Hello lovely email friends, hope you’re well. I recently bought another record player—not a fancy turntable, but a little portable thing—in an effort to make my records as close-at-hand as, say, Spotify. Then at Christmas I was generously gifted a little case in which to keep a small selection of my most treasured albums. To select which should be shortlisted for this exclusive collection-within-a-collection, I posed myself a question: if my home were ablaze, which would I rescue? What I’ve learnt from this exercise is I’m unlikely to survive a house-fire. Please test your smoke alarm.
⚖️ Want Drastic Climate Action? Maybe It’s Time to Sue the Government: Do citizens have a legal right to a stable climate? Increasingly, high-ranking officials are suggesting they do. In September, the UN Human Rights Commission passed a resolution that declared “a clean, healthy, sustainable environment a human right”. Meanwhile, The Global Climate Litigation Report, published by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at New York’s Columbia Law School, references more than 1,550 climate lawsuits in 38 countries. Cases have nearly doubled since 2017, brought by plaintiffs who are emboldened by the recent success of several climate lawsuits.
🍔 A Short Essay on Abundance: an interesting comment on the abundance mentality by someone raised in scarcity. There is enough. We are enough.
🎹 The 1960s Electronic Band That Built Their Own Synthesizer, Produced Two Pioneering Albums, and Then Faded into Obscurity: In the late 70s and early 80s, a handful of musical duos emerged who would have tremendous impact on post-punk, alternative, new wave, and experimental electronic music. Before them all came Silver Apples, a duo who should rightly get credit as pioneers of electronic experimentation in pop song form. They also suffered from a string of some of the worst luck a band could have. See also: Rare French Loumavox Synthesizer Is ‘A Beautiful Fake’.
🧶 The jumper that created Alan Partridge: Steve Coogan recalls first performing as Alan Partridge, originally a radio character, for a live audience for the first time in 1991. He bought a jumper in Lillywhites on Regent Street: something middle-aged men would wear to say, “Look, I’ve got a nice sweater.” He put it on, combed his hair to one side, and that’s how Alan Partridge was born.
💩 The Weirdness Beyond Web3’s Bullshit: It’s easy with Web3 to fall foul of What You See Is All There Is. On first impression, the whole space looks like bullshit because the bullshit screams in all directions. Filter it out, this article argues, and there are interesting ideas worth exploring. See also: first impressions of web3.
👩🚒 Your work is not your god: welcome to the age of the burnout epidemic: The reason why so many of us are at the end of our rope? We allowed work to be what gave our lives meaning.
🦀 Horseshoe crab blood: the miracle vaccine ingredient that’s saved millions of lives: Nature plays a huge part in the medicines we rely on every day. And when it comes to vaccines, we have horseshoe crabs and their blood to thank for keeping us safe.
🧱 The shock of the New Towns: The first wave of British New Towns was an extraordinary achievement driven by an acute post-war housing need, defying the critical shortage of building materials. Fourteen were designated in three years. This was practical idealism, ‘building for the new way of life’.