical scientific explorations can surprise us (thank you Galileo). Wander with us, become an Alice in Futureland subscriber! (It’s free.)
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Apps & Sites
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Movie & TV show recommendations
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You start with creating a ‘taste profile’ by rating certain movies and TV shows, then Taste.io will recommend – and keep learning about – things you want to watch. I like that the app takes into account which streaming service(s) you already subcribe to.
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Password & identity manager
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Cloaked is an advanced password manager with unlimited built-in virtual identities. Whenever you’re asked to enter your personal details – such as email address, phone number or payment info – Cloaked can generate unique virtual IDs, so your ‘real’ data is owned and controlled by you and you alone. (Some features seem to work in the US only at the moment.) Friends of DD enjoy a 25–40% discount.
Become a Friend to access specials like this.
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Customisable iPhone browser
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Quiche is perhaps the most customisable browser app for iPhone. A labour of love project by a French developer, Quiche lets you choose which buttons appear in your toolbar and what page information is shown in the address bar. You can even edit the long-press context menu. Have a lot of tabs open? Sort tabs by read time, group them by domain, and display them in list or grid views.
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Visualising bird migration
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“The Bird Migration Explorer is your guide to the heroic annual journeys made by over 450 bird species in North America, and the challenges they face along the way.” A wonderful visualisation project! Click on the map to start exploring each species migration paths and then click on the tooltip of each bird species to learn more and see an animation.
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Favourite Films: Matthew Buchanan
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Five recommendations for films from Oceania by Letterboxd co-founder Matthew Buchanan
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Directed by Christopher Pryor
A beautiful, at times unflattering, portrait of rural and sporting life in New Zealand’s Bay Of Plenty, photographed in stunning black and white. Despite its filmmakers’ outsider status in the community, they unearth the film’s heart in Kelvin, a curly-haired solo father of two, who is as at home in the milking shed or the kitchen as he is coaching the town’s juniors. Hopeful and real.
Directed by Dustin Feneley
Set in New Zealand’s deep south, Dustin Feneley’s feature debut is a tender exploration of both interior and exterior remoteness, the former in the shape of a relationship between two damaged ‘strays’ who don’t speak much, and the latter captured through Ari Wegner’s (The Power of the Dog, Zola) distant, patient lens.
Directed by Pete Gleeson
Two Finnish backpackers take a job tending bar at a rundown Outback hotel and things don’t go well at all. This documentary is credited as the inspiration for Kitty Green’s new film The Royal Hotel, which I also wholeheartedly recommend, with the caveat that the real story, as you might imagine, is all the more horrifying.
Directed by Robert Sarkies
A chilling, artful and sensitive recreation of one of New Zealand’s most notorious acts of violence. As is probably evident by now, I’m fascinated by depictions of historical events and the degree to which a reconstructed reality must be balanced with artifice, character moments and narrative drive. Sarkies delivers here what I understand from written accounts to be an achingly accurate portrayal of an unknowable evil.
Directed by Shirley Barrett
When swarthy Barry White fan Ken Sherry arrives in the sleepy town of Sunray to run the local radio station, he creates quite a stir, particularly with sisters Dimity and Vicki-Ann. A pitch-black love triangle peppered with wonderfully drawn background characters and, let’s be honest, some downright creepy interplay between the leads.
(Did you know? Friends of DD can respond to and engage with guest contributors like Matthew Buchanan in one click.)
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Books & Accessories
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The essential systems powering everything
The wonderful Deb Chachra with a brand new book – and what a great topic! We all rely on the utility systems hidden in plain sight (transformers, sewers, cables, pipes etc.) but rarely talk about or appreciate their role in enabling the many comforts of modern life. “Infrastructure is a marvel, meeting our basic needs and enabling lives of astounding ease and productivity that would have been unimaginable just a century ago. It is the physical manifestation of our social contract – of our ability to work collectively for the public good – and it consists of the most complex and vast technological systems ever created by humans.”
