Brian Wiesner

The convenience built into socialising in Spain makes it a low-effort ritual. It’s why the “living for the weekend” mindset doesn’t exist, and why the perennially semi-formal look of the average Spaniard makes it difficult to tell the day of the week by their clothes. Dressing correctly daily, they resist wardrobe categories such as weekday wear... See more

What we forget, however, is that the story of the Starving Artist is a myth. And like all myths, it may be a powerful story, one we can orient our entire lives around.

There is often something deeper below the surface motivating many of us to strive to uncover something more about ourselves and the nature of this world when we travel. But do we necessarily need to go looking for it “out there” beyond the horizon? Why might strolling the streets of Paris on a fall moonlit night enchant us in a way our midwestern... See more

In contrast to Berlin's nachtgestalten (rough translation: c reatures of the night ), Sydney is home to a lively dawn chorus of early morning run clubs, beachgoers and surfers. Bondi at sunrise could be mistaken for a beach in Europe during sunset; crowded to the brim, hundreds of people basking in the warm glow of first light.

You Want a Social Life, with Friends

by Kenneth Koch

You want a social life, with friends.

A passionate love life and as well

To work hard every day. What’s true

Is of these three you may have two

And two can pay you dividends

But never may have three.

There isn’t time enough, my friends–

Though dawn begins, yet midnight ends–

To find the time to have... See more

As Bill McKibbenwrote recently, the best thing you can do to prepare yourself for climate change is live in an area with a high degree of social trust.

We’ve come through 75 years where having neighbors was essentially optional: if you had a credit card, you could get everything you needed to survive dropped off at your front door. But the next 75

... See more

This order created uncoordinated systems that worked, without staff, as if by magic. Such was Jacobs’s “Sidewalk Ballet.” With density, she argued, came “eyes on the street,” a community-based security system that required neither barbed wire nor an extensive police presence. With wide sidewalks comes trusted interactions, even with strangers—a... See more

Time is flat. There has never been more of it, but we have never been so busy. But we are busy with noise, moving along a timescale that is maybe just a little too fast!! Rushkoff argues that we have experienced narrative collapse.

In many ways, we are very similar to mycelium.

We need the right conditions to survive and a constant flow of oxygen. We need to communicate to grow.

We need to connect to live.

A good connection is how quickly your world can change when you meet the right person.