📚Excited to start reading this book that just arrived today.
Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement by Ashley Shew #accessibility
About to be currently reading: The Tatami Time Machine Blues by Tomihiko Morimi 📚
I picked this book of the library shelf along with 3 other thin hardcover novels or story collections: It’s Getting Dark by Peter Stamm My Monticello by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson The Invention of Sound by Chuck Palahniuk
Currently reading: My Monticello by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson 📚
📚 First 3 books of 2024
The Invisible Kingdom by Meghan O’Rourke – Memoir about experiences navigating overlapping chronic illnesses and the Western medical system that is utterly unprepared to help people with ME/CFS and similar conditions, pushing many people to try unconventional and sometimes more holistic healing methods.
Survival of the Richest by Douglas Rushkoff (audiobook) – Entertaining non-fiction about late-stage capitalism and the mindset adopted by its modern god-emperors.
Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia – A story of horror films and occultic magic set in 1990s Mexico.
Grateful to the volunteer crew of guys who came over to help push the piano across the yard, uphill, and into the house.
Finished Baldur’s Gate 3 today. Incredible game, 10/10
A monster list of mostly sustainable and regenerative actions happening in the travel industry: www.cntraveller.com/article/b…
Apparently gondolas are a transit option for airports in some places:
TIL ammonia production is a low-carbon, scalable way to store and transport hydrogen as energy.
The EU is counting up their scope 3 maritime emissions
TIL the EU has an Emissions Trading System and that in 2024, it’ll include the maritime transport industry.
The interesting part is in one of the details:
“50% of emissions from voyages starting or ending outside of the EU and 100% of emissions from voyages between two EU ports and when ships are within EU ports.”
source: climate.ec.europa.eu/eu-action…
In other words, the EU is accounting for some scope 3 emissions. This seems like good news.
Aviation-wise, it only covers flights “within the European Economic Area and departing flights to Switzerland and the United Kingdom.” Not accounting for intercontinental emissions just yet. Maybe one day soon.
Mailchimp: Send now? y/n
Me:
8 ways life in the EU is becoming greener
An interesting page about how the EU is trying to cut net GHG emissions by 55% by 2030.
Learning about email spam filters today.
Whenever you need to feel insignificant, contemplate the number of email messages that are sent every day.
Every message that reaches its recipient is a miracle.
Currently reading: The Invisible Kingdom by Meghan O’Rourke 📚
A few chapters in, she’s writing about her experiences with her autoimmune illnesses and their interactions with Western medicine.
“Allostatic load” is a concept I hadn’t heard before. The higher your load, the more likely you are to develop an autoimmune disease, the theory goes.
🎶 Listening to an ambient track by Nils Frahm: “The Dog With 1000 Faces”
Climate's "front page paradox"
This article asks: Why is there not enough political will to move with urgency?
www.outrageandoptimism.org/blog/what…
And points out that renewables are seeing exponential growth. This is the decade of change in energy.
…we should be discussing how we do this, not whether it ought to be done.
and:
For all the complexities of climate change, the big picture of what we need to do is not rocket science:
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Turbo-charge investments into all clean energy alternatives: wind, solar, geothermal, batteries, green hydrogen, and green mobility.
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Enact a global moratorium on all new oil and gas exploration and exploitation, encouraging oil and gas companies to shift their business model.
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Regenerate nature.
Project Drawdown has a whole video series about climate solutions based in different places and neighbourhoods. There might be some good examples of local-focused actions.
Had a nice beach walk with the dog today. Felt good to get outside after a stressful few days.
Btw I’ve left behind my NaNoWriMo novel… for now.
Getting ready for a piano gig next week that will take most of my extra energy.
Short history of independent publishing
An interesting and thorough account of the evolution of independent publishing and the current sponsorship-driven model.
Same same for the music biz:
“The ratio was something like 1:10,000. Meaning that for every one person you could convince to subscribe, donate, become a member, or support you on Patreon … you would need 10,000 visitors to make the same amount from advertising. Or to put that into perspective, with only 100 subscribers, I could make the same amount of money as I used to earn from having one million visitors.”
"Tourists are like bees"
From an article on responsible real estate reporting in luxury travel destinations by Naka Nathaniel:
“Tourists are like bees: I don’t want a bunch of them circling around me, but I also don’t want them to disappear. It’s a delicate balance,” she wrote. “Tourists stick out and may not observe local norms, which can inspire petty grumblings and genuine anger from locals. But they’re a sign that the city is doing something right. Show me a city without tourists, and I’ll show you a city in decline.”
The source of Naka’s quote is “New York Is To Expensive to Even Visit”
🎶 listening to Naya (Unmastered, LP 2021) by Dawuna
The tide was at swing level today. Rainy, sunny, a good dog walk.
Eno Piano
Also listening to Bruce Brubaker’s Eno Piano bruce-brubaker.bandcamp.com/album/eno…
“Spending hours waiting for a flight at the Cologne-Bonn Airport, Eno became frustrated with the airport’s uninspiring atmosphere. At that moment, Eno conceived an album of music “designed for airports” In his original 1978 liner notes, he explained: “Whereas conventional background music is produced by stripping away all sense of doubt and uncertainty (and thus all genuine interest) from the music, Ambient Music retains these qualities. And whereas their intention is to ‘brighten’ the environment by adding stimulus to it (thus supposedly alleviating the tedium of routine tasks and leveling out the natural ups and downs of the body rhythms) Ambient Music is intended to induce calm and a space to think. Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting.”
Listening to “Kubur”, a piece for strings, part of the album Maryam Pagi Ke Malam - an original score. Found via Steve Smith’s For the Record newsletter.
Today’s word count: 3343. I don’t expect to get to 50k words by Nov 30, but I wrote and recorded an album with this daily method. I know something will come out of this, if not when.