F1 (2025) — I know nothing about Formula 1, but F1 the movie was… okay. Some scenes were great, some felt like a TV episode. Javier stole the show though. Fast cars and quite a ride, just don’t expect a masterpiece. 🍿
Below, a quick roundup of a few of the things I learned over the past few months.
There could be billions more people living on Earth than currently thought, according to a new study which claims rural figures worldwide could be vastly underestimated. (The Independent)
Women tend to outlive men around the world. In 2021, this difference amounted to a 5-year gap in global life expectancy: the average life expectancy was 73.8 years for women versus 68.4 years for men. (Our World In Data)
Researcher Thomas Vilgis, as well as researchers from Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research and the University of Southern Denmark, have created a process to replicate foie gras without force-feeding, using the bird’s own lipases. (Physics of Fluids)
A major review of over 67,000 animal species by the University of Cambridge has found that targeted conservation measures like habitat protection, captive breeding and reintroductions are successfully restoring populations of endangered animals. (Phys.org)
Renewables accounted for 93% of new power capacity and reached 46% of global generating capacity last year. (IEA)
In a world-first trial, two of four paralyzed men regained significant mobility after receiving injections of neural stem cells. (Nature)
Blocking mobile internet on smartphones improves sustained attention, mental health, and subjective well-being. (PNAS Nexus)
Researchers successfully made miso on the International Space Station (ISS) and found that the miso smelled and tasted similar to miso fermented on Earth — just with a slightly nuttier, more roasted flavor. The team hopes this research will help broaden the culinary options available to astronauts, improving the quality of life for long-term space travelers. (iScience)
A new analysis of a vaccination program in Wales found that the shingles vaccine appeared to lower new dementia diagnoses by 20% — more than any other known intervention. (Stanford)
McMaster researchers have identified lariocidin, the first new class of antibiotics in nearly three decades, effective against drug-resistant bacteria. (Phys.org)
Since 2000, the global under-five mortality rate has fallen by 52 per cent, reflecting decades of investment and collaboration by governments, communities and partners. (UNICEF)
The world used clean power to meet more than 40% of its electricity demand last year. (Guardian)
A rare and large summertime phytoplankton bloom in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre in the summer of 2018 was prompted by ash from Kilauea falling on the ocean surface approximately 1,200 miles west of the volcano. (UHawaii)
Forbes’ 39th annual billionaires list revealed that there are now 3,028 billionaires around the world, with a staggering estimated collective wealth of $16.1 trillion. (Forbes)
A strain of flu appears to have disappeared from Earth. No confirmed cases of B Yamagata have been reported worldwide in the last five years, with experts attributing this to COVID-19 measures like social distancing and travel restrictions that likely caused the virus to die out. (Our World in Data)
Bricks haven’t gotten cheaper since [the mid-19th century, despite massive improvements in brickmaking technology. (Construction Physics)
Storms and flooding across Europe last year affected a total of 413,000 people, led to the loss of at least 335 lives and are estimated to have cost at least €18 billion in damages. Last year was the hottest year on record for Europe, with record-high annual temperatures in almost half of the continent. (Euronews)
Around 40 million acres of lawn, an area almost as large as the state of Georgia, carpets the United States. Lawn grass occupies more area than corn. (NOEMA)
People who are given a vaccine for shingles have a 23% lower risk of cardiovascular events, including stroke, heart failure, and coronary heart disease. (European Society of Cardiology)
Your fingers wrinkle in the same pattern every time you’re in the water for too long. (Binghamton)
Scientists have turned lead into gold using the Large Hadron Collider. The ALICE scientists calculate that, while they are colliding beams of lead nuclei, they produce about 89,000 gold nuclei per second — by accident. (The Conversation)
By 2027, almost all new homes in England will be legally required to have solar panels installed during construction, under new government plans. (Guardian)
Clownfish have been shown to shrink in order to survive heat stress and avoid social conflict (Newcastle University)
Since 2015, the African Development Bank has facilitated access to drinking water and sanitation for 96.2 million people, largely through the African Water Facility accelerator fund. The fund has improved access to sanitation for 11.3 million people, provided drinking water for 23.2 million, equipped two million hectares for irrigation, and will undertake at least 14 new projects in 2025. (African Development Bank)
