Beamspun 12: 5th July 2020

Local sunrise / publish time: 0353 UTC (+4m)

Hello. Before we go any further, let's all just take a break. Pause this for a minute, five minutes, 20 minutes, an hour, whatever suits. It's ok. Take some breaths, look around to the corners of your vision, listen to the wind or the night or whatever else surrounds you. Just, you know, it's fine to stop. You don't have to feel guilty or excited or even curious about stopping. It's just a Thing that you can Do. Trust me, it'll be the best thing you do all day.

Now you're back, I'll be stopping too. Just for a week, mind. I've written more at the bottom, but we have work to do, and gathering yourself first is the only way to know if you're doing that work sensibly.

P.S. The ether went weird and this post was originally blank. Apologies if you get this twice, or never, or anything other than once...

Links

• cities: Anne Hildago has been re-elected mayor of Paris, and will be continuing the push towards a city for people, rather than cars: 'As part of her manifesto Hidalgo plans to turn the French capital into a myriad of neighborhoods where “you can find everything you need within 15 minutes from home.”'

• tao-culture: This week I've been returning to the Three Treasures of the Tao Te Ching - along the lines of compassion, simplicity and "not-being-in-front". I'm particularly struck by some of the similarities with the permaculture ethics: do they relate to people care, earth care and fair share respectively?

• tech: As a developer, it's intriguing to really stop and think about the effect our lines of code have on CPU cycles, and on global energy usage when we scale up what we do. "We can lower our carbon output if we'd just take the headphones off for a minute and stop behaving like a bunch of morlocks."

• academia: Videos from the recent ICT4S conference (ICT for Sustainability) are now online and my to-watch list, especially the keynote speech on pushing for a responsible innovation.

• meta-links: No Tech magazine has been posting some good links this week, with the following two links grabbing my attention:

• Mark Boyle on living without money: "over time I found my reasons slowly change. They now have less to do with saving the world, and much more to do with savoring the world. The world needs savoring." There is a key point in here that detaching from industrialism is not about severing ties from society, but just engaging with it on one's own terms, at one's own pace.

• Imagining the Communal Kitchen of 2030

• ritual: Some thoughts to really ponder in this read on Ritual "technologies" of smell, singing, and light. We get so used to the idea that we can 'design' houses, computer games, and so forth. What about little steps to 'design' our own mindset ona daily basis?

• music: Enjoying the ANNO 2070 soundtrack as I write this. Good mix of ambience and flying-sailing-fish image.

Solnotes

Solstice has changed something. I'm not sure what, just something nearby. The hard work of spring has given way to growth, given the world its own momentum. The berries are growing as they will, now.

I think I'm going to take a break from the newsletter next week. A fallow week, if you will. It's been agood few months and a lot of ideas and thoughts are spiralling out of them, I need some time to let them sink in and find some deep, dark earth to take root in.

If all goes well, the newsletter will shift after that. It will take what it's learned, and spin a thread out in new, subtley different direction. Perhaps. Or it may just stay the same while I carry on figuring out where to go. We'll see.

So catch you in two weeks. I hope whatever you're growing bears fruit.

Get in touch

If you enjoyed this, then please spread the word and tell someone else that you think might be interested - https://beamspun.exmosis.net/ is the address to spread!

For any feedback, suggestions, broken links, comments, or general 'hi there' type stuff, leave a comment, or you can find me hanging out in any of these places:

• Mastodon: @scribe@mastodon.sdf.org
• Gnu/social: @6gain@loadaverage.org
• Twitter: @6loss
• XMPP: 6gain@xmpp.zone
• Email: beamspun (at) exmosis.net - until the spambots find me

I'm also documenting my own 'everyday solarpunk adventures' over at the 6suns blog.