Friday!
Okay, I've been slack with helpful climate content lately (it's fine the world is burning while I procrastinate whatever) cause I got my wisdom teeth pulled out and I'm writing this PhD thing. My best news this week is that I can now eat weetbix again. Also, when you have a bunch of stitches inside your mouth, and then one morning you wake up and they're not there any more, where did they go? Asking for a friend. Given the renewed feeling of emergency this week, this was encouraging: the economics researcher who conducted the 2008 and 2011 climate reviews for the Australian government says that reducing emissions will cost much less than previously thought, and Australia has an unparalleled economic opportunity in a post-carbon world. Also, this week we hit a milestone and met 50% of electricity demand in Australia from renewable sources for a period on Wednesday. In response to this week's declaration signed by 11,000 scientists that the climate emergency is upon us and accelerating faster than predicted, several organisations have announced they're stepping up pressure on our federal government. If you'd like to take material action in support of these campaigns, you could make a quick one-off donation right now - take a look at what the Climate Council and Greenpeace have got going on. Okay! We are now entering the non-climate good news zone! After a 10-year-old McDonalds burger on display in Iceland got a lot of media buzz, these Aussie legends topped it with a 25-year-old Big Mac they've been saving for a friend. ""It's as hard as a rock," said [co-owner] Mr Dean, adding that it has never smelt at all." I know we've seen it before but this video of a dog meeting its favourite toy IRL is just one of the best things out there. Also: this collection of thoughts of Dog! The love of dogs for humans is so pure. And funny. (Thanks Daniel and Leesa for tagging this on facebook.) Also: everything is terrible so I googled "dogs being interviewed" and it helped. I recently took up running (I feel like this is super out of character for me but nobody else thinks so?) but for the past three years I've been a happy half-marathon widow. So much YES to this lovely piece that captures the magic of not running marathons while somebody else does. "When somebody recognises you in a grocery store nod briefly and become a cabbage" ...is maybe the most relatable line of poetry I've ever read. Here's the whole poem, which perfectly captures how I feel in this current season of my life. (Sorry and thank you to everybody who is actually, somehow, still my friend.) We try not to buy new stuff ever, but some essentials are trickier to get second hand - like undies. Just discovered Le Buns, a Melbourne-based sustainable underwear and swimwear brand that sells its seconds at half-price and has free shipping within Australia. I haven't tried them yet so if you do, let me know how it goes! Book recs from my bedside reading stack this week: A Life Less Throwaway - why and how to buy things that will last for your whole life The Bear and the Nightingale - wintry fairytale; Russian names that are fun to say out loud Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk - New Year's Eve, New York City, 1984. Sassy 85-year-old lady goes for a long walk, meets a bunch of people and reminisces about her former life as the highest-paid woman in Mad Men-era advertising. Related: this is the real-life "Subway Vigilante" incident that forms part of the background setting of the book. TV update: I'm in Glee season 3 and The Office season 4. Let your enthusiastic debriefing in my facebook comments commence. Happy weekend, friends. "May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears." (Nelson Mandela but it totally sounds like something Dumbledore would say, right?) xx Kamina
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Friends!
I just started watching Glee for the first time ever (currently on Netflix). I thought it was great, then awful, now I've circled back around to great again. The show is 50% musical numbers so on balance, what's not to love? Also, I got a new phone. Having rocked my refurbished iPhone 5 since 2015, I just bought a refurbished iPhone 7 in as-new condition for a heavily discounted price. If you didn't know that refurbished phones were a thing, look into it! It's a great way to upgrade (when you need to) by re-using something that's still perfectly fine. I'll be donating my old phone (which still does basic things, mostly) to the nearby asylum seeker centre, where they have a program for passing on phones to people in need. For anybody not following climate news closely: this week parliament debated the declaration of a climate emergency in Australia, then voted against it. This sounds like bad news, but the fact that the entire Labor party backed the declaration and it warranted a proper debate is ACTUALLY PROGRESS. We'll keep fighting! (Related: how to talk to your local MP.) For those people as anxious as I am: how to use meditation to cope with climate change. In honour of marking season (for those of us who are teachers, academics or university-adjacent): lines from The Princess Bride that double as comments on freshman composition papers. (Sidebar: I hate The Princess Bride. Come at me, I don't care.) Necessary: An instagram account of round animals. Like, round like a circle. ROUND. Some good news out of the USA: this major sporting goods store has voluntarily destroyed $7.4 million worth of semiautomatic guns and is reconsidering the whole idea of selling guns. Yay. I could look at this art all day: sketches of tree silhouettes that look like people. Twisty! "So many things are bewildering, unfathomable, and—at least, on some level—pretty hilarious." Mama Hotdog! I thought this was pretty cool: this First Nations couple were the first in over 100 years (on their land) to wed in a traditional cultural union ceremony. Mary Oliver is my favourite poet and this is one of my favourite poems. I could stop reading after the first line - the deepest needs of my heart are met in those seven words. I love emojis. I love the evolution of language. I love the sentence "If you want to understand how the peach emoji has come to represent both the potential impeachment of President Trump and a butt, you must first look to the ancient Sumerians." So obviously, I love this. And I love you guys. We're all going to be okay. Happiest, happiest weekend! xxx Hello friends!
