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“This photo essay was conceived as a meditation on our profound distancing from the natural world — of which we are all just one small part. What we are currently experiencing during the pandemic is yet another manifestation of this loss. And although the city streets where I made many of these photographs are now empty, I hope that these images will still help us to consider how we might reconnect — with the night, with the natural world, with each other, with ourselves.”
READING IN MY TABS
This split-screen pandemic world as the citizens of the developed countries have been largely inoculated – here are the places where no one has received a single covid-19 vaccination. Related: This animated chart shows how the world’s vaccine rollout is going – unevenly, as you can see.
Arabic speakers are using a script without diacritical marks to stay under the radar of platform algorithms that are censoring any content about Palestine. Related: “Algorithms don’t have imagination. Human beings have imagination.”
Also, camera phones and social media have changed the landscape of global outrage at the treatment of Palestinians.
Decades before “Zoom fatigue” broke our spirits, the so-called computer revolution brought with it a world of pain previously unknown to humankind.
“Children’s brains and bodies are built for doing, failing, and doing again. We applaud virtually anything they do, because they are trying. With adults, it’s more complicated. The phrase ‘adult beginner’ has an air of gentle pity. It reeks of obligatory retraining seminars and uncomfortable chairs. It implies the learning of something that you should have perhaps already learned.” The joys of being an absolute beginner – for life. Also see: curious elder.
“Across the many scales and dimensions of this problem, we are never far from three enduring truths: (1) Maintainers require care; (2) caregiving requires maintenance; and (3) the distinctions between these practices are shaped by race, gender, class, and other political, economic, and cultural forces.” A brilliant essay on returning to maintenance and care, and the dangers of romanticising them.
“Our current historical moment demands a radical re-imagining of how we address various harms. […] While we protect ourselves from their consistent and regular blows, we must also fight for a vision of the world we want to inhabit.”
“They call us now to say. Run. You have 58 seconds from the end of this message. Your house is next.”
RESOURCES AND TOOLKITS
We need to take a stand against dark patterns — and you can help by reporting a dark pattern today. Related: the impact of dark patterns in communities of colour.
Tips for using the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine in your next digital investigation.
STATUS BOARD
Reading: Leigh Bardugo’s Crooked Kingdom. Highly recommended: I return to Angela Davis’ Freedom Is a Constant Struggle every so often to remind myself that all our liberation is interconnected and one that we should strive for, and such an apt reading during these times.
Listening: “When the apocalypse comes, what will you put into the vessel of the future?”
Watching: We know what you did during lockdown.
Food & Drink: I spent last week nursing the worst migraine ever, and when I got better finally, I made some laksa Johor.