The problem is that waste has always been a marginal issue, both literally and figuratively. It has been dumped in and on the peripheries, consigned to that mythical place called ‘away’. It has always been an ‘externality’, an unavoidable byproduct of necessary industrialisation. But it is now an internality – internal to every ecosystem and every digestive system from marine micro-organisms to humans.
A great article on our throwaway culture and the central position of waste in it all. This generated waste is, basically, the metabolism behind economic growth.
Some filmmakers can do action, others can do comedy. And this video shows why Jackie Chan is one of the rare people to combine them well.
Because they aren't creepy enough, Facebook have been found to be using the accelerometer on iPhones to track all their owners' movements. Just delete your account.
Another hypnotising piece of footage captured by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Insitute.
Redu is a village in the south of Belgium that's famous for its many bookshops. As physical book sales die, the village is dying alongside them. Some locals are trying new things though.
“Obesity is not a medical epidemic – it’s a social epidemic. We have bad food, for example, and so people are getting fat.” The way we live changed dramatically – our food supply changed, and we built cities that are hard to walk or cycle around, and those changes in our environment led to changes in our bodies. We gained mass, en masse. Something similar, he said, might be happening with the changes in our attention.
Johann Hari believes we now need an attention movement to reclaim our minds and I definitely agree. I've felt this theft of my attention too.