First, something important. There's currently an e-petition on the Australian House of Representatives website, calling on our government to officially declare a climate emergency. When I signed there were 55,000+ signatures and rising fast. The more signatures, the more chance that this will garner serious media attention and (more importantly) force an actual discussion in parliament. To put it in context, the largest petition ever submitted had 1.2 million signatures, and the one in second place had 790,000-ish signatures (that one was about taxes on beer - Aussie as.) It would be amazing if we could top that! The petition is open to Australian citizens and residents until 16th October. If you want to get on board, sign here and share the link. WHAT a week. Trump impeachment proceedings! Boris Johnson misleads our Queen! Australia is the laughing stock of UN climate summit! I'm thinking of renaming this FORGET ABOUT IT FRIDAY because srsly, we need one day in the damn week where we can just block our eyes and ears and calm down. I marched for the Global Climate Strike in Brisbane on Friday. There were so many amazing things about the day, but one significant victory I'll mention here - the tone of mainstream media coverage is shifting from ridicule to empathy. Here's a great piece from 7 News about the day. Finally, some news from the climate crisis that made me laugh out loud. I was so happy to discover this existed. The Comedy Wildlife Photography awards is exactly what it sounds like: quite good photos of animals peeing on each other, falling over, making hilarious faces and so on. Here are the 2019 finalists. I love this idea for a surprise gift. Super memorable, and yay for gifting experiences over stuff! This tiny house in Japan is so beautiful, and thanks to clever design it looks unexpectedly spacious. Hard recommend for an instagram follow: Lord Birthday makes me laugh in a weird way and cry a little bit (click through the multiple pics on that last one - I'm pretty sure this is based on a real season in the artist's life. Yep.) The other day I remembered the Nazca Lines exist and was wowed all over again. Anybody else LOVE unexplainable phenomena like this? I could read Wikipedia all day long. Book recommendation: Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie looked really heavy, but it was actually really beautiful and easy to read - I'd go so far as to call it unputdownable. Heart-opening. I also recently read The No Spend Year. It was a little OTT in some respects (I wouldn't want to go a year without buying anybody a gift) but so, so good for putting spending in perspective and showing how much it's possible to save when you just don't consume. I've been leaning into my passion for television. It's my favourite art form and such wonderful escapism, which is important when you're facing potentially the end of the world as we know it. If you have Netflix, Anne with an E is not as awful as I first thought (if you can push past the arrogant anachronisms, there's a lot to like about it). We also just started watching The Office (American version), which we somehow missed most of the first time around. If you haven't seen the British version, run, don't walk to the library to request it - I still think it's the greatest piece of television ever made. Have fun this weekend! Watch good television! Sign that petition! Surprise somebody with generosity! And do something nice for YOU. xx Happy Friday, friends!
