It's reading week, which means fewer assigned readings and more random links. Polar opposite to last time, mostly just quotes for you today.
I send this fortnightly on Sunday and I don’t collect any data.
The tuft of grass MINOR | Albrecht Durer
Ecological Imperialism by Alfred Crosby
Incredible account of the terraforming, world-making project of ecological imperialism.
Prologue
Between 1820 and 1930, well over 50 million Europeans migrated to Neo-European lands overseas. That number amount to approximately one-fifth of the entire population of Europe at the beginning of that period.
and Ch 8: Animals
The migrant Europeans could reach and even conquer, but not make colonies of settlement of these pieces of alien earth until they became a good deal more like Europe than they were when the marinheiros first saw them. Fortunately for the Europeans, their domesticated and lithely adaptable animals were very effective at initiating that change.
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A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None by Kathryn Yusoff
Assigned one chapter, read the whole book because it is :fire-emoji:
If the Anthropocene proclaims a sudden concern with the exposures of environmental harm to white liberal communities, it does so in the wake of histories in which these harms have been knowingly exported to black and brown communities under the rubric of civilization, progress, modernization, and capitalism. The Anthropocene might seem to offer a dystopic future that laments the end of the world, but imperialism and ongoing (settler) colonialisms have been ending worlds for as long as they have been in existence.
with this stunning excerpt from Césaire
I must begin.
Begin what?
The only thing in the world that’s worth beginning:
The End of the World, no less
Places Journal delivering as per usual:
Utu in the Anthropocene by Rod Barnett on spacial justice, Maori value systems, reciprocity
An Indigenous intervention in contemporary public space that articulates reciprocity — that opens up the Indigenous environmental cosmology — would amount to a rent or tear in the space-time colonial-terrain continuum.
and
Tree Thinking by Shannon Mattern on plant intelligence and datafied forests, delightful even if it leans a lot too technocratic for me
What might a forest say to a satellite — or to us?
A rare design-related link, thank you Ella.
The incompatibility of Nudge and Co-Design as tools for policymaking by Emma Blomkamp and Colette Einfeld
Does the co-design group have the status and space to challenge, not only the solution and whether nudges are the most appropriate intervention, but also the policymakers’ understanding of the problem? If nudge is the predetermined policy tool, but co-designers expect to be able to shape the output, might this undermine the process and trust in the government?
3 fictions, 2 audiobooks and a tiny paperback
She of the Mountains by Vivek Shraya
On paper, I should love this book. Queer, GNC, coming out, but something about it didn't land for me personally. I loved the Hindu mythologies. Stunning illustrations.
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Winter and **Spring by Ali Smith**
I don't know if I get these books. They are highly-rated but the format is too all over the place for me. Maybe because I'm listening to it, dunno. They also make me feel sad. Is that why they are highly-rated, for sadness?
Have you read read the seasonal quartet? What did you think?
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Pedal Zombies: Thirteen Feminist Bicycle Science Fiction Stories edited by Elly Blue
A very cute little volume of short bicycle stories that have little to do with zombies.