A new browser that offers ‘productivity’ features not unlike some email clients, including the ability to organise tabs by groups, snooze tabs, and split screens to show multiple tabs. Currently for MacOS only, it seems.

A daily trainer to improve cognitive skills like math, reading, writing, speaking, and recall. Over 40 simple games aim to make the learning experience fun and measurable.

What a delightful idea for a storytelling project: 1000 Dreams tells the stories of 1000 refugees across Europe. A wonderful publishing idea that seeks to change prevailing refugee narratives in the media.

Enter your city name and the tool renders a monochromatic map of all the streets in that city, without any names or labels. Download it as a vector file and then customise it. You could use it as a basis for a piece of art, maybe a poster for your office or as a gift for a loved one.

Bullshit Jobs →

Meaningless jobs and their societal harm

David Graeber’s book is based on his hugely popular essay On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs: “Across the developed world, three-quarters of all jobs are in services or admin, jobs that don’t seem to add anything to society: bullshit jobs.” In his book, David Graeber looks at “how we value work, and how, rather than being productive, work has become an end in itself; the way such work maintains the current broken system of finance capital; and, finally, how we can get out of it.”

Disability Visibility →

First-person stories by people with a disability

Even though in the US alone, one in five people live with a disability, they are underrepresented in popular media and culture. This book celebrates and documents today’s disability culture, giving readers “a glimpse into the rich complexity of the disabled experience, highlighting the passions, talents, and everyday lives of this community”.

This essay on surveillance technology compares, for example, fitness trackers with tracking devices worn by parolees and argues that those who buy ‘luxury tracking technologies’ automatically impose a greater level of surveillance on everyone else. “What does it say about our society’s adoption of technology that such different cognitive frames can be used to understand and obfuscate two faces of what is essentially one technology – that some eagerly adopt what others must suffer? ... Part of the answer clearly has to do with power, privilege, and one’s perceptions of them. People who feel socially disempowered are often sensitive to (or at least aware of) the presence of imposed surveillance, whereas those who align with power either ignore or welcome it as a luxury.”

I really enjoyed this deep-dive on friendships and how they change (or don’t change) over the course of our adult lives. “Friendships are unique relationships because unlike family relationships, we choose to enter into them. And unlike other voluntary bonds, such as marriages and romantic relationships, they lack a formal structure. You wouldn’t go months without speaking with or seeing your significant other (hopefully), but you might go that long without contacting a friend.”

Some beautiful notes by a beekeeper, reminding us of the humbling experience of ‘working with nature’ even in densely populated, urban environments. “Recently, I delivered honey from a client’s hives to his home. When I was leaving he walked out with me. ‘Thanks again for the honey,’ he said, tapping me on the shoulder for emphasis. ‘You don’t know what this means to us.’ But I understood that this household in the middle of a large city had just connected with nature. ‘You are a farmer!’ I told him.”