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On the Intimately Remote
The ghostly Coast Mountains and serene islands straddling Atlin Lake, the base of a makeshift ice rink. February 28, 2024.Here I am contemplating the next great vacation, a jaunt on some foreign land for an extended period of introspection via exploration. A quest to fill a lacuna in self-identity, not confirmed but understood, like the mechanisms behind forces of nature.
The break will have to be a long one. Three to four weeks. Leisure is an illusion; to delay the end of its fleeting nature one of the simple joys of a secure profession. The time is also as necessary as it is limited – parts unknown only discoverable when repeatedly sought, Rooms of Requirement hidden away in alleyways far from tourist meccas.
Fall seems like a good option, all factors considered. Perhaps a trip south of the equator to Chile, where herds of horses hurtle across lands as sacred to astronomers as they are to widows of crushed rebellions. Santiago to the Atacama to the Patagonian outlands. Tempting. But what about one of the Asian Tigers? South Korea, wrestling with deep binaries – cultural differences between men and women, young and old, urban and rural, or rich and poor, while traditional religions flourish amid heightened modernity – a microcosm of globalized struggles. Wait, I have it, Iceland! An isolated reprieve; a romantic outpost. Who could argue with its chilling volcanic landscapes or gorgeous vistas overlooking stellar phenomena?
I am also trying to find companions for the journey. Aside from not being alone with my thoughts for too long, I prefer the benefits (and can tolerate the drawbacks) of travelling in a (small) group. Conversing through novel experiences can enrich them greatly, personal thoughts and assumptions not always the best guides towards, or filters of, wisdom. We all need bouncing boards for our learning and amusement. Finding a group with a small circle is also tough; coordinating leaves and scheduling excursions a terrible foundation of administrative turmoil on which to launch collective adventures.
No matter where I end up travelling, it strikes me that I am always here, on the shore of the cosmic ocean. An inescapable beach with too many grains of sand to sift through. Trifling in the grand scheme of things yet immeasurable in its immensity. Human experience and construction a mere footnote to its natural wonders.
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Weekly Picks – February 25, 2024
Credits (clockwise from bottom left): Sarah O’Gorman / UPY2024; Mustafa Saeed / Noema Magazine; Lalo de Almeida / Folhapress / Panos / Redux; Realy Easy Star / Giuseppe Masci / Alamy; John Moore / Getty Images; María Jesús ContrerasSome standout articles sandwiched between visions from different timelines that share the same world. Plus a deep dive into the lobbyists and billionaires who have undermined one of the most exemplary public vaccination campaigns in humanity’s history.
The main montage, then. Stories from the streets from individuals who find themselves homeless, in a fight not to be pigeonholed as scapegoats. Radical new histories enabled by advancements in science. An argument against the child-laden life from the proselytizer’s of antinatalism. Dispatches from the poet politicians reshaping the Horn of Africa. And the invisible emissions seeping through legal loopholes to grey our future sky, one dying oil well at a time.
This week’s collection:
- A Life Without a Home: Voices from the tents, shelters, cars, motels and couches of America.
- Solar storms, ice cores and nuns’ teeth: the new science of history
- The Case Against Children: Among the antinatalists
- A Country Shaped By Poetry
- The Rising Cost of the Oil Industry’s Slow Death
- Winners of the 2024 Underwater Photographer of the Year Contest
On the fight against a sane approach to cooperation on public health:
- The West Is Sabotaging a Global Pandemic Treaty
- Further reading:
- A podcast discussion on the topic:
Note that only excerpts (often introductory) are quoted. For full text (and context) or video, please view the original piece.
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Vangelis and the Past Future of LA
The person runs, futility in motion. The water cascades down, each window and mortar wall a riverbed. The drains overflow with a mixture of muck, covering the cracked ground with black filth. It is the middle of night, but the darkness lies above and below. Here, at street level, the effulgence of neon signs blinds anyone who look anywhere but down.
They splash their way down the high street, screaming for help. People look up, notice the blaring red and blue illuminations, and look down again. There is an order to things, and this is no aberrance. The runner looks back and sees the flying lights nearing. They pivot into an alley and rush past dumpsters, lightly floating but tightly chained. The darkness has crept in here, but not enough to hide in; nothing can shroud those chased by the hunters of the sky.
The person slips and falls into a thick splatter. Tar! The ever-seeping liquid asphalt abundant below the crevasses. This city eats people. Those living in alcoves a little easier to pick clean from its stained edifices.
“Halt!” The car blares as it rounds the corner. “Replicant, halt!” It is almost over their broken body, breathing heavy as the fumes of the city begin to overwhelm them.
“I am no replicant!” The plea goes unheard. “I am a threat to no one!” They unstick themselves and stand up, a stark silhouette against a malicious glare.
