on by Suzanne Whitby

Eierlegende Wollmilchsau

Apparently, a multi-hyphenate is someone who does lots of things, and has lots of hyphens in their job title. For example, I am a futures facilitator-science communicator-storyteller-sustainability chamption-educator-trainer-workshop designer-urban walker-artist. Am I a specialist who specialises in many things? Am I, as Marie Forleo says, “Multi-passionate”? These are all quite positive.

Perhaps others might describe me as a dilettante (not positive in today’s world – a person who “dabbles” in an art or a field of knowledge), or a generalist (also not a high-paying job description).

Frankly, I love the diversity of what I do, and how they interconnect. I’d rather say that my approach to work has mostly advantages and few disadvantages, much like the “Eierlegende Wollmilchsau” (egg-laying-wool-milk-pig), which in German refers to an imaginary farm animal first mentioned in a poem, which as a hybrid creature combines the advantages of different animal species, namely from chicken (laying eggs), sheep (delivering wool), cow (giving milk) and pig (meat).

Yup, I’m special. Practically mythical.

Eierlegende Wollmilchsau
Eierlegende Wollmilchsau – Wikipedia
Eierlegende Wollmilchsau (auch eierlegendes Woll(milch)­schwein) ist eine umgangs­sprachliche Redewendung, mit der etwas (eine Sache, Person oder Problemlösung) umschrieben wird, das scheinbar „nur Vorteile hat, alle Bedürfnisse befriedigt, allen Ansprüchen genügt“, eben deshalb aber irreal ist.
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de.wikipedia.org
on by Suzanne Whitby

You call it procrastination. I call it thinking.

You call it procrastination, I call it thinking.
– Aaron Sorkin

The story: 
In a talk about procrastination, Adam Grant shared this quote about procrastination. Aaron Sorkin, the screenwriter behind “Steve Jobs” and “The West Wing,” was apparently known to put off writing until the last minute. When asked about it, he is said to have replied, “You call it procrastination, I call it thinking.”

The point:
Perhaps procrastination between deciding to do something, and actually doing it, gives us thinking space that helps everyday creativity.

on by Suzanne Whitby

Food and violence

Michael Shaikh’s “The Last Sweet Bite” is a fascinating exploration of how conflict changes how and what people eat. And food has so much to do with identity, so this is, for me, a book about how conflict changes cultures.

The Last Sweet Bite
The Last Sweet Bite by Michael Shaikh: 9780593442845 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books
A powerful and heartwarming exploration of cuisine in conflict zones, highlighting the courageous persistence of people struggling to protect their food culture in the face of war, genocide, and violence.…
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www.penguinrandomhouse.com
on by Suzanne Whitby

Welcome, ChatMD

According to Futurism, OpenAI has launched a health-focused version of ChatGPT that can ingest full medical records. When people tap into this knowledge, they will see an explicit warning it shouldn’t be used for diagnosis or treatment. Isn’t this a bit like saying, “Don’t think of a pink elephant”, but instead of asking people not to think something, we’re asking them not use something?

ChatMD

 

on by Suzanne Whitby

A nod to an “egoless existence”

He’s the subject of a 2016 short film, The Snow Guardian, and a bar six miles away in Crested Butte is named the billy barr in his honor. (Barr lowercases the B’s in his name, a nod to an egoless existence.)

This quote, from an article about Billy Barr, struck me. He lowercases his name, a nod to an “egoless existence”. How much does capitalising our names equal “ego”?

on by Suzanne Whitby

A rare, human-scale record of a changing mountain ecosystem in Colorado

Billy Barr has lived in a secluded cabin in Gothic, just north of Crested Butte, Colorado, for more than 40 years. He has also spent over 50 winters living off grid, building one of the longest and most detailed climate records in the Rocky Mountains by meticulously hand-measuring snowfall, temperature, and wildlife each day.  As age takes hold, continuing to do this is a challenge, the story of the man and the data he collected is remarkable. As told by Robert Sanchez, for 5280.

Billy Barr poring through one of the many notebooks he’s used to compile a 50-plus-year record of climate data in Gunnison National Forest. Photo by Aaron Colussi
Winter Finally Comes for Gothic’s Billy Barr
Billy Barr has braved the fourth season deep in the Rocky Mountains for more than 50 years, amassing tons of climate data. What happens when his watch ends? Photo by Aaron Colussi.
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5280.com

 

on by Suzanne Whitby

Cape Minstrel Celebrations, Green Point, Cape Town

Brenton Geach, a South African photographer and contributer to GroundUp. He captured some stunning images of minstrels and crowds at the Tweede Nuwe Jaar Festival.

Iconic minstrels entertain Cape Town. Photo by Brenton Geach
In photos: Iconic minstrels entertain Cape Town
Hundreds of people were entertained in the annual Tweede Nuwe Jaar Festival in Green Point, Cape Town, on Monday, as Cape Minstrel troupes marched down Main Road. Photos by Brenton Geach.
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groundup.org.za
on by Suzanne Whitby

Food in the Anthropocene

Food. A gift and a challenge. Too cheap (considering effort, lives lost, practices, implications to humans, animals and the planet alike), and too expensive and limited (global poverty is real and millions have too little to eat).

Here’s something worth reading. In 2019, the food policy group Eat and the medical journal the Lancet issued a report, Food in the Anthropocene, linking unhealthy diets to the environmental damage caused by the industrial food system. The report argues that changing what we eat and how we produce it is essential not only for our own health but for the health of the planet.

It has apparently become one of the most widely cited, peer-reviewed scientific papers of the past 20 years.