Web Pages:

https://www.nikonsmallworld.com/galleries/2024-photomicrography-competition

https://thecoincidenceproject.net

Who Are We?TCP:

A Global NonprofitOur PhilosophyWe are all connected – humans, plants, animals, and the earth live in an interconnected and interdependent web. Meaningful coincidences illuminate this interconnectedness.

Our Mission is to educate the public about meaningful coincidences and to encourage people to share their stories of meaningful coincidences, serendipity and synchronicity, in order to inspire a leap forward in the evolution of human self-awareness: individually, interpersonally and collectively. We accomplish this mission through research and hosting gatherings, seminars, and discussion groups both online and in person.

https://ourworldindata.org/

Our World in Data (ourworldindata.org) is a very fascinating website for those interested in learning about the changes happening around us in a user-friendly form of colorful charts and graphs. There are several topics such as Population, Health, Environment, Innovation, and a ton more. This helps us understand how the world is changing overtime and the implications around it.

https://www.naturalworldfacts.com/deep-sea-hub

Welcome to the Deep Sea. Start up your submarine and decide on a destination.

https://www.livingmuseum.app/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

The Living Museum is an experimental user interface using content from the British Museum’s website[1] (unaffiliated), which aims to show how these technologies could be used to craft engaging experiences for museums visitors and people at home. First, we allow visitors to curate personalized exhibits by searching the collection using natural language. Second, we use large language models (LLMs) to bring artifacts to life, allowing visitors to feel their presence and learn about history through dialogue.

I hope this project demonstrates that technology like AI can increase immersion, thereby improving educational outcomes, without sacrificing authenticity or factuality.

Techie Tips:

Some Surprising Things Your iPhone Can Do

Identify plants or animals. If you take a photo of a plant, flower, tree, or animal, you can find out exactly what it is by tapping the Info button on the bottom of the screen; if your iPhone knows what it is, a symbol with stars will appear at the bottom of the photo. The metadata details will tell you what the plant or animal is and will also give you an option to look up more information about it.

Transform your phone into a portable white noise machine. In Settings, go to Accessibility > Audio & Visual > Background Sounds and choose from sounds such as Ocean, Rain, and Stream. We’ve tested this ourselves and with babies; the sounds are soothing.

Ask Siri to read things to you. Open the Safari app and then command Siri to “read this” or say, “I want to listen to this page.” You can also tap the Page Settings button on the left of the address bar and tap Listen to Page. You have the option to adjust the speaking speed as well as pause.

Schedule a text to send later. If you don't want people to know you're awake at all hours of the night, schedule your messages to send at more, uh, normal hours. Open a chat, type your text, and then tap the + on the left side of the message field. Select Send Later, then choose a day and time for your scheduled message to be delivered.

Create gestures that you can trigger with your voice. The iOS accessibility features can replay any series of touch actions when you give a voice command. Imagine mapping out an entire, tedious action that you frequently do in an app, such as manually entering information to move through screens or having a command that scrawls your signature or draws a picture. Go to Settings, tap Accessibility, and then tap Voice Control. Toggle it on, and then tap Commands > Create New Command. Enter your desired command phrase, tap Action, and then tap Run Custom Gesture. Use your finger to create the gesture on your home screen, and your phone will replay it when you say the trigger phrase. Note: We found that Voice Control would respond to anyone using the commands, so maybe turn this one off when you aren’t using it.

Quickly remove the background from photos. Tap and hold any picture stored in the Files app, and then tap Quick Actions > Remove Background. iOS creates a duplicate of your original photo with no background—perfect for further editing in another app. You can use the same trick with several photos, too.

Use two fingers to select all. Just swipe down to select all to mark every item as read or mass-delete items within apps like Messages, Mail, Notes, and Reminders. This action also works in some third-party apps.

Copy or translate text with the camera. Open the camera app and point your phone lens at a block of text. An icon with three lines in an outlined square appears at the bottom-right corner. Tap the icon to capture the text with the option to copy, select all, look up, translate, or share.

Look up laundry-care icons. After you take a photo of a laundry-care label, tap the Info button at the bottom of the page and tap Look Up Laundry Care. The results will show you what each specific label means.

Keep people from snooping through your phone. A setting called Guided Access keeps your phone locked to one app, which is particularly useful when you’re letting kids play with your iPhone. In Settings, tap Accessibility > Guided Access to activate the feature, which prevents whoever is using your phone from exiting an app and opening another one. Just remember to turn it off once you get your phone back.

