Readings good, Amazon bad

Sometimes you'll get linked to an Amazon product page. Sure, you could buy it from there, but if you're in Australia, Readings Bookstore is a way better place to get your p-books. They have numerous Melbourne locations, a great website* and free shipping anywhere in Australia.

It would be convenient, would it not, not have a handy bookmarklet which would copy the product title from the Amazon page you were looking at and search for that title at Readings? Yes, yes it would.

What are you waiting for?  Drag the bookmarklet below to your favourites bar. Next time you're on an Amazon product page, you'll be ready**.

*Yes, we made it.

** I haven't actually tested this on more than two pages. YMMV.

On the permeability of the individual

We're accustomed to thinking of ourselves as atomic, indivisible entities. I am me, and you are you, and that’s that. I’m coming to see that this is only approximate. When people live and work together, sometimes—when it’s good—a gestalt entity emerges. Who can say who’s responsible for this piece of work, this meal, this idea, this experience? And as we offload more of our sensory and cognitive apparatus to a distributed digital armamentum, we share more of that apparatus with others. How long until the world mind?

Kinds of knowing

When I was twenty, an architect friend-of-a-friend designed a house where kitchen and shower wastewater ran in a stream across an internal atrium, the idea being that an awareness of one’s effluvia was a prerequisite for dealing with it effectively.

At the time, I didn’t get it: I had an intellectual appreciation for environmental concerns, but I didn’t see what I do now – how intuitively right his solution was. What is it, to feel something deeply, rather than just thinking it? What’s the difference between “knowing” and knowing?

Designing our lives

Code is hard but people are harder, and perhaps one’s own self is the hardest of all: it’s difficult to have the critical distance. We're skilled at considering how to make things better, quicker, more beautiful. Can we apply those same skills to our lives and our communities? Can we establish clear structures, eliminate the unnecessary, give ourselves breathing room? Can we refactor our methods, optimise our algorithms, stop making the same mistakes over and over? Can we spend a bit more time deciding what to do, and once we've made that decision, do it to the best of our collective abilities?