Tella has come a long way since I first mentioned it in DD two years ago. The new macOS app allows you to record your screen and your webcam independently – neither the video of yourself, nor the Tella app will show up in the screen recording. Once you’re done, the video is automatically uploaded for sharing, but you can make further edits online.

This is such a great idea: want to learn how to dye garments, make jewellery or restore old furniture? Why not learn the craft from an experienced artist and combine it with a vacation? It definitely beats buying crappy souvenirs.

There are quite a few ‘ambient sound apps’ out there. Portal promises high-definition visuals and ‘dynamic spatial audio’ to help you sleep, focus or breathe. I’m not entirely sold on the many health benefits used to promote these apps (a simple walk outside, without tech, has proven more effective for me), but I do occasionally enjoy the nature sounds to help me fall asleep. Their new macOS app brings that experience to your desktop, too. Friends of DD enjoy 20% off premium. Become a Friend to access specials like this.

No better way to feel old than to look back at all the stuff that happened since you were born. This quirky little app puts your age in a demoralisingly frank perspective.

The World for Sale →

Commodifying earth

With a compelling title, this is a book about the money and power behind the natural resources that enable global commerce. “It is the story of how a handful of swashbuckling businessmen became indispensable cogs in global markets, enabling an enormous expansion in international trade and connecting resource-rich countries – no matter how corrupt or war-torn – with the world’s financial centers. The result is an eye-opening tour through the wildest frontiers of the global economy, as well as a revelatory guide to how capitalism really works.”

The Good-Enough Life →

Striving for enoughness

Perhaps as a companion to the ‘post-growth living’ books I recommended in recent DD issues, this book encourages us to abandon the race to the top and our obsession with greatness, and instead find contentment in the good-enough life. “By competing less with each other, each of us can find renewed meaning and purpose, have our material and emotional needs met, and begin to lead more leisurely lives. Alpert makes no false utopian promises, however. Life can never be more than good enough because there will always be accidents and tragedies beyond our control, which is why we must stop dividing the world into winners and losers and ensure that there is a fair share of decency and sufficiency to go around.”

An excellent debunking of the idea/ideology that the rewards of modern life – money, power, jobs, university admission – should be distributed according to skill and effort. “In addition to being false, a growing body of research in psychology and neuroscience suggests that believing in meritocracy makes people more selfish, less self-critical and even more prone to acting in discriminatory ways. Meritocracy is not only wrong; it’s bad. ... Meritocracy is a false and not very salutary belief. As with any ideology, part of its draw is that it justifies the status quo, explaining why people belong where they happen to be in the social order. It is a well-established psychological principle that people prefer to believe that the world is just.”

Bemoaning the new and romanticising the past can be rather tedious, but I largely agree with this piece that critically highlights the deliberate and engineered shrinking of the internet by entrapping people in highly commercialised, monopolising social networks where everyone is constantly jostling and crowding. “It is worth remembering that the internet wasn’t supposed to be like this. It wasn’t supposed to be six boring men with too much money creating spaces that no one likes but everyone is forced to use because those men have driven every other form of online existence into the ground. The internet was supposed to have pockets, to have enchanting forests you could stumble into and dark ravines you knew better than to enter. The internet was supposed to be a place of opportunity, not just for profit but for surprise and connection and delight.”

A fascinating story about a hospice doctor researching a phenomenon called ‘end-of-life dreams’ where dying patients report dreaming of deceased loved ones as a sign of their own imminent death. “As patients approached death, their dreams increased in frequency and their content changed. Earlier in their time in hospice, patients reported dreams about living friends and relatives; as the patients approached death, the dreams were mostly filled with deceased family and friends. It was also clear that the dreams involving family members who had already died provided the most comfort.”