Tag: reading

August 2024

The wind has been a lot this week.

I enjoyed ‘Praiseworthy’ and when I first got the audio, I wasn’t sure I would get through the length. It was worth it. I listen when I go to bed so I listened to this book twice, feeling like I had missed bits. I intend to reread.

“We have no problem recognising the benefits of physical exercise, Wright observed. Isn’t mental exercise just as important? We are an affluent country with a good education system; there is no reason why readers shouldn’t be able to come to grips with a work of literature written, as she put it, “at scale”.”

James Ley Deputy Books + Ideas Editor

(from The Conversation, Books + Ideas Newsletter)

I love this blog. The two blogs Euan Semple referred to, sent me into hours of reading. This post is relatable to me.

https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-bad-therapy-or-cruel-world-how-the-youth-mental-health-crisis-has-been-sucked-into-the-culture-wars-232519

This thought-provoking article has me wondering about how to make a change in the way I see the lives of young people. I have had a real shift in my ideas about using technology at school.

“His focus on smartphones has been widely reported. But his equally important emphasis on the cultural preoccupation with protecting us from harm has received less attention.”

11th August 2019

I’m doing a course, it’s great. I love learning, getting into the space of developing new skills is one of my favourite things. One of the fun activities in our course last week was to pick our favourite film and there were two films from other participants I hadn’t seen – “Song for Marion” and “Cafe de Flore“. I watched them this weekend and they were brilliant. I highly recommend them.

I finished reading 21 Lessons For The 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari. Are our governments focussing on the technological disruption that is coming? What should we pay attention to? How do we know the truth? The main conclusion I came to was that we need to meditate more. Bill Gates has written a thorough review of this book here.

28th July 2019

“The revolutions in biotech and infotech are currently being started by engineers, entrepreneurs and scientists who are hardly aware of the political implications of their decisions and who certainly don’t represent anyone. Can parliaments and political parties take matters into their own hands? At present it does not seem so. Technological disruption is not even a leading item on the political agenda.”

 21 Lessons For The 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari.

Anyway, this – https://mashable.com/article/community-care-versus-self-care/ was shared with me by one of our amazing volunteers at The VRI. I have been reflecting on it a lot.

I enjoyed this. I believe in redemption too. My favourite quote is “We are shaped by education.”

That is all for this week. It’s been long.