The semicolon seems to be in terminal decline, with its usage in English books plummeting by almost half in two decades — from one appearing in every 205 words in 2000 to one use in every 390 words today. (Guardian)
The use and prevalence of hummingbird feeders has changed the size and shape of the Anna’s hummingbird’s beaks: bills get longer and they become more slender, and that helps to have a larger tongue inside that can get more nectar from the feeder at a time. The range of the hummingbird also spread from the southern part of California all the way up the West coast into Canada. (NPR)
People who have been taking antidepressants for more than two years are substantially more likely to experience withdrawal symptoms compared to short-term users when they come off the medication. (UCL)
Ibn al-Shatir was the first astronomer to have successfully challenged the Ptolemaic cosmological system of planets revolving around Earth and corrected the theory’s inaccuracies about two centuries before Copernicus. (Medievalists)
In 2023, seagoing vessels — from oil tankers to container ships — carried more than 12 billion tons of goods: roughly 1.5 tons for every person on Earth. (MIT)
Scientists have discovered a giant planet orbiting a tiny red dwarf star, something they believed wasn t even possible. The planet, TOI-6894b, is about the size of Saturn but orbits a star just a fifth the mass of our Sun. This challenges long-standing ideas about how big planets form, especially around small stars. (UCL/UofWarwick)
Scientists discovered a unique sugar in sea cucumbers that can block Sulf-2, an enzyme that cancer cells use to spread. (UMississippi)
Swapped my MacBook for a Framework 13, iPhone for Pixel, left Fosstodon, joined Micro.blog, and canned Kagi & YouTube. Less noise, more life. Here's how it's going...
Oof, that's a lot, right? So to save you reading lots of posts on all these changes in isolation, I thought I'd hit them all up quickly in a single post.
How very efficient of me, hey? Ok, let's jump in...
Framework 13
I already posted my initial thoughts after a week of use, most of which were positive. After using it for a couple of months, I'm extremely happy with my purchase. The screen issue was fixed quickly, as the Framework folks immediately sent me a replacement, and I’ve been able to test the repairability by upgrading the keyboard to the v2, which has no Windows key.
Battery life isn't as good as the MacBook, but it was never going to be. It is, however, more than good enough for my needs. I've been sat on the Framework in the lounge for the last 90 minutes or so, catching up on work emails and writing this post, and I still have 81% battery remaining.
Ubuntu runs perfectly on the Framework – I've had no issues with it and no occasion where I've felt the need for Windows or Mac.
Pixel 9a
Meh. It's a phone. It's fine. Battery life is good, camera is fine, it doesn't have much bloat on it (except for Google apps that I don't use), and I can do everything on it that I could on my iPhone. It was also half the price of the iPhone and will be supported for 7 years.
The Pixel doesn't wow me, but it does what I need it to do. Having said that, I don't remember the last time any phone wowed me.
iOS frustrated me in certain ways. Android frustrates me in other ways. Neither is perfect, but the significant difference in price is the clincher for me.
Micro.blog
I don't miss Fosstodon one bit. I have a lot more free time now, and once everything is fully handed over to Gina, I'll have more money too. 🙃
Micro.blog is a nice little community, and I can still interact with all the peeps on the Fediverse too, so I’m not missing out in that regard. What I have noticed is that I'm spending less time on Micro.blog than I did on Fosstodon. Not because the former is bad – far from it. I think it's a combination of things:
I'm not an admin, so there's less work for me to do and I don't need to spend as much time on the platform.
Manton – the founder of Micro.blog – has put a number of guardrails in place to prevent gamification. No likes, no boosts, no follower counts, no image replies, etc.
I'm really happy with my decision to switch to Micro.blog. If you're thinking about a move away from the Fedi, I'd consider Micro.blog first. It's a slower pace and has a lot of features that allow for customising the feed to make it more deliberate – or a firehose, if you prefer.
Kagi
I'm a search Luddite, so I don't need a lot of the power features that Kagi offers. I love what they're trying to achieve over there, but DuckDuckGo is perfectly good for my needs, so I might as well save myself $10/month.
I've been back on DDG for a little over a month now, and I haven't missed Kagi once. Says everything, really.
YouTube
I was finding that I was spending a shit-tonne of time on YouTube. Like, any time I had a spare 30 seconds, I'd whip my phone out and start wading through the crap that's on YouTube Shorts.
