On the road
Daunt Books, which we visited today. I picked up a sketching book, a copy of some George Orwell essays, and an essay on the misuse of words by Locke.
We're still on the front half of our trip. Still in London, though we're now on our second AirBnb. This one is much better than the first, it actually has space to sit, eat, or stretch out, rather than feeling like a series of closets connected by loudly squeaking floors (which are terrible if you're trying to step around sleeping children at night). London feels much more like a melting-pot of a city than the our previous trip to Paris. Despite both cities being large tourist attractions, London seems to have more diversity in it.
The first week of the trip was very hot. Not being used to a combination of both high temperatures (93° F/34° C) and high humidity, coupled with a top-floor rented flat and no A/C made for some sweat-drenching nights. Thankfully the heat has abated and the trip has become much more enjoyable since. Today is the last day in London before we head to the rainy and windy weather in Brighton, and then on to Paris and Amsterdam after that.
I haven't really coalesced many thoughts about the trip overall, but I'll probably have more to say about it once it's all over. That being said, I don't have a lot to share for this newsletter, but I have a few things I've managed to read lately.
The FDA finally acknowledges what we've all known: Phenylphrine doesn't work (more approachable article summarizing the findings by Ars Technica.)
I thought this article by Robin Waldun on why he refuses to track how many books he's read was a good explanation of the topic, and I agree with his overall thesis. The most interesting part was a quote from Susan Sontag's On Photography book about travel photography:
The very activity of taking pictures is soothing, and assuages general feelings of disorientation that are likely to be exacerbated by travel.
This is an interesting thread to pull on. Other than photography (assuming you agree), what other activities do you think combat the disorientation of travel? For myself, it's visiting the same place repeatedly, whether a coffee shop, patisserie, or even the same park. The act of repeating a routine allows me to feel more mentally relaxed and ease more into a mode of living instead of traveling.
On this trip I'm reading Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. Since I'm in England I'm enjoying its English feel, and I'm looking forward to reading Adam Roberts' notes on the book once I've finished. Some interesting things in there for anyone that has read the book, or doesn't intend to read it.
Finally, getting back to technology:
As important as the ability to think critically continues to be, we argue that it is insufficient to borrow the tools developed for offline environments and apply them to the digital world. When the world comes to people filtered through digital devices, there is no longer a need to decide what information to seek. Instead, the relentless stream of information has turned human attention into a scarce resource to be seized and exploited by advertisers and content providers. Investing effortful and conscious critical thinking in sources that should have been ignored in the first place means that one’s attention has already been expropriated (Caulfield, 2018). Digital literacy and critical thinking should therefore include a focus on the competence of critical ignoring: choosing what to ignore, learning how to resist low-quality and misleading but cognitively attractive information, and deciding where to invest one’s limited attentional capacities.
There is a phrase I love the idea of: critical ignoring. I will be reading this paper on Critical Ignoring as a Core Competence for Digital Citizens with great interest.