(Banner image via)
One of the things that got me interested in putting a newsletter together was how intimate the whole endeavor seemed. Every week I could sit down and do some writing and share various things with a group of people that - I think - are interested in the majority of the things I was sending out. This week’s deluge of GDPR emails from various companies and organisations reminded me of how important it is to continually frame the media we consume and participate in so that we are always aware of the consequences of engaging with them.
For the record, I am using all your data as inputs in a top-secret AI-powered pattern recognition network. Don’t be alarmed, it is all for the greater good.
-
I read a fascinating article on how fish are killed and the steps some people are taking to not only increase awareness of the inhumane way most commercial fishing operations handle it, but that there are better ways to do it, not just for ethical reasons, but also to improve the way the fish taste.
Speaking of food, here’s a follow-up article to the last conversation I posted on nutrition.
I keep reading and sharing articles about eating right because apart from getting enough quality sleep and breathing better, eating well is one of the basic things we can do to improve our baseline physical and mental health. I feel it is important that we cut through a lot of the marketing-powered noise and get to the basics about what healthy eating means in this day and age where most of us, have more access to food than we know what to do with.
This is a good podcast featuring Dr. Andrew Huberman professor of neuroscience at Stanford, and Brian Mackenzie, renowned coach and innovator in health and fitness, talking about how altering your breathing and visual focus can help you manage fear, stress and give you more control over your emotional state.
-
This short, but sweet essay captures so much about what we could potentially be doing in our present moment. It also taught me a new word:
Neoteny, one of my favorite words, means the retention of childlike attributes in adulthood: idealism, experimentation and wonder.
-
Do any of you guys listen to The Moth? You should! Keeping the oral tradition alive is something worth encouraging and definitely something I would love to see emulated all over the world. From great sagas to the small and mundane, storytelling is part of humanity’s cultural DNA and not something we should lose to our market-augmented obsessions with efficiency and convenience.
Interested in telling better stories for fun and/or profit? This is not a bad place to start.
-
One of the things that I have come to realize over the last few years is the power of keeping records. One of the easiest ways to fight against our innate cognitive biases is by augmenting our memory with objective recording. Whether that is via journaling, using a decision journal, tracking your weight, tracking your sleep and physical activity via a smart watch or an Oura ring, there are loads of things that one can and should keep track of especially now when there are so many options for doing so. Even without buying anything more than a notebook and a pencil you can track a lot of things about how you feel each day, things that happened and more in order to allow you to know yourself better.
-
(Still from Beyond the Black Rainbow)
Is anyone interested in a film club? I have decided to put together a semi-regular and informal viewing meetup at Stranger where we can get together to watch all manner of stuff and talk about it afterwards. Everyone is welcome to join in even if you are not around. Still making up my mind about the first film, but it will definitely be something in the general aesthetic camp as Villeneuve’s Blade Runner, NWR’s The Neon Demon - essentially Kubrick and Lynch progeny with a heavy helping of retrofuturistic soundscapes.
-
“Intelligent individuals learn from every thing and every one; average people, from their experiences. The stupid already have all the answers." — Socrates
-
China’s quickly transforming into a science fiction country complete with a social credit system ranking its citizens, brainwave monitoring of workers in mines, a rainmaking network three times the size of Spain, the most advanced renewable energy program on the planet (for every $1 the US spent, China spent $3) and massive investments in AI research and applications.
I have been reading some trashy Chinese martial arts comics online recently and the fantasy version of China portrayed in those stories is really incredible. Not because of all the people flying and channeling chi energy to do superhuman feats, but because of the mythopoetic view of China present in these publications. They believe they are the center of the world and now their government is working VERY hard and VERY smart in order to ensure that belief becomes a reality.
Meanwhile, Nigeria continues its lackadaisical stroll into mediocrity and potential decline via opioids, herdsmen(?) and a burgeoning “lazy” youth crisis. If I ever go into politics, it will be to somehow fight to comprehensively overall and revolutionize the education system. Forget power, forget potable water, forget jobs, forget diversifying the economy. If we don’t get education right right now, we will be left with a massive population unable to do much beyond menial jobs.
With all the information out there about human development and neurobiology, we have the raw materials to build truly radical systems to empower our people and give us some way out of the cycle of ethnic and religious backed conflict that has plagued us since the founding of the country.
If you work in education in any way, you owe it to yourself to get acquainted with the work of people like Dr. Zachary Stein right now.
-
And on that note, here’s wishing you all a great week ahead! It seems like we are always moving from one place to another and maybe not seeing much of a difference when we arrive, but just remember that the process of moving is where enlightenment is experienced, in the journey, not the departure or the arrival.