I cancelled my subscription to YT Premium and disabled the app on my phone (can't uninstall it on Android, which is annoying). I've also started deliberately not carrying my phone with me. I have a place in the kitchen where I leave it so I know where it is, but it prevents me from unconsciously pulling it out of my pocket.
I have to say, it's working really well. I very rarely go on YouTube at all now, even when in bed with my iPad. I'm mostly reading my Kindle in bed instead. My iPad isn't long for this world, being around 7 years old at this point, so when it stops getting updates, I don't think I'll replace it.
If I start to miss it, I'll probably buy a Pixel tablet. But something tells me I won't. We'll see...
Final thoughts
So there you go – I just saved you around four extra posts to wade through. All in all, I'm happy with the changes I've made to my tech. I'm saving money and will hopefully have hardware that lasts a lot longer.
Overall, I feel like my relationship to all this crap has shifted over the last few months. Before, I felt like I was perpetually online, but now, not so much. They're just tools at this point. Don't get me wrong, they're tools that I enjoy using (especially the Framework – it's bloody lovely), but tools nonetheless.
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A song I’m loving:
like walking through sun, 35mm film
“To live with an open heart is to get more comfortable with risk.”
My therapist said these words to me recently and they’ve been lingering ever since, ringing like a bell in moments I forget. In our work together lately, we’ve been exploring the inherent risk of letting myself be seen, witnessed, known — the risk of living beyond narrow narratives that once felt like the truth — the risk of being true to one’s self, of trying, of allowing intimacy, of leaning into momentum instead of staying comfortable in What Has Been, of Going For It in a world with no guarantees. Most potently, maybe, we’ve been tending to the risk of fully loving while knowing it will all end eventually.
Until the last few years, I had unknowingly associated risk with abandonment. To risk means potential loss, and loss had long been something I’ve avoided at all costs, even if it meant not letting myself fully have anything to begin with. I thought loss would obliterate me. I thought I’d be unable to bear it, unable to face the pain of it.
And yet one of the deepest lessons becoming a parent has given me is the inevitability of loss. I watch my daughter grow past every version of herself, our closeness taking on new shapes at each turn. I witness the wrinkles around my eyes becoming more apparent and remember I will one day leave her in the world — that she’ll be here without me in this form eventually. I feel the grief of every passing phase, every closed season, every reached development. She will never be smaller; I will never be younger; the tenderness of facing this each day has been intense and heart-opening in ways I am still trying to fully grasp. And it has forced me to reckon with the ways I’ve hesitated to let the love exist in its fullest — to unguard my heart, even when loss is unavoidable.
this beauty, 35mm film
The comfort of avoiding risk brought me far. I needed it to stay alive at one point; I guarded my heart from love because I didn’t yet know how to handle loss. I think of my infant self who had no clue why her first mother, her home, had left. I think of my child self who always sat on the periphery of friendships, reading on the hill at lunch instead of playing, of being known. I think of my teenage self, desperate to leave because staying, feeling, potentially losing, was unbearable. I think of my 20-something self, still unsure of how to let my partner’s love permeate my fear of opening. I think of my new mother self, floundering in the amount of love I felt for my child and the barriers I carried from the womb, the ones that still made it hard to truly let that love become a home instead of something to be skeptical of.
And I feel my current self, leaning into the risks of living more than I ever thought I’d be able to. I imagine all those past versions who didn’t know how to take the risk, who were too afraid to unfurl, and I bring them along as I practice, as I learn. I feel my daughter watching me be brave instead of afraid. I feel myself loving her in ways I didn’t ever know was available to me, and leaning into that love instead of turning away from it. I feel my infant self being cradled as I let love pour in and out now, as I remind her, us, that it’s inherently risky to let it all in, and yet the risk is the only way.
keep on keeping on, 35mm film
I’ve been asking myself lately, what is worth the risk of vulnerability, the risk of stepping out of comfortability? What am I willing to risk my comfort for?
I’m willing to risk my comfort for the sake of connection. I’m willing to risk my comfort for the sake of possibility. I’m willing to risk my comfort for the sake of alignment. I’m willing to risk my comfort for the sake of release. I’m willing to risk my comfort for the sake of true presence. I’m willing to risk my comfort for the sake of understanding. I’m willing to risk my comfort for the sake of growth. I’m willing to risk my comfort for the sake of wholeness. I’m willing to risk my comfort for the sake of love.
