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.
This is the funniest anti-tourism behaviour I’ve seen. No one shall have their selfie!
NaNoWriMo update: The total word count for my novel is now 2898.
The dog and I found a starfish on today’s beach walk. Pretty far up the sand, but safely in a pool.
Finished reading: Zoey Is Too Drunk for This Dystopia by Jason Pargin 📚
A dystopian near-future comedy about an heiress trying to right the wrongs of her deceased father’s empire. A good time all the way through, and I’d like to read the other book in the series.
I’m 67 words farther along today: 2215 in total
I started the NaNoWriMo challenge on November 1. Writing a novel in one month – is it possible? On day 3, I’m at 1530/50000 words.
Surging Seas Risk Zone forecasts
#Some really neat climate data. This interactive Surging Seas Risk Zone Map forecasts timing for sea level rise in many places - even our little coastal village. With a projection of 2200 as the median estimated year for 5 feet of rise; 2090 for one foot, assuming unchecked pollution.
TIL that people from Glasgow are called Glaswegians, pronounced like Norwegians, and I think that’s perfectly charming.
Solutions for the climate, 1
#I collect climate solutions small and large. Here’s one that came across my desk today.
Are airships due for a comeback?
I forgot these existed outside of steampunk stories and photos of the Hindenburg, but these floating air tankers are a piece of carbon-emission-reducing transport technology that make an inspiring kind of sense. Are they feasible? Will thery spark a new wave of luxury slow travel? Some people are building airships right now.
And the Senate of Canada’s Stand Committee on Transport and Communication was talking about them today.
Look to the skies.
Is there a sane way to use the internet?
#This PJ Vogt podcast with Ezra Klein makes me want to read Jenny O’Dell’s books again. How To Do Nothing and her other, newer one.
“Is there a sane way to use the internet?” podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas…
This new blog thing where I’m gathering bits of my attention is one way I’m trying to find the answer to that question.
This deeply reminds me of the book Becasue Internet. And I really enjoyed the mental image of explaining to a judge what YOLO means 😂
Telling the stories of solutions and change
#I just learned a bit about solutions journalism:
“The Solutions Journalism Network is leading a global shift in journalism, focused on what the news misses most often: how people are trying to solve problems and what we can learn from their successes or failures.”
The UNWTO has developed a Statistical Framework for Measuring the Sustainability of Tourism. To skim through later. Is it being used yet, in practice? Are there case studies?
Finished reading: The Anomaly: A Novel by Hervé Le Tellier 📚
A fun, disturbing, existential-philosophy-thriller novel about what happens when you meet yourself and what the world really, like is.
“And at the very heart of this fire that has always consumed America, with this war waged by darkness over enlightenment, a war in which reason gradually backs down in the face of ignorance and the irrational, Jacob Evans puts on the dark breastplate of his own primitive and uncompromising hopes. Religion is a carnivorous fish in the abyssal depths. It emits the feeblest of light and needs a vast darkness around it to attract its prey.”
Attention Collection
#Hello, if you’ve just stumbled across this blog. 👋🏻 This is where I keep things that have held my attention. I’m a composer, podcast producer, writer, avid reader, web enthusiast, sci-fi fan, climate crisis try-and-solver, bookshop co-owner, and guy living in a remote place. I’ve got a lot of overlapping interests and will likely add fragments about a lot of them. This is my attention collection.
Media literacy
#On the Media has published a media literacy guide to the Israel/Gaza conflict. They have guides to lots of other types of stories too.
Breaking News Consumer’s Handbook www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/…