Greetings, friends, happy April, and happy Easter!

It’s not the New Year, but I’ve got a couple new resolutions...

• Short-term (this week?): Finally learn how to do a cartwheel
• Long-term (a few years?): Read a book and listen to a song from every country/territory in the world. All recommendations welcome!

Any new goals coming up for you lately?

Also: acquired a large quantity of shells of all shapes from a recent trip to South Carolina, and pondering what art projects to do with them. Ideas?

Anyway, onward to to the links. As always, I’d love to hear any comments or reactions!

Cheers,

Maya

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An unorganized list of links for your perusal

• Stunning aerial views of solar panels and greenhouses show the beauty of a green transition.
• I’d go into the office to work if it looked something like this… plants are everything. Have you heard about the IKEA greenhouse hack? It is my goal to build one.
• A compelling argument against the current system of applications for basically.. all applications, and some alternatives that sound sorta crazy at first but are growing on me pretty quickly. Would love to hear thoughts on this idea!
• Not quite surprising, but still depressing how far microplastics have infiltrated the deep sea.
• A profile of Mike DeWine, and the sad state of the Republican party. Really reminds me of the spectrum of views out there, and how much it’s changed in recent years.
• The system that has developed to bring products to the most remote locations — those that even Amazon doesn’t service — is quite impressive.
• This newsletter, “In Defense of Debate,” resonated with me— I so often automatically dismiss free speech advocates by virtue of their viewpoint, but Jill Flilpovic makes a solid argument as to the value of continuing to defend our basic rights.
• Find a book by reading just the first page... this goes against my habit of very extensive research into the plot and style of a book before I read it, but would be a good spontaneity challenge!
• Another fascinating, smoothly-crafted visual essay by the Pudding, this time on the figures we find on banknotes across the world.