Even naming it is a reminder: there is so much on the other side of comfort. There is so much on the other side of taking the risk, of trying. There is so much on the other side of a guarded heart, on the other side of a protected self. There is so much on the other side of contrived certainty by way of staying comfortable. There is so much on the other side of the risk — and what’s on the other side is often not the danger we assume is there, or the rejection we fear awaits, or the pain we’re unsure we’ll be able to face; often, what’s on the other side is all we’ve been looking for, all our own strategies and modes of protection have been keeping at bay.
And with each risk, each step beyond comfort, each movement toward the potential of love blooming, my body learns it’s safe to not know — it’s safe to risk — it’s safe to face the hurt that may come from doing so — it’s safe to trust myself to be with it all. I can be with it all. I can be with it all. I can be with it all.
my person in the flowers, 35mm film
“To hope is to gamble. It's to bet on your futures, on your desires, on the possibility that an open heart and uncertainty is better than gloom and safety. To hope is dangerous, and yet it is the opposite of fear, for to live is to risk.” Rebecca Solnit
To live is to risk. Here’s to taking the risk. To doing the thing, wobbly and afraid. To reaching out with no guarantee you’ll ever hear back. To saying what’s on your heart, without being able to predict what will unfold from doing so. To going toward beauty, even when pain lingers. To changing direction, even as the familiar path remains. To trying, even when also failing sometimes is inevitable. To letting our imperfect humanness be seen, known, witnessed. To letting love out and in, perhaps the most risky thing of all — because letting it all out and in is what brings us more alive. Because letting ourselves grow more and more alive, in spite of all the uncertainty and risk in doing so, might be the only way to truly live.
Stockholm, Sweden — bought a bag of mixed candy for the movie. The person at the register only charged me for the drink. I asked if he forgot to charge for the candy. He replied: “It was such a small amount, it’s on us.” There’s still hope for the world! 🍬📷
Jesse Welles’ new song “Ozark” feels particularly lyrically rich. Here’s a sketch of what stood out to me.
I was born up on the hill
though I am being born still
Personal participation in the ongoingness of creation.
I was carried down to the river valley
on the big bend of the Arkansas
Carrying the baby to a special place in the river valley. Presentation of the child to the spirits of place. An introduction and initiation.
People talk but they don’t know
when ya tell em that’s where you call home
they say ah yeah buddy I seen that show before
but they don’t know what it’s like to feel
like the world is wrong and the nature’s real
rolling down Altus Hill
People don’t know what your home is like; at best they might have ideas formed by popular portrayals on television. Only those initiated into their places (“carried down to the river”), in relation to their place, can know it in any depth. Such initiates know that the world of appearances is the false world.
watch the river flow the way it does
watch the trees grow the way they do
it’s all connected
it’s all connected to you
Initiated into interconnectedness. Self and land are not separate.
when I was young I didn’t understand
but I’m older now and I’ve seen the land
Ozark please forgive my tresspasses
Foolish youthfulness does not appreciate its inheritance; that comes with age. The breach of ingratitude is forgiven through renewed relationship.
cause I’ve been around and I seen the way
everybody everywhere is about the same
Ozark just so beautiful, kiss my ass
Caplitalism flattens culture; market efficiencies want uniform products like McDonald’s cheeseburgers and country music. And now every small town is full of wannabe rednecks who are, in reality, another target demographic. But the particularity of place calls us to a higher loyalty. Fake consumerism can kiss my ass.
A male Hen Harrier. Uncredited photo from RSPB’s site.
On our wild uplands, birds of prey continue to be killed in appalling ways or disappear in mysterious circumstances. In recent years, I’ve made a significant effort to understand why these crimes occur, as they cause me frequent distress.
The primary reason is that rich landowners view these birds as a threat to lucrative field sports. Tomorrow, MPs will debate the urgent call for licensing of grouse shoots, which will supposedly make prosecution easier.
I believe that driven grouse shooting (where the birds are forced to fly over people with shotguns in fixed positions) should be banned entirely. Our uplands — which are drained and burned to support one species that wealthy people shoot in huge numbers — should be returned to a healthy state that supports our planet. Decades of work to find solutions have failed, so perhaps licensing is worth trying.