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Weekly Picks – February 18, 2024
Credit (from left to right): Jonas Gratzer/LightRocket via Getty Images; Kelly Kline; Eliseu Cavalcante / Grist; Emily Altman / Current AffairsAn assortment from the first few days of the week this time, as I am away travelling.
A confirmation of the declining diversity in species globally, from the most authoritative study of its kind. Policing’s place in our conception of safety and society. An extraordinary look at dispossession and a system of ongoing colonization of Indigenous lands perpetuated by institutions of higher education in the US. Finally, the promises, ideologies, and foibles of the managerial class.
This week’s collection:
- The World Is Losing Migratory Species at Alarming Rates
- Illusions of Safety: On freedom from policing
- Misplaced Trust: Stolen Indigenous land is the foundation of the land-grant university system. Climate change is its legacy.
- Against Managerialism
Note that only excerpts (often introductory) are quoted. For full text (and context) or video, please view the original piece.
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Journey
When this post is published, I will be in Los Angeles, having driven 800km South from Prince George and having caught a flight from Vancouver. One of many stops that I will be making over the course of this month. From the moderate chill of middle BC to the balmy sunshine of Southern California, before heading back to work up North to travel across frigid Yukon, to reach some of the most remote communities in Canada.
Boy, what a large carbon footprint I carry. I suspect no one, from the gaudiest campaigner to the most ardent activist, will quit travel entirely until we are forced by the climate itself to confine ourselves to little squares on the global grid. For now, no carbon emissions more egregious than any other, from the ones we produce directly to the ones we wear or consume. All the more important to recognize since we are having quite the ‘winter’. Though Prince George has had a couple of weeks at or below the -30 range, it has also been much warmer than usual. Not to localize large climate patterns, of course, only to point out the observable results of their compounding impacts. It is no longer strange seeing headlines about wildfires and drought as early as February.
And I am a contributor.
I share that as a grim caveat to a fond feeling I am reminded of on a sporadic basis. As a young adult attending post-secondary, I used to dream of living a life where I get to travel regularly. Not engage in tourism. Rather go from place to place as a learner and appreciator of the differences that define us and the similarities they disguise. I did not care where – you can find plenty that is foreign in familiar surroundings left unexplored – but I did not want to remain unmoved.
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Modernism of the Soul
“I was writing this paper on the notion of attention span disappearing. I don’t think the issue is attention, you know, I had a professor who always used to talk about that. And then he was telling me his son was playing a video game, and he tried to play it, and he could only play it for five minutes, and he got completely like, he was like ‘I can’t even’, you know, attend to it. We would never accuse the professor of having a short attention span because he could only stand that for five minutes. Though he accused his son of having a short attention span because he couldn’t read a book for five minutes. But that same kid could play that video game that the professor couldn’t play for five hours. And the reason why is we’re bookish people, we’re biased towards the book. And so the issue isn’t attention, for me, it’s interest. And that is a crisis. I think, my kids, I don’t want them to be disinterested in everyday life…It’s not that they can’t pay attention to it, they just don’t…they’re not interested in it. To me, boredom is an excuse, it gives you a crutch. What you’re really saying is, ‘I’m not interested in things that I probably should be interested in’, you know, like everyday life, like time passing, like a slow film. I don’t think they can’t pay attention, I just don’t think they’re interested in it. And that to me is more of a crisis.”
– Filmmaker Kogonada in an interview at the 2016 Berlinale Talents Summit
A haphazard rumination on something foundational. I want to share a corner of the human condition in countenance of the humanist tradition. An avenue towards compassion, empathy, and warmth towards all those who share this shrinking world.
Despite humanity’s seeming connectedness, we are distant. We have not yet reached a stage where technology is able to replicate true connection. But we revel in its distraction and unfulfilled promise. We are a species that evolved needing the presence of others around us, in every sense. We now live in a world of reflective and transparent surfaces, translating each other’s thoughts and personalities through flat screens. Interpreting events having lost ourselves in the gossamer that obscures their true nature.
From within this context and through just as fiddly a medium, I implore you to consider the still frame. The unmoving, lingering shot focused on extracting the remarkable from the routine.
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Weekly Picks – February 11, 2024
Credits (clockwise from top right): Nick Sirotich, Thomas Nast, Pixculture/ Creative Commons, Mark Harris, Sue Cunningham Photographic/Alamy, Maggie Shannon.
The informal economy, crime, and journalism surrounding rural Amazonia. Parasitic effects of fungi an analogue to the corporate thought process. Phantasmagorical escapes into farming retreats in Singapore. The historical and ongoing political and military philosophies behind Israel’s great displacement project, as relayed by the Editor in Chief of Haaretz. A first-hand account and analysis of the dollar store model in the United States. And photographs from a late abortion clinic in a country unwilling to offer basic healthcare to women.
