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Citizen Energy
On Sunday (18 Sep) we had a special guest give a talk about how citizens installed solar panels on public institutions in Ikoma City, Japan. Kusunoki Tadashi is a boardmember of Citizen Energy Ikoma (ๅธๆฐใจใใซใฎใผ็้ง), a citizens group who took the…
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Nostalgic utopianism โ a review of Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus
Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperityย by Douglas Rushkoff Power corrupts and money ruins everything. These are basically the premises that Douglas Rushkoff starts from in his latest book, a critique of the concentration…
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A short trip to the Sunshine Coast
The Sunshine Coast is a region of mainland British Columbia just up the coast from Vancouver. Originally inhabited by the shรญshรกlh people, the area was settled by westerners in the mid-nineteenth century. Now, about 27,000 people live there. The Sunshine Coast…
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Listening in โ a short review of โBetween the World and Meโ
When I think of my long struggle to “try and be a writer”, my confidence is shattered upon reading such a poetic, insightful, heartfelt piece as this. This is writing โ the naked intimacy of it. Even if I cannot fully…
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C.R.E.A.M.
The War on Cash is an informative piece about the battle against the cashless society. I have been cash-only for a few years, mainly for two reasons: protecting my personal information and financial discipline. In the old days, a transaction would…
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Clausewitz Roundtable released as book
Many years ago I participated in an inter-blog (and very detailed!) discussion of the military classic On War by Carl von Clausewitz. The proceedings of that endeavour have been collated into 553 page book, released this week by Ever Victorious Press.…
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More people than bots?
In 1975, BusinessWeek magazine imagined the rise of the paperless office as computer use became more widespread. Of course, over the following two decades, consumption of paper doubled. A couple more decades on, we are finally seeing year-on-year decreases in office…
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Against โcommodified fantasyโ
From the Foreword of Ursula K. Le Guinโs Tales from Earthsea:
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Minimalist wall-hangings
People who think I am a downsizing/minimalist fundamentalist, are surprised when they come into my livingroom and see a number of wall hangings. We don’t have many, but almost all of them are handpainted art (like the family portrait featured in…
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You don’t tell me when I should speak English โ multicultural parenting and language rights
Last month, this story from Wales: The most perfect thing I have ever seen just happened on the replacement train bus service between Newport and Cwmbran: White man sat in front of a mother and her son. Mother was wearing a…
Got any book recommendations?