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For years I thought SpongeBob was a talking Weet-bix. I couldn’t understand why he was celled SpongeBob or how he could live underwater without turning to mush. Clearly there’s something wrong with me. I bet you always just thought he was a sponge
“What he liked, [anthropologist David Graeber] said, was self-subverting authority, authority which undermines its own basis. He gave the example of a teacher: A teacher knows something useful to their student, and so they have a natural authority; but if they do their job well, at the end of the process the student knows what the teacher knows, and their authority is spent. The hierarchy is flattened, and no further unequal power can accrue. The student is changed, and so is the world.”
— James Bridle, ‘Benchma(r)king’. Emergence.
#shuhari #learning #teaching #change
📷 Sunset at the mouth of the Shoalhaven River, NSW..
#photography #Australia #LandscapePhotography #Sunset
When I ask artist and lecturer Linn Phyllis Seeger about how microblogging might benefit art created today, she tells me “it’s really a question of how to carve out alternative aesthetics and posting practices through formats and platforms that have not been commodified yet”. — Is microblogging the next big art movement? | Plastered
“do not research simply to decorate your writing with impressive names and references. Research should extend your thinking, not replace it.” — Alexis McElroy, The Muse & The Melody, How to Turn Your Thoughts Into Something Worth Reading. Substack
I really like writing while on a train journey, and this article about a crazy train trip project in Japan is inspiring. Japan Today.
#WritingLife #Japan #productivity
Make YouTube videos and you’ll eventually be tempted to sit in a bath of ketchup or jump into a tiny pool with a goat – but either would bring relief from the cat photos the rest of us seem compelled to post.
How do social media platforms trap users in networks they would rather leave? | UNSW
Podcast listening overtakes radio? The New Publishing Standard.
Congratulations are due to Dave Winer for an amazing achievement. Micro.blog has a great discovery tool for interesting podcasts. RSS FTW!
The name might be archaic, but at least they didn’t call it downloadable radio.
#podcasts #radio
This is what nuclear ‘decommissioning’ looks like: a debacle. #nuclearindustry
“The NDA expects the clean-up of the Sellafield site to go on until 2125 and cost £136 billion ($184 billion), an estimate which has increased nearly 19 percent since March 2019.”
www.theregister.com/2025/06/0…
HT: Glyn Moody, Mastodon
Why in #Australia are there at least 50 private health insurance options (!) but only two major supermarket options, only two main telecom providers, and pretty much a single major hardware chain? It’s well past time for some serious #antimonopoly action.