Become a faster photographer with Camera shortcuts. Swiping left on your iPhone’s lock screen opens the Camera app by default (though you can also change that shortcut to something else in iOS 18). It’s much easier to shoot photos by pressing the physical volume button on the side of the phone instead of tapping the Shutter button. Swiping the Shutter button to the left shoots a bunch of photos in a row, a function known as burst mode, while holding down the Shutter button shoots video without you having to swipe into video mode. Shaving a second off the time it takes to snap a photo or record a video can be precious when you’re capturing something fleeting, like fast-moving kids or pets.

Limit screen time for specific apps. Wasting too much time mindlessly scrolling TikTok or Instagram? You can turn on a setting that restricts your access to those apps. In Settings, tap Screen Time, then Add Limits > Add Limit. You can select an entire app category, such as Social, or you can set limits on specific apps by tapping the category and then selecting apps within those categories. Tap Next in the top-right corner and then choose how much time you’ll allow yourself to spend on those apps. You can give yourself more time on weekends if you want by tapping Customize Days.

Move a group of apps to another page on your home screen. When you’re curating your iPhone home screen, moving apps one by one to a different page can be tedious. You can move a group of apps over at the same time: Long-press, an app, tap Edit Home Screen and then grab the app you want to move. While still holding your finger on the screen, tap on each app icon you’d like to move with it, and the iPhone will grab them all.

Sketchplanations:

If you're a parent or buy presents for kids, perhaps Christmas brings mixed feelings. While we love spending time with family, playing together, and taking a break, Christmas gift-giving easily brings some stress and anxiety (one of the reasons that Thanksgiving is so good).

This list from Pragmatic Parent is a potential antidote to the consumerism that can overtake at Christmas. The idea is to give one gift to each child in five categories: Want, Read, Wear, Need, and Do.

No one wants a Dudley Dursley on his birthday, "Thirty-six. That's two less than last year!"

At the same time, as a parent, you may be nostalgic for your Christmas or holidays as a child and want to recreate them for your children.

Paul Graham wrote in an essay Life is Short :

"Having kids showed me how to convert a continuous quantity, time, into discrete quantities. You only get 52 weekends with your 2-year-old. If Christmas-as-magic lasts from ages 3 to 10, you only get to watch your child experience it 8 times. And while it's impossible to say what is a lot or a little of a continuous quantity like time, 8 is not a lot of something."

So, while you may be working as parents to make it memorable, some things can easily get out of kilter.

The 5-Gift Guide for Christmas is a potential way to reduce some of the consumerism associated with Christmas and adopt a more minimalist approach:

- It promotes useful gifts that won't gather dust after the excitement of the holidays has passed.

- It encourages gratitude for what we receive and minimises pining for what we don't.

- It also suggests gifts that create experiences for the receiver and the family—one of the best ways to spend our money.

The Paradise Paradox is the tempting but misguided belief that moving to a "paradise" will magically make everything better. It's the idea that a change of scene to somewhere beautiful or exciting will somehow sweep away all our problems. And while a fresh setting can give us a lift, the reality is often more complicated: paradise, as wonderful as it might be, won't always solve the everyday challenges we bring along with us.

Moving to your paradise might feel incredible, and it's a life-changer for some people, but it's easy to idealize paradise, imagining it as a place where worries simply disappear. Yet even the most stunning places could start to feel ordinary, and your conceptualised paradise may have its own challenges.

For instance, perhaps your paradise is a beautiful, distant, exotic land. Such a paradise, however, has the drawback of no longer being distant or exotic once you arrive and the day-to-day takes over. Someone living in a fast-paced metropolis might dream of calm and quiet, while someone surrounded by calm and quiet may dream of the rush and excitement of the big city.

Alastair Humphreys, who introduced me to the Paradise Paradox in his book Local, gave a great example in our podcast about Microadventures. In an interview on an American podcast, the interviewers couldn't imagine exploring Kansas to be exciting—it was known or even home to them. But to Alastair, a visit to Kansas would be an adventure, full of new things to see and do. It's a reminder that our ideas of paradise are often fueled by novelty—and novelty, by nature, doesn't last forever.

