Love & Work
A notebook about how we work, learn, love and live.
This week Debbie and I spent a couple of days with old friends, we participated in a protest at our town hall, and my friend Chris Sikes and I helped a very cool community organization think about their strategic priorities.
As Lynne Segal says in this week's lede story, the pleasure of acting in concert to assert our need for each other and our natural world can hold us together during these challenging times.
Happy Friday.
How We Live
“Making hope possible, rather than despair convincing.”
Lynne Segal, center, in 1973. Copyright Lynne Segal
Lynne Segal has been asking important questions since the 60s. She was clear then. She is clear now.
"Rather than simply facilitating forms of predatory capitalism, which will always feed off ongoing calamities, the many present crises can encourage us to find better ways of seeking change together. Despite all impediments, watching the vitality of today’s progressive movements—from radical eco-warriors to Black Lives Matter and disability rights activists, and the surge of union activism now occurring in the UK—I see some return to the longing for a better, more equitable world that defined earlier decades.
"The pleasure of acting in concert to assert our need for each other and our natural world can, and must, hold us together in the challenging years ahead. There may well be dark times, but there can also be singing, at least when we gather to work toward better futures." - Lynne Segal
Article: The Utopian Pulse
Community
How social infrastructure, such as libraries, community gardens, and public beltways, can create social cohesion.
"While forms of physical infrastructure, such as roads and sanitation systems, are inarguably important, investing in social infrastructure, sometimes in ways that pair with physical infrastructure, brings people together in unique ways that facilitate civic participation, neighborhood attachment, and community engagement. Klinenberg also argues that the growth of social infrastructure can ameliorate the political polarization that exists in modern US society by bringing together people from various backgrounds and experiences into common spaces to discuss and debate ideas in a truly democratic fashion." - Kellie D. Alexander
Book Review: Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life
How We Work
"In the end organisms, not organizations, are more resistant."
Jacques Tati Playtime 1967 MoMA
“But if you are living in a world that’s shifting, if you’re living in a world where delight and innovation are highly prized, you need an organism, not an organization, Seth says". - Eli Woolery
Podcast: Is The Term Organization Outdated? Seth Godin Makes a Strong Case
How We Work
Businesses that are open, transparent, and cooperative are more resilient because they rely on people, not processes.
"In a transparent organization there is no way to game the system as an individual. A transparent business focuses on long-term value, not short-term profit. It can also foster innovation, as diverse ideas come to the fore when people openly share their ideas. Workers become a social network, cooperating in order to make the organization better.
"Knowledge networks are similar. They function well when they are 1) based on openness, which 2) enables transparency, and 3) in turn fosters diversity — all of which reinforce the basic principle of openness. In such a transparent workplace, the role of management is to give workers a job worth doing, the tools to do it, recognition of a job well done, and then let them manage themselves." - Harold Jarche
Article: Knowledge Flows at the Speed of Trust
Live/Work
Reinventing the hotel room in Tokyo
Article: TOASt Renovates Hotel Rooms into Flexible Interaction Lodges in Tokyo
Packaging, Circular Economy
"A new, waste-free, single-serve coffee system means that portioned coffee no longer needs to be surrounded by an aluminum or plastic capsule."
"Plastic coffee pods produce 100,000 tons of waste globally per year; and while some of the pods in the marketplace are recyclable or biodegradable, the majority still end up in landfill....
"Migros — Switzerland’s largest retailer — has designed and patented a brand-new way to package portioned coffee. The compressed Coffee Balls are encased in a tasteless, colorless, seaweed-based coating that gives it structure and protects it from flavor loss — completely eliminating the need for traditional capsule casing. In blind taste tests, CoffeeB has performed as well as conventional coffee capsules.
"The thin, plant-based protective cover isn’t consumed and remains on the ball of used coffee after brewing. The whole Coffee Ball — casing and coffee — is fully garden compostable (the company says they decompose into valuable humus within four weeks). In contrast, biodegradable capsules are still made of plastic — which can take months, if not years, to fully decompose."
Article: So Long, Coffee Pods ... Hello, Coffee Balls?
Futures Thinking
"In the 1920s version of the future, zeppelins and airships are all over the place."
"'Futurism' is what people believed the future would be like at a given time. Similarly, 'retrofuturism' is futurism of the past. Most people think of Victorian futurism (steampunk) and 1950s/1960s futurism (atompunk). 1920s futurism sits right in the middle, mostly forgotten. Technically, it's grouped in with 'dieselpunk,' which extends into the WWII period, but I think the aesthetic of the 1920s is a bit different. For example, in the 1920s version of the future, zeppelins and airships are all over the place, though by WWII, zeppelins were a thing of the past. In this video, I'll explain a little bit about the 1920s conception of the future, then show a lot of examples from a 1920s science and technology magazine called 'Science And Invention.'"
Video: The Future of the 1920s
One-liners
Article: Owners of ‘small forests’ can now get paid to leave them alone
Article: Sedona will pay residents to not use homes as Airbnb rentals
Article: Germany’s €9 train tickets scheme ‘saved 1.8m tons of CO2 emissions’
Article: When young people lose welfare benefits, there is a very large increase in their criminal justice involvement in adulthood
Article: 11,000 Federal Inmates Were Sent Home During the Pandemic. Only 17 Were Arrested for New Crimes.
Playlist
Domitille Degalle, Anderson .Paak and JD Beck
"Jazz fans are notorious for navel-gazey debates about what constitutes 'real jazz.' DOMi & JD BECK, indisputably the buzziest new duo playing disputable jazz, preëmpt the debates by being both more and less real than the competition. They use their real first names, abbreviations and caps-lock glitches aside. Domitille Degalle, twenty-two, is from France; JD Beck, nineteen, is from Dallas. In an age of studio ghostwriters and digital sleight of hand, they are a true duo, and a virtuosic one: she plays keys, he plays drums, and their four hands and four feet cover a lot of ground.
"'We don’t only want our shows to be cold and brainy, full of jazz dudes who know exactly what’s going on,' Degalle said.
“'We want seven-year-olds and seventy-year-olds,' Beck said.
“'We want people going, "I don’t know what the fuck this is, but I like it!"' Degalle said." - Andrew Marantz
And they pull it off. To do it they developed much of their first album, NOT TiGHT, at Anderson .Paak's home studio, a delightfully refreshing album that features .Paak, Mac DeMarco, Herbie Hancock, Snoop Dogg and Busta Rhymes. And it's actually easy to know what it is: funky music, made new yet again.
Album: NOT TiGHT
Article: Jazz, but Make It YouTubey
Video: DOMi & JD BECK: Tiny Desk Concert
Image of the Week
One of a pack of polar bears that has taken over the abandoned buildings of a meteorological station on an island between Russia and Alaska. Photograph by Dmitry Kokh.
Article: Photographer Finds Polar Bears That Took Over Abandoned Buildings
What's Love & Work?
Love & Work is the weekly newsletter by me, Mitch Anthony. I help people use their brand - their purpose, values, and stories - as a pedagogy and toolbox for transformation.
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