Readerly looks like a Twitter for book lovers, but it’s more of a friend-powered recommendation engine: “Every book you see is one that has been recommended by a like-minded reader, and every time you take an action on a book – save, hide, or mark it as read – we remove that book from your feed.” The app is currently waitlist-only. But Friends of DD get to jump the queue. Become a Friend to access specials like this.

Browse AI lets you train little ‘bots’ that monitor a website for changes and, if/when they occur, extract data accordingly. This can be helpful if you’re anticipating updates that you want to be notified of or want to automate certain steps based on new content being published.

Forvo is (according to them) the world’s biggest resource for learning pronunciations. You’ll find millions of words and phrases pronounced in their original languages. It’s more fun than I thought to look up words like Glenfiddich or pho. Don’t miss the kids section!

COVID brought us a seemingly endless supply of ambient sound generators. (Do we really dislike the sound of our homes so much?) If you ever yearned for a mix of light orchestral music and the sound of a trapped fly, complemented by suburban traffic noise, this is app is for you!

Breaking Things at Work →

Challenging the way we think about work, technology and progress

A timely book with an updated perspective on ‘Luddism’ and what the movement has to offer in regards to the modern technologies of today. “Breaking Things at Work is an innovative rethinking of labour and machines, leaping from textile mills to algorithms, from existentially threatened knife cutters of rural Germany to surveillance-evading truckers driving across the continental United States.”

Power, for All →

Understanding and navigating power

Why identifying power dynamics are essential to influencing people, organisations and society – this new book offers “a timely, democratized vision of power. While hierarchies tend to stay in place because power is often sticky, by agitating, innovating, and orchestrating change, they show how those with less power can challenge established structures to make them more balanced.”

A powerful essay on the effects of celebrity and fame that the internet conditions us to crave. “This, perhaps, is the most obviously pernicious part of the expansion of celebrity: ever since there have been famous people, there have been people driven mad by fame. In the modern era, it’s a cliché: the rock star, comedian, or starlet who succumbs to addiction, alienation, depression, and self-destruction under the glare of the spotlight. Being known by strangers, and, even more dangerously, seeking their approval, is an existential trap. And right now, the condition of contemporary life is to shepherd entire generations into this spiritual quicksand.”

This piece about how Silicon Valley is becoming the new Wall Street is now a few years old, yet it reads truer now than it ever has. Especially when you look at what’s happening in the crypto world. “In 2008, it was Wall Street bankers. In 2017, tech workers are the world’s villain. ‘It’s the exact same story of too many people with too much money. That breeds arrogance, bad behavior, and jealousy, and society just loves to take it down,’ the investor said. ... The royal treatment seems surreal at first, but most founders quickly acclimate to the free helicopter rides, the free concerts, the free gadgets, and the invites to rub elbows with one another at plush resorts on Montauk or Necker Island or Hawaii. They work hard, the justification goes. They’re changing the world. They deserve it.”

Need some motivation to call it quits? “What you’re doing [by not quitting] is avoiding the harder thing, which is confronting the uncertainty of change. You’re protecting yourself of the fear of regret.” (Possible soft paywall)

This interactive visualisation of modelled impacts of climate change is really well done, and nothing short of terrifying. “By the end of this year the world will have burned through 86% of the carbon ‘budget’ that would allow us just a coin flip’s chance of staying below 1.5C.”