Some of the Paradise Paradox may be explained by how easy it is to build up expectations. If we imagine paradise as the ultimate fix, it could lead to disappointment if it doesn't live up to the dream. As for vorfreude—the joy of anticipation—the build-up can sometimes overshadow the reality.

Then there's the simple truth that day-to-day life in paradise isn't a vacation. A tropical beach holiday lets you unwind and enjoy the scenery without a care. But living there might mean dealing with rainy seasons, work deadlines, or just regular old laundry.

Humans are also remarkably adaptable. We're good at adjusting to new surroundings, which means something initially remarkable may soon become the new normal. It's a bit like the grass-is-greener mentality we see in many areas of life. If you're a consultant, you might long for the stability of an in-house role, while in-house folks might crave the variety of consulting.

In some cases, the Paradise Paradox takes on a more serious tone. The documentary film The Paradise Paradox, executive produced by Olympic ski racer Bode Miller and filmmaker Brett Rapkin, explores how people are drawn to the beauty and tranquillity of US mountain towns sometimes face mental health struggles. These picturesque communities, though visually idyllic, have experienced higher-than-average rates of suicide, highlighting the challenges of living in remote, isolated settings.

To reduce the effect of the Paradise Paradox, it helps to focus on what brings fulfilment in any setting, allowing us to appreciate where we are without feeling the constant pull of an imagined paradise.

Here are a few ways to lessen the allure:

1. Cultivating Gratitude

Practising gratitude allows us to recognise the value of what we already have. Focusing on the positives around us may make us less inclined to search elsewhere for happiness, realizing that contentment often lies closer than we think.

2. Prioritizing Experiences Over Material Goods

Research consistently shows that experiences bring longer-lasting happiness than possessions. Prioritizing meaningful activities and memories can bring joy and satisfaction, outlasting the initial thrill of accumulating more.

3. Simplifying Life

A minimalist approach can help reduce the constant desire for more—whether it's things, places, or achievements. Simplifying our lives can allow us to focus on what truly matters and bring a greater sense of peace.

4. Pursuing Meaningful Goals

Focusing on personal growth, nurturing relationships, and contributing to our communities can offer a lasting sense of fulfilment that doesn't depend on our surroundings. Meaningful goals and connections often provide the depth of happiness that location alone can't bring.

Paradise can certainly refresh us, but true and lasting happiness is often about embracing where we already are and what we already have.

Article:

Mastering Our Mind For Better Ideas

Whether we like it or not, the digital noise we absorb every day (yep, the doomscrolling, the media overload, and the speed at which we’re expected to live) affects our thinking. Constant engagement and relentless “productivity” doesn't just clutter our minds; it profoundly impacts our ability to think critically and come up with original ideas. The good news is that we can step outside the infinite scroll and reclaim our capacity to think creatively. We can ignore the endless open tabs for a second to regain clarity of thought.

I’ve recently experienced this myself after travelling for a couple of weeks and being offline for the most part. Nurturing creativity is also a topic I’ve always been interested in, so it made sense to share some of my lessons in the form of six habits for mental clarity, creative insight, and, ironically, sustained productivity.

1. Doing vs. Plotting:

Action and planning are meant to complement each other: immediate action, while fulfilling, can sometimes be akin to running in circles if not backed by deliberate strategy; on the other hand, excessive planning can become an obstacle to doing anything at all. We can produce better results by using strategic thinking as a compass for action and adjusting as we go along.

The book “How to think more effectively” encourages us to be mindful of how much of our time is spent on execution and how much of it is devoted to strategy. Strategic thinking can feel challenging due to a normalised state of distraction, lack of conditions for good thinking (not exactly our society’s strong suit), and the anxiety that often accompanies difficult topics: “The most profound thoughts we need to grapple with also have the most potential to disturb.” However, it’s certainly easier to carry on with the familiar tasks:

“We should strive to ensure that at least 20% of our efforts are devoted to reflecting on the deeper ‘why’ questions.”

That sounds like wise advice to me.

2. Hands-on thinking:

“Thinking by doing” isn't just a catchphrase; it's an approach I use every day for problem-solving, both at work and in my personal life. Whenever I find myself stuck in a mental loop, starting a practical task related to the challenge always helps. The mental puzzle becomes tangible, and I’m able to visualise its parts, move things around or undo them, and shape them in real-time.

