Now and Next
Current location: Milwaukee, WI, USA
Reading: The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
Listening: FYE FYE by Tobe Nwigwe & Fat Nwigwe
(if you have a moment, reply with your own 3-item status)
Now and Next
In any discussion, there's a collection of intuitive, shared contextual understandings.
If you're engaged in a conversation about labor rights, it's typically understood that you're addressing the topic as it exists within the current economic, social, and geopolitical paradigm.
You could talk about how you think we need to move to a post-scarcity society so that the concept of "labor" as we think about it today is no longer a thing, but doing so would probably color outside the default guidelines of such discussions: it's meta-contextual and may require an overt shift of conversational scope to be meaningful.
This doesn't mean we shouldn't look up and down the context-scale to suss out solutions to problems and imagine realities that don't exist, yet, but it does seem prudent to understand where contexts begin and end, and at what scale we're operating so as to not talk past each other—missing out on points of commonality and opportunities to cooperate in the here and now because we can't stop thinking and talking about how much better things would be if only everything was different.
This applies internally, as well.
It's pleasant to consider how life might be different if we or the contexts we occupy were different, and I would argue it's important to imagine such changes (even dramatic ones) so we have a sense of where we want to go and the motivation to get there.
But ideally we also have a productive grasp of where we are, today, so we can perceive the distance between here and there, and can thus accommodate and act upon contemporary realities (rather than ignoring or feeling persistently inconvenienced by them).
If you found some value in this essay, consider supporting my work by buying me a coffee :)
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Projects
Select, recent works from across my project portfolio.
Aspiring Generalist: Alarm Fatigue
Brain Lenses: Cognitive Immunology
I Will Read To You: My Country
Let’s Know Things: Real Estate Companies
Curiosity Weekly / Daily: April 26 / April 25
One Sentence News: April 27 (podcast version)
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Interesting & Useful
Zooming Into the Sun with Solar Orbiter Solar Orbiter’s latest images shows the full Sun in unprecedented detail. They were taken on 7 March, when the spacecraft was crossing directly between the Earth and Sun.
Photographer Shoots 2 Million Photos to Show the Moon's "Wobble" Astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy spent a month shooting over 2 million photos of the Moon to show how it dances in the sky.
Mapping Where the Earth Will Become Uninhabitable
Lethal heat or flooded coastlines: find out where populations are projected to be hit hardest with our interactive 3D visualisation.
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Outro
What've you been watching, of late? I'm keen to add some new films and TV shows to my "to-watch" list, so if you have any suggestions (from any genre) please drop me a quick note :)
Also: what music are you listening to right now? Artists, albums, songs?
And: podcasts? I'm interested in getting some new ones on into my podcast app—my list has stagnated a bit.
In general, too, I'd love to hear from you (and a quick something about you, your life, etc): you can reach me by replying to this newsletter or by writing to colin@exilelifestyle.com.
You can also communicate via the usual methods: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or fake archaeology.
If you’re finding some value in what I’m doing here, consider supporting my work: Become an Understandary member / Buy me a coffee