If you experience anxiety, fear, depression, or most any kind of mental malady on a regular basis, then I commend this interview to you: http://hellohumans.co/blog/who-would-you-be-with-byron-katie
Christmas List 2017
For many years, in a seemingly unstoppable fit of immature and indulgent vanity, each Christmas (and yes, I admit, every birthday too) I send my family a list of potential present. Because I am without shame, this year, in my dotage, I have decided to go public.
Australian Monuments
I want to share this Australian history with my children. I want them to know about the oldest culture in the world, their convict ancestors, and the role of their late grandfather in building perhaps the world’s most tolerant and successful multi-cultural society.
But what the fuck is wrong with my country?
Emerging in landscape
I love the following descriptions of our place in landscape from John O’ Donohue, who was born and lived in the west of Ireland.
Bowerbird: Letter from Colorado. How Trump is transforming rural America
In Colorado, the President’s tone has started rubbing off on residents.
By Peter Hessler
The New Yorker, July 24, 2017 Issue
This is a compelling article. Hessler covers Trump supporters in Grand Junction, Colorado.
- Why should you read it?
Because, ‘people have reasons for the things that they believe, and the intensity of their experiences can’t be taken for granted.’
‘“I’ve never been this emotionally invested in a political leader in my life,” he said. “The more they hate him, the more I want him to succeed. Because what they hate about him is what they hate about me.”
Phoebe Bridgers – Smoke Signals
This song is just so jaw-droppingly beautiful that I want to share it with you.
Book Review: Hillbilly Elegy by J.D Vance
If you’re looking to understand the culture and thinking of generations of poor white Americans in the age of Trump, then portions of this book will provide fascinating reading.
Still, I can’t reconcile the myopia of the wide-eyed American exceptionalist I found in the second half of the book, with the often astute social observer I met in the first.
Book Review: The Emperor of All Maladies – a biography of cancer
This is less a review and more of a birds nest.
The book opens with a terrifyingly beautiful epigraph from Susan Sontag:
Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship.
Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom
of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all
prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is
obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves in that other place.
each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves in that other place.
Technology is political
I’ve just read a fascinating interview with Daron Acemoglu. Who is Daron and why should you care?
Mundane Music
I’ve been making music every Monday. Little snippets. Bits and bobs. No rhyme or reason. Just simply music for the sake of making sounds. I’ve been uploading these snippets to Google Drive and sharing them with my wonderful friend Danling (a.k.a Mundane Matters) for her to use or ignore as the mood takes. Here’s the first bit of my Mundane Music she’s used.