Hello gorgeous friends, thank you for having me once again. There’s a bad habit among newsletter-senders to pour over recipient data, pick out those who appear not to have opened, and send again “in case you missed it”. Drives me mental. It’s a weird, selfish assumption that you have nothing better to do than instantly tear open an email like it’s a present on Christmas morning. I’d rather trust you to know how to operate your own inbox and read at your convenience, rather than when I happen to send. So—at your leisure—let’s get into it, shall we?
😴 Boring Postcards from Portugal: if you gather enough boring things together, do they become interesting? Perhaps, if those boring things are Portuguese postcards. Already it seems strange to buy a printed photograph of something so you can mail it to someone else, yet I still kinda wanna do it.
👔 Can A Shirt And Tie Make You More Productive? A study of the best thing for gentlemen to wear while working from home: “I have always tended towards the formal and would never wear sweatpants when working from home. But, as my social feeds filled with people extolling the virtues of working in loungewear, I wondered: had I had been doing it all wrong for years?… I needed data. Would I be more productive wearing pyjamas for a week, or wearing a suit for a week?”
🖨 Ceramic coral reefs and sawdust houses: the architects 3D-printing the future from scratch: 3D printing is moving beyond plastics: instead, these architects use everything from car tyres and sawdust to grape skins and coffee grounds. Via experimentation with such novel substances, the duo aims not only to create more sustainable approaches to 3D printing, but to brainstorm innovative solutions to pressing societal problems too.
🌿 The Skinny Gourmet: Ten Mistakes New Herb Gardeners Make (and How to Avoid Them!): So you’re thinking of herb gardening, or maybe you tried it last year and it was an utter disaster? Have no fear. There are a few simple mistakes that many herb newbies make. Master these simple and practical tips for herb gardening and you’ll be using your own fresh herbs in no time.
🌅 Tame Impala Made the Perfect Summer Album. Then Summer Got Canceled: Kevin Parker on loosening up in quarantine.
👜 Gucci plans “new path” with catwalk schedule reduced to twice a year: Uncharacteristically enlightened thinking from the world of high fashion: the brand has signalled an overhaul to its schedule, following a rethink by creative director Alessandro Michele: “Above all, we understand we went too far. Our reckless actions have burned the house we live in. We conceived of ourselves as separated from nature. We usurped nature, we dominated and wounded it.”
The other outbreak
It is maddening that we should still be seeking action on racial injustice. It is also encouraging to see so many voices unite in support of change. Many of us cannot know such injustices first-hand, but can choose to be active in stamping them out. Passive solidarity isn’t helpful: we must lend our active support and privilege to this cause.
So no rambling this week. I’ve picked out some interesting things that White people should invest in understanding, but Black people know only too well.
✊ I Am Racist, I Vow to End Racism: Here’s a viewpoint that really set me thinking. There’s a leap from assuming you’re not a racist to being clear that you don’t want to be one. Not thinking about racism is itself an indicator of white privilege. “How could I not be? I grew up in an almost all-white suburb within a country that was built on racism; almost every day, I was presented with racist imagery and speech—sometimes implicit bias and ignorance and other times explicit hate. Even as I write this, I have to admit that I’m only doing so because a cop killed George Floyd—or rather only because so many people spoke out and took to the streets that I couldn’t ignore it anymore. Racists like me have the privilege of forgetting about racism.”
🇺🇸 It Really Is Different This Time according to two dozen experts. To offer some context for what we’re living through, and why it feels especially unsettling right now, Politico Magazine asked a range of thinkers to tell us what’s really different this time around.
📜 A Timeline of Events That Led to the 2020 ‘Fed Up’-rising: Without the proper context, it is impossible to understand the uprisings that are exploding in the wake of the deaths of George Floyd, Breanna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and countless others. This article forms a timeline of some of the events that contextualise the anger, frustration and desperation that forced protesters to recreate the lawlessness and chaos that black people experience on a daily basis.
😑 A Sociologist Examines the “White Fragility” That Prevents White Americans from Confronting Racism: In more than twenty years of running diversity-training and cultural-competency workshops for American companies, the academic and educator Robin DiAngelo has noticed that white people are sensationally, histrionically bad at discussing racism. In 2011, DiAngelo coined the term “white fragility” to describe the disbelieving defensiveness that white people exhibit when their ideas about race and racism are challenged—and particularly when they feel implicated in white supremacy. Why, she wondered, did her feedback prompt such resistance, as if the mention of racism were more offensive than the fact or practice of it?
🗺 Racial Divide: These maps show the racial divide between black and white people in major American cities. On my first visit to the USA 15 years ago, I got to see this for myself in Chicago. The steps taken to force communities apart based on skin colour are unbelievable.
🎓 A Class Divided: The day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed, Jane Elliott, a teacher in a small, all-white Iowa town, divided her third-grade class into blue-eyed and brown-eyed groups and gave them a daring lesson in discrimination. This is the story of that lesson, its lasting impact on the children, and its enduring power 30 years later.
⬛️ How Did #BlackOutTuesday Go So Wrong So Fast?: Instead of posting useful content or publicly donating, celebrities and influencers are now posting a black square “in solidarity” with the black community. It even reached celebrities who aren’t in the music industry, twisting a movement intended to amplify black voices into performative and potentially harmful allyship. But just as soon as #BlackOutTuesday took off, several celebrities spoke out about its flaws.
🎧 Electronic Music Is Black Protest Music: Clubbing and its culture of escapism originated in Black and Brown communities. It’s time to understand exactly what this means. See also: Racism In The Music Industry.