Happy Wednesday, friends!

A quick collection of links from the past week, covering topics from the economics of care to lizard toes. I hope you find something interesting in the mix.

Cheers,

Maya

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Made me think

• How we don’t value care and why it’s a big deal
• The Shopping Cure: pondering why we all keep buying stuff we don’t need to fix problems we don’t have
• A fascinating look at how Biden operates as president — with constant questions, deep deliberation, and an obsession for detail that is not obvious from his public persona. (And an interesting profile on Kamala Harris and the difficult task she has in balancing her Asian and African American identities.)
• Michelle Nijhuis on thinking deeper about what we mean when we say “nature,” “the wild,” and “wilderness”
• Rebecca Solnit, on how we’re not so good at telling stories of the hundreds of people working together who do great things— she quotes indigenous Australian artist Jonathan Jones, reflecting on his installation inspired by a murmuration of birds:
  • " I’m interested in this idea of collective thinking... How the formation of really beautiful patterns and arrangements in the sky can help us potentially start to understand how we exist in this country, how we operate together, how we can all call ourselves Australians. That we all have our own little ideas which can somehow come together to make something bigger."
  • “What are human murmurations?” she wonders (as do I, now).

Things to do

• Try the Big Tech Detective to see just how many websites you visit are controlled by Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft... and if you’re feeling particularly rebellious, block your access to sites by any or all of them (Dense Discovery)
• Join me in never filing another email again.
• A very overwhelming, very cool organization of every genre of music there is, with dozens of ways to explore it. Relatedly, a cool Spotify integration to discover new tunes.
• Never again worry about figuring out what to watch with this movie/TV search tool
• A pleasant, not-unlimited scroll through beautiful landscapes

Fun facts

• Spending time with therapy dogs really does have a cause lasting stress reduction, especially for those at highest risk!'
• Lizards are evolving bigger toepads (for gripping) in response to increased hurricane severity (The Whippet)