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The hidden ways tech shapes our identity
In her new book, British-Bangladeshi author and researcher Zara Rahman explores how data about who we are is used to shape the paths available to us in life. “As we go about our day-to-day lives, digital information about who we are is gathered from all angles via biometric scans, passport applications, and, of course, social media. This data can never fully capture our complex, fluid identities over decades of our lives. Yet, this data populates numerous databases we may not even be aware of that can make life-or-death decisions such as who is allowed access to welfare benefits or who is granted food parcels as they pass war-torn borders.” Physical/printed copy available here.
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Overheard on Twitter
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Hey sorry I missed your text, I am processing a non-stop 24/7 onslaught of information with a brain designed to eat berries in a cave.
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Food for Thought
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When many of us are deeply divided and living in a society that is collectively narcissistic, how do we come together to solve the big issues of our time? Jeanine M. Canty believes the answer lies in what she calls ‘ambiguous, unusual couplings’: “In collective narcissism, we create false realities, not in response to needs for safety, but because it is the norm in a world that conditions us to be highly individualistic and self-centered. When we let go of having such tight reins on our constructed reality, we start to experience ambiguity—we realize how much of our belief systems are fluid. We also begin to learn that being in relationship with self and others is more important than static knowledge. This brings us closer to our essence.”
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I’ve had quite a few conversations about how today is different to other difficult moments in our history when existential questions were raised. This piece argues that the world is in a unique ‘polycrisis’ generated by novel conditions, as measured by total human energy consumption, Earth’s energy imbalance, the human population’s total biomass, and global connectivity. “From the evolution of modern humans to the 20th century, the amount of energy arriving on Earth from space was roughly balanced by the amount going back out. But now less energy is going out than coming in, because our greenhouse gas emissions are trapping more heat in the atmosphere. ... Aggregated across Earth’s entire surface, it’s the amount of energy that would be released by detonating 600,000 Hiroshima-size atomic bombs every day.”
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Your next car should be an e-bike. I’ve made this case often enough here, but if you’re still not convinced of the hidden benefits of commuting on two wheels, here’s a short piece by a recent convert. “But biking to work wasn’t just not unpleasant – it was downright enjoyable. It made me feel happier and healthier; I arrived to work a little more buoyant for having spent the morning in fresh air rather than traffic. Study after study shows that people with longer car commutes are more likely to experience poor health outcomes and lower personal well-being – and that cyclists are the happiest commuters.” (Possible paywall – free archived view)
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Aesthetically Pleasing
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The talented Hannah Lemon creates ridiculously adorable and realistic-looking miniature worlds using air-dry clay, wood, paper and lots of other random materials.
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Ryan Dale takes close-up photos of fungi and insects: “For the past couple of years now, I have been dedicating much of my free time to wondering around the forests and fields of the UK midlands, using a dedicated macro camera setup to help reveal all sorts of weird and bizarre life that can be found in places as simple as the underside of a fallen leaf.”
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The Urban Farming Office in Ho Chi Minh City is a concrete-framed building covered in a vertical farm of vegetables, fruits and herbs. The filtered light coming through the lush greenery and hitting the brutalist, industrial interiors offers a beautiful contrast. “Completely covering the building's glazed southern side, the wall of plants acts to filter sunlight and air, preventing overheating and creating a shaded microclimate for the office interiors.”
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Apparently, the inspiration for the severe structure, wedged serifs and sharp details of the letters of contemporary serif type family Auge came from the micro world of insects.
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Notable Numbers
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Wind turbines are correctly blamed for killing a lot of birds. Estimates range from 140,000 up to 679,000 each year. However, this pales in significance with the estimated 4 billion birds killed each year by prowling house cats. Other sources of electricity are also more lethal for birds than wind energy: a 2012 study found that wind projects kill 0.269 birds per gigawatt-hour of electricity produced, compared to 9.36 birds killed per gigawatt-hour of electricity from fossil fuel projects.
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Workers returning to the office and socialising after pandemic lockdowns helped lead to a 15% surge in sales of deodorants, according to the maker of Dove, Rexona and Impulse.
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A report by the American Public Transportation Association shows that across 20 large US cities replacing a car with public transport could save $13,000 annually on average.
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Classifieds
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The Week in a GIF
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Reply with your favourite GIF and it might get featured here in a future issue.
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DD is supported by Friends and the modern family office of  .
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