Eiffel Over

Tag: lockdown

  • Creating contours in the flat landscape of lockdown

    Creating contours in the flat landscape of lockdown

    In the midst of lockdown we have created a new household tradition that brings a highlight to the week. On Saturday nights we dress for dinner, enjoy our meal, watch Strictly on our new TV, and then push back the furniture and dance. 

    With the household locked down, one day could easily look like the rest. To use Matthew Crawford‘s  language, the ‘affordances’ of one day look exactly like the rest: there are a fewer physical contours that shape how different parts of the week feel now that we are always at home. So you have to create that structure for yourself.

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  • Good enough for now: the philosophy of Lego sorting

    Good enough for now: the philosophy of Lego sorting

    With our household suddenly in self-isolation pending results of a Covid test, my daughter and I are back playing lego together and I’m revisiting that recurring question: how best to sort our Lego? But this time I think I have landed on a method that is standing the test of time, and one which has wider philosophical benefits.

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  • Still waiting

    Still waiting

    I’ve realised that quietly, in the back of my mind I am waiting. It hasn’t happened yet, so I just have to wait a bit longer. I am waiting for things to return to normal.

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  • #18 Hazel Hill Wood – Dawn chorus sonic lockdown therapy- show-notes

    #18 Hazel Hill Wood – Dawn chorus sonic lockdown therapy- show-notes

    30 minutes of uninterrupted dawn chorus Hazel Hill Wood, recorded at the end of March. Hazel Hill is woodland nature reserve and education centre helping frontline staff develop resilience and wellbeing through connection with nature. While people are prevented from visiting the woods during lockdown, the team are working on ways to bring the wood to them during lockdown. Listening suggestions:

    • Early in the morning
    • Over breakfast
    • In the background while you work
    • To clear your mind at the end of work
    • Late at night as you drift off to sleep
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  • A click of the ratchet from physical to virtual

    A click of the ratchet from physical to virtual

    Across all the of the projects I’m involved with we are working out what can go ahead and what must be postponed. A significant factor in whether to proceed is whether the activity can go ahead virtually. While the ability to move online is a blessing for business and job continuity, I think it represents an irriversible step for industry and society away from the phyical to the virtual – a click of the ratchet – that will have long-lasting impacts on our freedom and how we interact with other people.

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  • The horizon of existence | surveillance capitalism | the return of analogue skills

    The horizon of existence | surveillance capitalism | the return of analogue skills

    It’s hard to know where to start. So much has changed in the last fortnight and there is so much that I feel compelled to write about. But now that our house has also become a remote workplace, a homeschool and playground and locus for all entertainment and time-passing activities, it is hard to find the time to write in an ordered way, so I will capture things as they emerge and look to see the patterns over time. I hope you will bear with me, reader. On my mind today:

    • The shrinking horizon of existance
    • Surveillance capitalism and Analogue Skills
    • Everyone is the same distance away
    • Mourning friction
    • A great slowing

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