Love & Work
A notebook about how we work, learn, love and live.
Fifty years ago this week, on December 7, 1972, the "first fully illuminated color image of the Earth by a person" was shot from the Apollo 17 spacecraft. Soon after, the second shot after this, having the same perspective, was cropped and processed and widely used as the Blue Marble picture. Ever since we've had no excuse to misunderstand that we live on a tiny, finite planet.
Happy Friday.
Global Awareness
Some common geographic mental misplacements
This is a fascinating survey of common misconceptions we share about where geographic locations are in relationship to each other.
It never occurred to me that the northern tip of Africa shares a latitude with Norfolk, VA. Nor did I know that Chicago and Rome also share latitudinal parity, that the entirety of the South American continent lies to the east of Jacksonville, FL, or that South America is closer to Africa, its neighbor to the east, than it is to Houston, TX.
"If learned early on, a foundationally incorrect view of the world can perpetuate, as students naturally build knowledge in light of a past, incorrect, understanding. Something as basic as our assumptions about the relative locations of Earth's continents is an interesting, and actually sort of fun, example of how we can get things wrong right off the bat.
"Ultimately, everything is learned, but some curious geographic errors tend to persist more than others. So what are some tantalizing locational mistakes that seemingly come pre-installed in American students’ minds that geography teachers wrestle to overcome?" - John Nelson
Have fun.
Interactive Website: Misconception
Psychedelics, Transformation
Can tripping save the planet?
Gail Bradbrook in her home in Stroud, UK
"In March 2016, Gail Bradbrook was at an impasse.
The lifelong activist had spent decades working on an array of social justice campaigns, but few of them had gained much in the way of lasting traction. In order to bring about real, radical change, Bradbrook felt like something inside her consciousness needed to be unlocked.
So the reluctant flier traveled to the jungle-covered mountains of Costa Rica, thousands of miles away from her home in England’s leafy countryside, for a psychedelic retreat.
(Two years later) "... Bradbrook, one of the founders of the world’s most high-profile environmental movements, felt as though the trip had rewired her brain. 'It was utterly transformative,' she told CNN in a recent interview at her home in the English town of Stroud." - Eliza Mackintosh
Article: A Psychedelic Journey, a Radical Strategy and Perfect Timing. How The World’s Fastest-Growing Climate Movement Was Made
Article: Can Tripping Save the Planet? The mysterious connection between psychedelic use and eco-activism.
How We Work, Economics
Imagining an economy that treats individuals and the world as beloved
"We have all become so accustomed to the fact that the economy feels, well, rather brutal. Many of us think it just has to be that way.
"In this book, we call the kind of extractive capitalism that is dominant across and affecting so much of the globe the loveless economy. Visionary cultural critic and prolific Black feminist scholar bell hooks coined the term lovelessness to reflect the spiritual hunger and lack of true loving that is experienced and practiced across different dimensions of US society. 'I awakened from my trance state,' she wrote in All About Love, 'and was stunned to find the world I was living in, the world of the present, was no longer a world open to love. And I noticed that all around me I heard testimony that lovelessness had become the order of the day.' In her writings, bell hooks points to the ways in which the underlying principles of our current economy are incompatible with an ethic of love." - Joanna L. Cea
Author Interview: What Would a Beloved Economy Look Like?
Learning
Combing research to learn how to improve teaching
Image by teachingforchange via CC
In what has become an annual ritual, editors at Edutopia pored over hundreds of educational studies published this year and held up those they considered the most significant. Amongst other learnings the research reveals that there is no conflict between warm relationships and academic rigor. A landmark study strikes a resounding note for inclusion, and simple sketchnotes and concept-maps work even better than we knew. At the end of the day we are all teachers and learners, so these insights are relevant to all.
Article: The 10 Most Significant Education Studies of 2022
How We Work, Company Culture
Creating a great company culture in a post-pandemic world requires very different priorities than a few years ago.
"To better understand workplace culture today and learn how employers can prepare for the future, eLearning Industry surveyed 1,200 workers across five industries -- Retail and Hospitality, Finance and Insurance, Healthcare, Manufacturing, and Technology. The main goal of the survey was to understand the dynamics between leadership and employees when it comes to company culture: what employees value in the workplace today and how they feel employers are doing when it comes to designing a great workplace.
