Gardening is not just a set of tasks. It’s not restricted to backyards, courtyards, balconies. It can, and should, happen anywhere, everywhere. Gardening is simply a framework for engagement with our world, grounded in care and action. To garden is to care deeply, inclusively, and audaciously for the world outside our homes and our heads. It’s a way of being that is intimately interwoven with the real truths of existence—not the things we’re told to value (money, status, ownership), but the things that actually matter (sustenance, perspective, beauty, connection, growth).

– Georgina Reid, Audacious Gardening: On Daring to Care

“Every new generation reaches new conclusions on the questions that we all ask throughout our entire lives. My problem with my own generation’s answers to these questions is that I think they are algorithmically generated. We are reaching, I believe, inhuman conclusions on what human life means on both an individual and societal level. The machines don’t want to help you. They want you to keep looking.”

— DJ Peach Cobbler

“It’s not the iPad baby’s fault per se that they are iPad babies. They were raised in an ecosystem designed to keep them addicted, reactive, and overly emotionally invested in things that do not matter. By the way, an iPad baby’s can be any one of any age. We are all infected by the brain disease of TikTok at this point. The algorithm doesn’t reward curiosity or skepticism which are two pillars of independent thought. It prioritises certainty, immediacy, and volume.”

• Some of y'all seem to be labouring under the assumption that your decision to disengage from current events in this country and around the world is a neutral choice.
• Or even more insidious this idea that your wilful ignorance is some kind of self-care because the things that are happening in this world are just too terrible to bear.
• Of course it's too terrible to bear. That's actually the whole point. That if you intentionally let yourself feel the grief of the world that would make it very difficult to continue your day-to-day operating procedure.
• We live in a violently capitalistic society that is dependent on all of our continued productivity and consumerism. Do you think it's a coincidence that there are so many products out there that are meant to distract you, steal your time, and keep you numb?
• Because if you actually took a moment to let yourself feel the grief of the world then I don't know, maybe you might like post about something you've never talked out...

My main reason for postponing the end of the world is so that we've always got time for one more story. If we can make time for that, then we'll be forever putting off the world's demise.

— Ailton Krenak

When do I know it's time to stop scrolling? If Instagram, TikTok, Twitter disappear tomorrow, what will I have lost? What will I have done to prepare?

(in conversation with a friend, 8 October 2024)

I do not dream of better algorithms or more efficient computers.. My closest friend touching my heart in a way that no one else can? Try to simulate that. We know this. But they will tell us that our hearts are too big and our brains are too small. My heart is my brain, thank you.

I don’t want a new computer.
I just want to hold hands and speak without words. We do not really need words; we are constantly lost in translation when we are speaking the same language anyways. My closest encounters have required the fewest words—most definitely the fewest calculations.

I don’t want to calculate.
I want to be thrown down the hall of life like my father and his father and his father only to emerge the other side and say yes, now I understand the miracle of life… without needing all of the world’s data to tell me that yes, that was the miracle of life. Even if, like a bull in a china shop, I break my heart along the way.

Yes. I want to know the miracle of this existence without a chat...

Ichi-go ichi-e (一期一会), is a Japanese idiom that is often translated as “for this time only,” “never again,” or “one chance in a lifetime.” The term reminds people to cherish any gathering that they may take part in, citing the fact that many meetings in life are not repeated. Even when the same group of people can get together again, a particular gathering will never be replicated, and thus, each moment is always once-in-a-lifetime.

We are living in an attention economy. There are millions of people in the modern world who make more money depending on how much attention you pay to them. The oligarchs who sat behind Trump at his inauguration make more money when more people pay more attention to things on their apps. They have enormous incentives to keep you addicted to those apps, to keep your eyes on them. Performers, and influencers, and celebrities also have enormous financial incentives to keep your eyes on them. More eyes means more streams, more likes, more ad revenue, more investor money, and of course for the viewer, more time out of your one wild and precious life.

When we boycott, we are reminded that we vote with our wallets, but also don't forget that we vote with our eyeballs! Some of the most powerful people alive today— not just in the entertainment industry, but also in politics and music and medicine— they aren't the people who are most qualified, the most well-meaning, the most talented,...

“Since the Internet has conquered human interaction, let me deepen my subscription to introversion.”
― Makuochukwu Okigbo