Undb is a “private first, local first, open source, no-code database” platform. It’s a free(mium) alternative to Airtable for hosting your own data and sharing it with others.

FloatBrowser lives in your macOS menu bar and opens a specific website (like a social stream or your favourite app) in a miniature-sized window. You can set it to auto-refresh at certain intervals, too.

Wealthfolio describes itself as a “beautiful and boring investment tracker, with local data storage. No subscriptions, no cloud”. It’s an open source app that runs securely on your desktop, visualising your investment performance. And it’s free to use. Feeding it financial data seems to be a manual process, i.e. uploading export files from your broker/bank. You’ll also need to have some technical chops to install the app on your machine.

This is such a cute idea: one of Matt Webb’s many creative projects let’s you install a little script on your website that shows the cursor of other visitors as they move around the page. A new feature: hit the ‘/’ key and start chatting with other visitors. Why? To make surfing the web more social and fun: “What’s the smallest thing that can help you realise that other people are here too?” (via)

Lifehouse �

A practical guide to community resilience

A book for anyone seeking a beacon of hope and practical guidance on building resilient communities and reclaiming power in the face of climate-driven crises. “Adam Greenfield recovers lessons from the Black Panther survival programs, the astonishingly effective Occupy Sandy disaster-relief effort and the solidarity networks of crisis-era Greece, as well as municipalist Spain and autonomous Rojava, to show how practices of mutual care and local power can help shelter us from a future that often feels like it has no place for us or the values we cherish.”

Playground �

Ocean life, technology and human connection

A new novel (released last week!) by Richard Powers, best-selling author of The Overstory. Playground brings together four characters whose lives converge on the remote island of Makatea in French Polynesia. As the island’s residents prepare to vote on a groundbreaking project to build autonomous floating cities, the novel explores themes of technology, the environment and human connection, set against the vast backdrop of the world’s largest ocean.

This excellent essay explores how pain has become the organising principle of modern life, used as a tool for progress, refuge and justification. Inspired by adrienne maree brown’s Pleasure Activism, Tiago Forte advocates for centering pleasure in personal and collective transformation, proposing that sustainable change can come from embracing joy and self-care instead of sacrifice and pain. “We use pain to justify ourselves when there are no other excuses. Can’t you see I’m suffering? Can’t you see I’m at my very limit? Pain passes the buck to some other cause, some other perpetrator. It is the flag we waive in the face of all our accusers, especially ourselves. As long as I am suffering, I am shielded from responsibility for the consequences of my actions. But I have to keep suffering to keep that shield in place.” (via)

Will Stancil (unsuccessfully) ran for office in Minneapolis, MN, and in this post he shares some of the perspectives he gained from the experience. It shifted his view of politics from managing an image to understanding and representing the diverse needs of his community. “When you become so familiar with the people in the district, it’s hard to escape another realization: Maybe you entered the race because you felt like you had clever views on policy. But once you get to know the people in the district better, you become more keenly aware what you’re asking of them: to be their representative. That realization started to color every conversation. Marching up to someone’s door and informing them of my opinions felt very wrong. Of course I needed to tell voters about myself. But what I wanted even more was to hear about them: their worries, concerns, and priorities.”

Proponents of self-driving cars sell the tech as being safer and cleaner, but the Jevons paradox tells us that they might lead to more driving and higher emissions. As driving becomes easier and more enjoyable, people may take more trips, negating any environmental benefits. “Electric lights are often cited as an example: people have responded to improved light bulb efficiency by installing so many more of them that there has been no decline in the total energy consumed by lighting. The Jevons paradox has become a bedrock principle of environmental economics, used to explain why efficiency improvements can backfire and cause the opposite outcome from what was intended.”