Welcome to 5 Quick Things that I saw since last month that I thought were interesting enough to share with you. None of them are particularly timely so feel free to just enjoy 🙂

>Number One<

In An Age of Speed, Slow is Revolutionary

As a very avid YouTube watchers and long essay lover (in both video and written form), I feel really strongly about how people tend to spend most of their time “reading” and “watching” extremely short, bite sized ideas and thoughts. Not that I don’t also check my Twitter, look at Facebook, watch a couple short videos etc. but I feel like, as with most things, you need a balance. You need to watch a movie, or a documentary, or a a long YouTube essay just to get different ideas and different lengths of ideas in your head. While there is nothing inherently good about long form anything (lord knows everyone is out here binging long TV shows that offer very little in terms of emotional, spiritual, or intellectual challenge) and you can get a lot of wisdom from a koan or poem you mull over for hours – there is something to be said about the flexibility that a long form YouTube essay offers which is well edited to the exact time it wants to be and gives a deeper dive than a 5 minute gloss or a person pointing at text on TikTok. This essay about the hour long YouTube lives next to a short 20 minute YouTube in my head about some of these ideas. Both ironically – worth the time.

>Number Two<

Paved Paradise

My city has started a green initiative these past few years and one of the things they want to do is to make sure that there aren’t more parking spaces added to the city. It’s a great idea that I hope they follow through with but in Europe it’s a much less pressing issue than in the US. In that way, I have been thinking about parking a lot lately and this article hits the nail on the head around some of thoughts I was having. Especially in the face of climate change, parking lots are kind of a terrifying prospect and I think it’d be good for people to maybe spare a few extra thoughts for how we use the space around us and if that is really the best thing for us, for the environment, or for the lives we would like to be living.

>Number Three<

Oft Ignored Thick of It

Happy Shiiba put out three YouTube videos (all bangers) about a year ago and hasn’t posted anything since but all three of them are worth a watch and personally, I think this one most of all. Depending where you are in on the internet and what gender you mingle with you may have some or no idea about the politics of fat but you’ve certainly encountered them in your life with or without your notice. It’s a great area to be more aware about and this video is a perfect jumping off point.

>Number Four<

Flung Back Into the Past

I got my first computer in my room well before the internet looked like this but I do remember the Angelfire/Geocities period of the internet very well and it was a beautiful, wonderful time if not aesthetically (so.much.neon.) then for no other reason that with a few hours, for free, you could have your own website made where you could post whatever you wanted. Unlike the web now which is an extremely complicated mishmash of mostly Web2.0 “free” (you as the service) or worse, having to pay money for hosting, then software, then support in order to make even the most basic websites instead this website sends you back down that hole of a simpler time. There are things from the past I am happy to have outgrown but move from website creation to web service interaction is, at the very least, one that gives me pause.

>Number Five<

Material Action in the Face of Climate Change

So, we all know that money is fake. I mean, money is very real and its probably ruining some part of your life right now but also money is fake and it’s just a thing that we made up and we can do whatever you want because it’s just an agreement made by all of us. And maybe, one of those things that we should do (because money is just a collective mirage) is cancel the debt of poor and devloping nations so that they can invest in new solutions for their country including their own unique solutions to climate change for their area. Just a suggestion. And then maybe we can all see how fake money is and start cancelling other debts – and money. I don’t know, just thinking out loud I suppose.

Alright folks that’s all she wrote, see you next month!