I’m a kind of obsessive consumer. Before I buy something I tend to get excited about it, and do a lot of research, and get super into whatever it is that has struck my fancy. When the iPhone X came out, even knowing that I wasn’t on a buying cycle this year, I still wanted it and so did dozens of hours of research. A few weeks prior I was looking at a particular Olympus lens. And before then it was a new Sony rx100 or Fuji x100.
But I’ve gotten to know myself well enough that I let myself wallow in the obsession…and then just let go. It’s a self-reflective defensive mechanism that kept my wallet pretty safe throughout the sales of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and one that more generally has helped to lift me out of consumer debt hell over the course of the past year. Consumerism is exciting, so long as you only enjoy the dreams and avoid crushing them by actually purchasing the item(s) in question.
During the Cold War humanity did terrible things to the natural ecosystems of the world by testing nuclear weapons. Bikini Atoll is one of the areas that most felt humanity’s ugly destructive impulses. So it was pretty exciting to learn that after abandoning that part of the world for about fifty years things seem to be recovering:
The research, López says, provides at least preliminary evidence that even if you destroy an ecosystem, it can heal with time — and with freedom from human interference. Ironically, Bikini reefs look better than those in many places she’s dived.
Despite the fact that the ecosystem is healing what’s there now remains dangerous to human life. The coconuts (and coconut trees more generally) hold huge doses of radiation, and the platter-sized crabs are presumably similarly radioactive because their primary food source is coconut meat. Despite the outward appearances of healing the atoll will likely remain hostile to human life: for the foreseeable future this paradise will only be accessible to animal life and off limits to human habitation.
In some exciting personal news, I got back a review from a journal to which I’d sent an article. While some revisions are required, work that I’ve been hacking on for the past few years is more than likely going to be public in one of Canada’s law journal’s next year! Unlike some other publishing experiences this time it was a fast turn around: submit in September, hear back by end of November, revisions by January, and publication in Spring 2018. W00T!
New Apps and Great App Updates from this Week
- Perhaps not a ‘great’ update, but Apple pushed an emergency update to all Macs running High Sierra because of a boneheaded security vulnerability.
Great Photography Shots
Jenna Martin gave herself a challenge: go to an ugly location (Lowe’s) and get some pretty shots (success, in my opinion).
Music I’m Digging
- Queenin’ by Neisha Neshae
Neat Podcast Episodes
Good Reads for the Week
- Attack of the Hack Back
- Saying “No” with Grace
- How to Send Emails to Very Busy People (and a Case Study Teardown)
- After the local newspaper closes shop
- A woman approached The Post with dramatic — and false — tale about Roy Moore. She appears to be part of undercover sting operation
- Women Were Pirates Too
- The notification gap
Excited Pixels 