This week’s collection:
- The Forest Eaters
- The Fungus Among Us
- On Farms
- Israel’s Self-Destruction: Netanyahu, the Palestinians, and the Price of Neglect
- Dollar Stores Show Capitalism at its Worst
- A Safe Haven for Late Abortions
Note that only excerpts (often introductory) are quoted. For full text (and context) or video, please view the original piece.
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folkshilfe, LEMO & Kosik
Salzburg as seen from Hohensalzburg Fortress
I visited central Europe last year, my first trip abroad since before the Covid interlude. I travelled with a few friends and we galivanted from Budapest to Geneva, spending the bulk of our time in the lovely country of Austria.
A couple of months later, I decided to revisit the photos and videos we had all taken to compile them into a video for the group. I needed background music and went digging through the Austrian charts from the last few years to find the appropriate track.
The winner was folkshilfe’s “Hau di her”, a song about finding meaningful connection:
Other good ones I came across: “Schwarze Wolken” from LEMO and “Legenden” from Christina Kosik.
In case you are looking to add some Austrian pop to your playlist.
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Weekly Picks – February 4, 2024
“We can’t have a decent society, we can’t have people with their own volition, we can’t have a society that progresses, we can’t have a society based on empathy or kindness, if people are being manipulated from some central source, no matter what type of source that is.”
– Jaron Lanier
Special comment: On the same day that I published this quick dive into the most popular virtual interfacing networks, the CEOs of Facebook, Tiktok, X, Snap, and Discord testified in front of the US Congress. On the docket was the companies’ response to the sharp rise of online sexual exploitation of children and youth. In attendance were families of youth who had self-harmed or committed suicide. There was even a surreal moment when Mark Zuckerberg was asked to “say something” and apologize to the families seated behind him. You could see his hesitation as he struggled with the Senator’s request – acquiesce and admit wrong, or stay put and appear inhuman? He landed somewhere in the middle, issuing about as appropriate an apology as you can get in such a setting, without accepting any ownership of responsibility.
My post was not planned to coincide with this event. And this is not the first nor the last time these online heads of states will be summoned to legislative assemblies to defuse tensions around growing crises relating to social media usage. As Jaron Lanier describes in the video I had shared, the fundamental architecture of these systems will ensure these outcomes. Modern tech moguls, many of them founders and builders of this fundamental architecture, are brilliant developers and marketers. But they are not saviors. To imbue them with power and expect them to “regulate culture” as Lanier puts it, is an abdication of public responsibility. The profit motive is hardly the stalwart steward of great philosophy, governance, and ethics. It will not safeguard society. That is the public’s task, to be undertaken free from invasive surveillance and ruined edifices.
Another video shared here for those interested in further exploration of the topics discussed in the post:
(12:28-18:52 is a succinct summary of the crux of the issue.)
This week’s collection:
- A Circular Motion: Protest, what is it good for?
- Prisoners in the US are part of a hidden workforce linked to hundreds of popular food brands
- Trees struggle to ‘breathe’ as climate warms, researchers find
- Can Divestment Campaigns Still Work?
- Why You’ve Never Been In A Plane Crash
Note that only excerpts (often introductory) are quoted. For full text (and context) or video, please view the original piece.
Further reading for those interested in social media, the tech industry’s power, or surveillance:
- When dead children are just the price of doing business, Zuckerberg’s apology is empty
- The illusion of closeness: how social media redefined respect
- The Rise of Techno-Authoritarianism
- How Surveillance Is Changing Our Most Intimate Relationships
Notes on the ongoing Gaza conflict, and its interpretations:
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Bringing the Factory to the Farm
A morsel of your time, if you please, to dive into a surreal vision. A moment under the darkening firmament with a gaggle of green learners, rendered speechless by the immutable.
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A late evening in July 2013. My colleague and I have just finished a day’s worth of sessions at a school a couple of kilometers from the homestead where we are residing. This is a joint elementary-secondary, about 7 clicks away from the small but busy village center of Busolwe, Eastern Uganda. We have supported facilitating a set of reading, writing and debating competitions to close out our time at this particular location. Part of a community-led program to foster higher literacy rates and championed by the local library and Elder Council.
Our host and supervisor, the local librarian, has left us and returned home for the night. We are to finish our conversations and join him and his family for dinner at a reasonable time. The kids, of course, have to stay. They live at the school most of the year, sleeping in dense rooms in stacked beds, sharing meals in the same rooms where they study. They do the chores too – some have already started sweeping the hallways in preparation for mealtime. The teachers, who double as caretakers, and most of whom have not been paid for many months, have retired to their quarters or trundled home.
I am speaking with a few of the older students trying to convince them of impossibilities.