"Unfortunately, more than a third (37%) of employees believe culture doesn’t exist in the workplace today. With this post-pandemic revelation, it’s evident that a disconnect has emerged in the leader-employee relationship: 50% of all workers say their leaders don’t understand what constitutes a strong company culture or what employees want. This sentiment is especially troubling considering more than half of workers across Healthcare (54%), Tech (53%), and Manufacturing (52%) believe their leaders don’t understand what employees want."
eBook: The Future Of Work Report 2022: Culture Trends And What Employees Want
How We Work
With the rise of remote work, more employees are picking up side projects. Many take them more seriously than their full-time jobs.
"Gone are the days when your job made up the bulk of your identity. Thanks to remote work, you can now run into lawyers/artists, and tech workers/writers. According to a survey of over 585 Americans by venture capital firm WorkLife Ventures, 70% of employees picked up a side project that they are serious about during the pandemic." - Shalene Gupta
Article: Our Day Jobs Used to be Our Identities, But Not So Much Anymore. Here’s What Changed
How We Work, Innovation
Listen. Lean. Give. Learn. Why jamming might be a better model than sprinting.
Amhad Jamal by Philippe Agnifili via CC
"Let’s face it: you may not actually solve your wicked problems in two days. Maybe this focus on brevity and results is misguided and unrealistic. Instead of obsessing about manically sprinting, it’s time we focus on jamming instead. The Design or Innovation Jam.
"I think jamming instead of sprinting would have a couple of huge benefits to our innovation efforts:
"- It would remove the unrealistic expectation that your team will solve a wicked problem in two or three or five days.
"- It would encourage collaboration, curiosity and experimentation rather than focusing on completing set tasks.
"- It would critically give people time in between jams to think by themselves. We make a huge mistake in not prioritizing this but I’ll bet that no true innovation has occurred without it.
"- It would encourage us to invite new band members into the jams. To inspire or test us." - Rich Nadworny
Article: Stop Sprinting and Start Jamming
One-Liners
Article: ‘Y'all,’ that most Southern of Southernisms, is going mainstream – and it’s about time
Article: Humans are evolutionarily drawn to beauty. How do such complex experiences emerge from a collection of atoms and molecules?
Article: The virtue of owning books you haven’t read: why Umberto Eco kept an “antilibrary”
Article: 10 types of cognitive bias to watch out for in UX research & design
Playlist
Recently I've been paying a lot of attention to Bob Dylan, again. A few weeks ago my friend Vincent Valvo shared these links with me:
Song Sung New, Bob Dylan – Acoustic
Song Sung New, Bob Dylan – Electric
In these podcasts music critic and historian, Stevie Nix, reviews some of the many, many musicians who have covered Dylan's music. Together they make an encyclopedic discography.
Then a week or so later David Remnick published a wonderful article in The New Yorker, A Unified Field Theory of Bob Dylan. He’s in his eighties. How does he keep it fresh?
So, when our son Sayre shared this link on our family message thread, I was primed. Check out impressionist James Austin Johnson singing Jingle Bells as Bob through four important musical phases. #hilariousbecauseitistrue.
Pure fun.
Image of the Week
"View of the Earth as seen by the Apollo 17 crew traveling toward the moon. This translunar coast photograph extends from the Mediterranean Sea area to the Antarctica South polar ice cap. This is the first time the Apollo trajectory made it possible to photograph the South polar ice cap. Note the heavy cloud cover in the Southern Hemisphere. Almost the entire coastline of Africa is clearly visible. The Arabian Peninsula can be seen at the northeastern edge of Africa. The large island off the coast of Africa is the Malagasy Republic. The Asian mainland is on the horizon toward the northeast." - NASA
This image was shot from space fifty years ago this week, on December 7, 1972, by the crew on the Apollo 17 moon rocket. This famous image of Earth would become widely known as the "blue marble."
With this image, people could actually see what this small, life-sustaining planet looks like from afar.
During an interview on The World radio show, astronaut Mae Jameson said, "I knew that the Earth was a marble, right? I knew that it was this circular thing. What I do remember, because I was in high school at that time, is seeing the continent of Africa shown so clearly and the size and the fact that here was this planet that was so much all about where we live. And for me, having Africa in the center made a really big difference because it was during that time when we sort of saw different continents, different countries as not being as big a part of this world. And that put us clearly together. That's what I remember about it."
Article: NASA’s Iconic Image of Earth Still Inspires 50 years Later. Astronaut Mae Jemison Reflects on it.
Wiki Article: Timeline of First Images of Earth from Space
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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