RemNote helps you memorise information. While you take notes in the Notion-like interface, you can create flashcards by simply typing ‘>>’. Once you’re in ‘study mode’, the information will be hidden and flashcards are shown at intelligently-timed intervals. Friends of DD enjoy an extra month of Pro for free. Become a Friend to access specials like this.

Add all your houseplants to the Planta app (it helps you identify them) and it will tell you how to look after them. It takes into account your local seasons, light exposure and other criteria. My friend, who told me about the app, had a lot more success with their indoor plants after following the app’s advice.

For those of you who create web apps, ToDesktop looks like a very simple way to convert your web app into Mac, Windows or Linux apps. For a basic version, minimal coding is required.

Little Alchemy 2 is a game (free in your browser, available as a mobile app) in which you combine elements to create new elements. You start with the basic elements fire, water, air, and earth and create more complex items: life, time, and... internet. There are 720 items to be discovered. Here’s a handy walkthrough to get you started.

The Culture of Stopping →

Disrupting the ‘treadmill to disaster’

Can we rebalance things in favour of life, rather than of dead objects we own? Not without a cultural context for talking about it. That’s what Harald Welzer, a professor of sustainability and design at the University of Flensberg, Germany, is trying to provide with his brand-new book: “We’re on a treadmill to disaster. To get off this treadmill, we need to learn how to stop: as individuals and as societies, we need to stop doing what we’re doing and say ‘enough’. We find it hard to do this because our culture has trained us to regard endless escalation as desirable, and we’re reluctant to surrender the material benefits of growth.”

Outrage Machine →

How tech amplifies discontent

Also fresh off the press: a new guide to understanding how the internet has broken our brains, and what we can do to fix it. Author, designer, and media researcher Tobias Rose-Stockwell “illustrates how social media has bound us to an unprecedented system of public performance, training us to react rather than reflect, and attack rather than debate. Outrage Machine reveals the triggers and tactics used to exploit our anger, unpacking how these tools hack our deep tribal instincts and psychological vulnerabilities, and how they have become opportunistic platforms for authoritarians and a threat to democratic norms everywhere.”

An emphatic critique of travel, of being a tourist. Like me, you may not agree with everything, but you can’t deny that Agnes Callard makes some great points. “Touristic travel exists for the sake of change. But what, exactly, gets changed? Here is a telling observation from the concluding chapter of the same book: ‘Tourists are less likely to borrow from their hosts than their hosts are from them, thus precipitating a chain of change in the host community.’ We go to experience a change, but end up inflicting change on others.” (Possible paywall – free archived view)

Carbon offsets – which often but not always means planting trees – first seemed like a good idea for those who genuinely want to do something about their personal climate impact. Today, the concept is mired in controversy due to questions about legitimacy and effectiveness. This piece shows the many shortcomings of carbon offets (especially when used as a licence to continue to pollute), but also why they can still do some good. “Dix in Yorkshire bought offsets from Ecologi in Bristol, who bought them from CO2Balance in Somerset, which paid Bureau Veritas in London to convince Gold Standard in Geneva to issue credits for emissions reductions achieved by Carbon Zero’s Kenyan stoves. The journey of a carbon credit is a long chain of financialization – of nature, of communities, of solutions.”

I remember having conversations with my parents about the value of learning calculus in school. What use does it have in my future life? They never provided a satisfying answer. In this post, Nat Eliason offers one: it’s to prove you can do hard things. “The ability to do hard things is perhaps the most useful ability you can foster in yourself or your children. And proof that you are someone who can do them is one of the most useful assets you can have on your life resume. Our self-image is composed of historical evidence of our abilities. The more hard things you push yourself to do, the more competent you will see yourself to be.” The one thing I would add is that ‘doing hard things’ is different for everyone. For some it’s completing a marathon, for others it’s getting well after an injury.