It's grey, drab and drizzly here, but I'm snuggled up in the window seat of my favourite cafe with a rug on my knees and a soy cappuccino at my elbow. Later I'll wander across the block to collect from my Friday afternoon fruit and veg co-op, and my husband is coming home tonight after a few days away. I love today! First, good news for the climate: This week Coles signed long-term contracts to power its stores using renewable energy, following a series of Australian businesses to do the same. And the Brisbane City Council lost its court bid to stop people protesting about...the right to protest? Related and funny: Some sinister tactics those brave protesters could have used but also didn't. ("Sneakily hitching a police person's belt to a hot air balloon and then laughing unkindly as they floated away." ) (I feel like the only way to cope with what's happening in QLD local politics right now is to laugh.) Fun and free: How to stop buying sh*t you don't need. A resource produced by Yes and Yes, one of my favourite blogs and definitely an awesome thing to sign up for. Download it and do it this weekend. Also from Sarah at Yes and Yes: FYI, buying second-hand makes you feel cooler and richer. I really enjoyed this sweet piece about a tiny New York house that's always open for a party. (New York Times.) Bittersweet, but I love this poem about happiness. And I will never not laugh at these silly, dark Harry Potter comics. It's deep citrus season where we are. In an effort to use the entire fruit, Mick has been making batches of delicious marmalade, loosely following this recipe. Book recs: This week I read The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver. It was so good I tore through it in a weekend and immediately reserved its sequel (Pigs in Heaven) at the library. I've also been reading Becoming by Michelle Obama. So easy to read and interesting. (Did you know POTUS travels around with a HAZMAT RESPONSE TRUCK in his motorcade? And A STORE OF BLOOD IN HIS TYPE?) Related life hack (related to reading books, not the presidential motorcade): Whenever I hear of a book I'd like to read, I quickly email myself the name of the book from my phone so I'll see it next time I'm on the computer. Then at my earliest opportunity, I look it up in the catalogue of my city library. Nine times out of ten the library has the book I'm searching for, and I request to have it held for me at my local library branch. So I get a steady stream of texts from the library letting me know that a book I reserved is ready to pick up, often weeks later when I've forgotten about it, translating into a steady stream of surprise, high-quality reading material curated for me, by me. High five, past Kamina! I hope the week has treated you well. And whatever your troubles, you have more chance of winning if you bring your best self to the game. So switch off your worries and your cares and look after you this weekend. xx Kamina Happy Friday, friends!
I'm in total crash/relax mode after my PhD confirmation presentation yesterday. When it was over, I immediately went and got a Thai massage then went out for woodfired pizza with some longtime, faraway friends who happened to be in town. I've been feeling really sad about the state of the world this week, and hopeless about our future. But only HOPE spurs us towards action. So take a breath and practice some radical trusting in this moment with me...and enjoy some internet distraction on this Good News Friday. With that, here are 6 reasons for hope in the face of climate change - in a heartfelt speech by ecologist Professor Lesley Hughes upon accepting her lifetime achievement award for work on climate change. I feel intensely grateful to older people (who likely won't live to experience the most devastating impacts of climate change) who make life choices that will serve future generations. Sylvia powers her home and car from solar panels on her property, and road-tripped around Australia in the electric car (at a cost of around $150 over 20,000km for electricity). It's possible! Now some stuff to remind you there are good and beautiful and true things to think about, when you're not thinking about environmental devastation: When I was trying to think of things that make me happy, the first thing I thought of was Nathan W. Pyle's comics about living on a strange planet. (Hard recommend that you follow his instagram.) For practical self-care: 10 simple steps to enjoy daily life. One of my favourite podcasts is Dax Shepherd's Armchair Expert. Dax and his sidekick Miniature Mouse (Monica Padman) interview celebrities, thinkers and experts about the messiness of being human. Some of my favourite interviewees have included Ashton Kutcher, Zach Braff, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss and relationship expert Esther Perel. Last week we passed a pile of abandoned books on the roadside, and one of them was A Modern Way To Eat by Anna Jones. Reading this book is an intoxicating experience and it makes seasonal cooking seem completely accessible. Okay, not exactly "good news" - but I've been reading Kate Grenville's amazing novel The Secret River. I just found out it was made into a mini-series that you can watch online. Harrowing, but important (and so so compelling). This just got more enjoyable as it wore on. Mine are "I don't believe in..." (insert totally innocuous thing like "owning books" or "bootcut jeans"), "awkies", "whatevs", saying "I have a rule that..." (I have a rule about everything), "that's not a word" when I don't understand something, "NOPE" when I hate something and yelling "friggety frack!" (thank you Sheldon Cooper) or "holy frick on a stick!" (Elliot Reed). What are yours? Current Netflix recommendations: Queer Eye season 4 (obvs) (oh that's another one of the things I say in earnest!) and have you seen Glow or Derry Girls yet? WHY THE HECK NOT? Probably the most feel-good things I have seen on TV in a year. Go get into it! I love you all. Now go boldly into your weekend and enjoy our world. x K |
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