Hello there lovely email friends, hope you’re staying cool. I ventured outside briefly and now I look like a lobster trapped in a postbox. Anyway, I’ve ventured far and wide for you this week, virtually though as it’s too hot to move around. A fair few of these are worth more than a skim, when you have time this week.
📮 Open Letter to the Good Guys: Originally an Icelandic newspaper article, now translated by its author. Gentlemen in particular, please give this a thorough read. Women have worked long and hard enough to curb men’s violence; now it is men’s turn.
🛸 Why Does Utopian Architecture Suck? This excellent article notes we have many utopias at our fingertips—alternative energy systems; dense insulation to conserve energy; architecture sensitive to existing ecosystems; urban planning for mass public housing and transportation to replace oil-burning car dependence—yet starchitects’ rethinking of the built environment keeps going awry. See also: Combating the loneliness epidemic through urban housing.
📋 33 Ways To Simplify Your Life (And Be Happier For It): I mean, you really gotta be careful with a bait-ridden listicle like this, but rationalising your daily routine may lead to make better choices that ultimately leave you feeling happier and with more time to do the things that really matter.
🧳 Soul Music, Smalltown Boy by Bronski Beat: Excellent stuff from Radio 4 exploring this disco classic’s powerful story: that of a young, gay man leaving his homophobic small town for the freedom of the big city. Released in 1984, it continues to resonate and has become an anthem for the LGBTQ+ community.
😶🌫️ Near-death experiences have long inspired afterlife beliefs: Accounts are found in ancient sacred texts, historical documents, the journals of explorers and missionaries, and the ethnographic reports of anthropologists. Descriptions from around the world often bear striking similarities to myths of afterlife journeys in different religions, but can happen to followers of any religion, and to those of none.
⬛️ Helping a Loved One Navigate the Dark Waters of Depression: For those who have experienced depressive episodes, experience breeds resilience: adopting strategies to adjust, recognise the lows and navigate the waters of depression. But what can we do when it’s a loved one? How can we help the people we love to navigate the dark passages of depression?
🛌 The low-desire life: why people in China are rejecting high-pressure jobs in favour of ’lying flat’: It’s been dubbed ’tangping’ – shunning tough careers to chill out instead. But how is the Communist party taking the birth of this new counterculture? See also: Beijing Calling: Suspicion, Hope, and Resistance in the Chinese Rock Underground.
🎸 An Oral History of Glastonbury Festival 1992: Here’s a cross-section of memories, from bands, performers, journalists, rave crews, and those behind the scenes. Some of these are drawn from extant sources but most are fresh interviews, including from artists such as Primal Scream, The Orb, Shakespeare’s Sister and Carter USM.
🤨 We are all conspiracy theorists: In each of our minds, we draw a line of demarcation between beliefs that are reasonable and those that are nonsense. This article asks, where do you draw your line?
🥅 The Long Win, Resetting our Perspective on Success: an interesting rumination on short-term versus long-term success across sport, business, diplomacy and education.
🌊 World’s Largest Seagrass Project Proves You Can Actually Restore the Oceans: A “game changing” 20-year effort suggests that even severely depleted marine ecosystems can be brought back to life. Time, effort, money innit.