Dispatches from a different world 🗺
Three more sleeps until I head back to New Zealand, I’m still signaling
I have spent a lot of time listening to stories this week. Friends have revealed what they have been through over the past two years, layer by layer. This is the sort of revelation that can only take place over time, through repeated contact. I am reminded of the proverbial three cups of tea it can take to build trust between people when they meet for the first time. Perhaps this is true when renewing friendships again too. The trust is there still, I’m confident about that. But the intersection of our experiences are uncertain ground - and when these experiences have been so foremost in our minds over the past two years, we tread carefully. I’m still listening.
You’ll notice there’s no paywall in my Noise Reduction newsletter this week. It’s going to be free to read from now on. Paid members will get access to my 30,000 Days posts - those posts like this are open for the next couple of days for free subscribers.
Are you shopping in real-life again?
If this sounds like you, then you’ve bamboozled big tech.
We’re now buying less online than many had predicted, and it’s confusing tech companies and ruining forecasts for the economy.
We still don’t know what “normal” looks like in the U.S. or elsewhere, and we probably won’t for a year or more as our spending habits adjust to higher prices, ongoing difficulties with manufacturing and shipping, rising interest rates, continued coronavirus infections and a desire to frolic in the real world.
American Brexit
Although America isn’t about to fall apart (probably), it might feel like that for some.
What America is going through is analogous to Brexit – a lumbering, mutual decision to go separate ways on most things but remain connected on a few big things (such as national defense, monetary policy and civil and political rights).
This thinkpiece from Robert Reich is well worth a read.
The second American civil war is already occurring, but it is less of a war than a kind of benign separation analogous to unhappily married people who don’t want to go through the trauma of a formal divorce.
A Guide to Help You Keep Up With the Omicron Subvariants
You could be forgiven for losing track of the latest variants to be concerned about. Recently, it seems to have become more complex than ever.
How different are these subvariants from one another? Can infection by one subvariant protect someone from infection by another subvariant? And how well are the existing coronavirus vaccines — which were developed before omicron’s emergence — doing against the subvariants?
Here’s a rundown of the answers when medical and epidemiological experts were asked these and other questions.
Maybe it’s not your memory? Get your eyes checked
Cognitive tests that rely on vision-dependent tasks could be skewing results in up to a quarter of people aged over 50 who have undiagnosed visual problems such as cataracts or age-related macular degeneration (AMD).
Find the original paper here.
The Great Chemical Detox
No, I’m not talking about the latest influencer craze.
I’m talking about ground-breaking proposed EU regulations:
“This ‘great detox’ promises to improve the safety of almost all manufactured products and rapidly lower the chemical intensity of our schools, homes and workplaces … It is high time for the EU to turn words into real and urgent action.” - Tatiana Santos, European Environmental Bureau.
Scientists have been warning that chemical pollution has reached hazardous levels for humans and the planet. The plan is to outlaw thousands of potentially harmful chemicals that are found in food packaging, cosmetics, toys, building materials and more. Find out more here.
If implemented, this plan would lead to the largest ever regulatory removal of chemicals anywhere on earth.
The Great Resignation continues …
Although this is probably more accurately framed as a great re-evaluation, this movement is large enough to have sparked its own sub-genre of books.
Here’s an article from The Guardian about some of these radical reinventions that people are find to compelling to hear about:
This isn’t an entirely new phenomenon – it is close to 170 years since Henry David Thoreau “went to the woods” because he “wanted to live deliberately” and wrote about it in Walden. At the heart of such stories is the question of what happens when life is stripped back to its bare bones. How much do we need to survive, how do we rise to the challenge, and who are we at heart, without all of life’s paraphernalia?
The iPod is dead
The iPod really can be called a device that changed everything.
After 22 years, Apple is ceasing production of the iPod. Check out this New York Times retrospective highlighting how, without the iPod, there would have been no iPhone, as well as this great compilation of 10 iconic iPod ads from yesteryear.
What I’m listening to
It’s Mental Health Awareness Week in the UK. As well as being invited to do a Q&A with members of the London Writer’s Salon (which was wonderful), I’ve been curious watching and listening to lots of things mental health here. This unusual podcast caught my eye.
In 1621, Robert Burton published, The Anatomy of Melancholy. Described as the “largest, strangest and most unwieldy self-help book ever written”, it was written to deal with melancholy: “one of the most perplexing, elusive, attractive, and afflicting diseases of the Renaissance”.
Listen to this interview with Dr Mary Ann Lund - author of A User's Guide to Melancholy, an accessible guide to Burton's work that unpacks the Stuart era's approach to mental health.
One to watch on burnout
In the interview, part of a TED interview series on how to deal with difficult feelings, here’s a short video about burnout.
Emily and Amelia Nagoski share their experiences about three telltale signs that stress is getting the best of you -- and share actionable ways to feel safe in your own body when you're burning out. It’s a relatable conversation, and well worth 18 minutes if you’re starting to wonder about burnout, or would like to hear their perspective on it.
Talk like there’s no one watching you
You may have heard about the trials of the big streaming companies, whose revenues are falling as people start to cut back on their subscriptions in these straitened times. But for some free-to air channels, it’s worse than that.
For some new channels, no-one is watching.
We find ourselves in a landscape of televisual orphans, floating around in the ether, forgotten and unwatched.
Thanks for reading, everyone. Have a great rest-of-your-week, and weekend. Hopefully, I’ll have a clear pre-departure test for my flights to New Zealand on Saturday night, and I’ll write again soon - probably on the plane - and I’ll post when I land.