But killing birds of prey has long been illegal, and so I’d expect gamekeepers would continue to destroy them. I’ll likely never see a Hen Harrier when walking the high moorlands of the Peak District, and this breaks my heart.
If you’re interested in this topic, I strongly recommend Mark Avery’s excellent and thorough book, Inglorious.
The plan was to only use one computer so that I could stop thinking about syncing and software updates and backups and so on. That one computer needed to be portable. I had a 2021 MacBook Pro, but I traded it in for a new M4 MacBook Air (w/24GB and 1TB HDD). The MBP is still perfectly fine, but I wanted newer and smaller/lighter. I set the Air up "from scratch", and, after a few painful days, it's starting to feel like a usable machine that has most of my "stuff" on it.
My "One Computer" setup involves several computers 😁.
MacBook Air (M4) - Primary
Mac Mini (M2) - Home server
Intel NUC - Roon server
Synology - (retired)
The Mac Mini (M2) has been moved into a home server role. The Mini has an OWC Ministack enclosure hanging off it loaded with a 2TB SSD and an 8TB HDD. These drives contain all my RAW files/videos/archives/etc. Both drives are a just little over half full, so I have some room there. I decided to renew my Backblaze subscription and have it back up the Mini and both the drives in the Ministack. It's $100/year to have all my important stuff backed up remotely. Even though I still clone the backup drive to another HDD and carry it offsite manually, Backblaze is a good value for the size of the backups and the piece of mind it brings.
There are 3 other drives attached to the Mini...
There is an 8TB HDD, to which I copy everything from the Ministack every night using Carbon Copy Cloner. These are my local backups.
To avoid having to plug an external drive into the Air for Time Machine backups, I attached a 4TB drive to the Mini for use as a Time Machine drive.
And finally, the Mini is home to my Plex server, so I plugged another 8TB HDD into it for Plex media. So far, this drive is not backed up anywhere. I could include it in the Backblaze backups, but it just seems like too much. Honestly, if I were to lose that drive, I wouldn't be out anything I couldn't replace. It's not like I throw my DVDs away after ripping them. 90% of everything is available for streaming anyway. Plex is more because I like how it feels to play movies from inside the house.
That leaves 2 other computers on my shelf.
There's a little Intel NUC running my Roon Core. It's been running flawlessly for years, so I'll leave it be until it dies. The actual music files are backed up elsewhere. If it dies, I'll install Roon on the Mini and that will be one less computer to think about.
I'll be retiring the Synology. It's going on 10 years old and at this point it's redundant. What I may do is pull the (2) drives out of it and put them in a cheap enclosure with RAID for my Plex media. I know, I know, RAID Is Not a Backup™, but it's better than a single drive on its own, and we've already established that I'm not too worried about it.
One flaw I see here is that there's no explicit offsite backup of the Air. Nearly everything on that computer is synced via iCloud, so I'm not too concerned about this yet.
Technically, I'm not down to "One Computer", but the goal was to only use one computer, so I think I'm good.
I recently listened to a documentary about the artist Charli XCX. It featured, among others, the Swedish songwriter, producer, and friend Noonie Bao, who’s been with her since the very beginning.
Noonie shared how happy and moved she feels seeing Charli’s success. Having witnessed all the hard work and dedication firsthand, she talked about how Charli stood her ground when others doubted her, always trusting her own intuition. As Noonie wisely put it:
It’s easy to think that this kind of success happens overnight, but it simply doesn’t.
So true, and so easily forgotten.
We often look at people who’ve “made it” and assume their success was handed to them. While timing and luck are often mentioned - and yes, they do play a part - the real foundation is usually relentless hard work and a whole lot of patience.
So when we feel like giving up, maybe we should pause and ask ourselves:
Have we really given it our all?
Not all projects need to be successful, of course. There’s great value in creating just for the pure joy of it, whether it’s the Zen of CSS or a good side project.
But if we do have ambitions to take it to the next level, then we really do need to ask ourselves:
Am I truly willing to invest what it actually takes?
If not, keep doing it for the grand gratification of creating. When all those “must succeed” thoughts are set aside, that kind of freedom can actually lead to success too. That’s the beautiful paradox of the creative world.