Concrete action often illuminates the path forward, Whether sketching, wireframing, or jotting down a plan. This is true in my design practice, where an idea is often only half of the equation, and what I imagined doesn’t always translate elegantly onto the screen — not until I create it in context, nor until I try different solutions within a real canvas. Tangible ‘trial and error’ is particularly effective for complex problems with multiple factors.

In “Thinkertoys”, Michael Michalko describes myriad creative-thinking techniques in great detail. One is called “Think Bubbles”, a graphic exercise for organising our thoughts by creating a physical picture of how our mind blueprints a challenge:

“Once you project your blurred mental images onto paper, the idea evolution process can begin.”

This technique allows us to see relationships between different parts of the problem and mimics the way our mind clusters concepts, making the information easier to absorb. Engaging with different parts of a challenge without losing the big picture can yield unexpected insights.

3. Writing for mental clarity:

Expanding on the theme of “doing”, writing is an externalised form of thinking that often leads to new insights; much like the previous example, it helps our mind to process information — it forces us to structure our thoughts, choose words, and to construct arguments.

Writing down ideas allows us to return to an insight and look at it from a different perspective, perhaps with accumulated knowledge, to connect dots we hadn’t seen before. Conversely, that same distance may bring an updated lens and steer us into discarding an idea. In this scenario, writing helps us to think critically, as captured in “How to think more effectively”:

“We can note how much more work we need to do, to let someone else understand what we are still only meaning to say, rather than actually saying.”

I often feel I know more about a topic after writing because I was able to articulate it in the process. By materialising our thoughts we crystallise knowledge, we move from vagueness into concrete sentences; and once we do, we hear them in a different frequency. When we write, we’re forced to ask ourselves: What do I mean by x? Why do I think this is true? Which analogies can I draw from it? How can I explain it? So, in a way, writing becomes an extension of our brain.

4. Bypassing mental blocks:

Sometimes, our brains need a break. An effective way to distract our minds from actively solving a problem, is to engage in mundane or routine tasks. Tasks that can serve as a “cognitive pause”, such as going for a walk or driving down the highway... When we’re in autopilot, without overwhelming distraction, our brains can wander.

We’ve all heard about the "aha moments" and brilliant ideas born in the shower, a place where not much is happening inside our minds and where we’re not expected to think. This is when half-baked thoughts reach our consciousness and turn into insights. The neuroscientist Marcus Raichle explains:

“The parts of the brain that come ‘online’ when you’re doing nothing are called the Default Mode Network.”

Even though we’ve subtracted the ‘background noise’, our brains never really turn off. Allowing our mind to be distracted by giving it space to wander goes a long way.

5. Chasing novelty:

Our brains are wired to pay attention to new stimuli, and a ‘change of scenery’ is a known trick to help our minds loosen up. New experiences can disrupt our patterns of thought and bring in a new perspective. Creating opportunities for awe and novelty, such as travelling, being in nature, visiting an exhibition, or attending a workshop on an unfamiliar subject, provides new input, which in turn can awaken our brains with novel ideas. Brent Crane explains why, in the article “For a more creative brain, travel”:

“Creativity is related to neuroplasticity, or how the brain is wired. Neural pathways are influenced by environment and habit, meaning they’re also sensitive to change: New sounds, smells (…) and sights spark different synapses in the brain and may have the potential to revitalise the mind.

”Being away from the distractions of our daily lives can help our minds lower their guard. This is why, for some of us, a long enough flight becomes fertile soil for reflection, making space for the unsettling questions or those new ideas that we never have “time” for.

6. Diluting mental silos:

The richest ideas often come from the intersection of ’seemingly disconnected fields’; an example is behavioural economics, which is the blend of psychology and economics. This cross-pollination of ideas is one definition of creativity. Enriching our reservoir of knowledge beyond our domain is key when broadening our thinking. After all, as Michael Michalko points out: “Remember that everything new is just an addition or modification to something that already existed.”

The author explains why “manipulation is the brother of creativity” when introducing the brainstorming exercise SCAMPER, a checklist of idea-spurring questions by Alex Osborn and Bob Eberle, which allows us to find relationships between dissimilar things; to borrow aspects from a contrasting object or concept, substitute characteristics, modify or magnify certain parts, to generate new alternatives.

Looking for patterns, processes, or features from another subject might translate or help clarify our own. Keeping an open mind and constantly asking questions enables us to make new connections, thus transfer and apply insights in unexpected ways.

Mastering our mind is not about completely shutting down distractions (would that be even possible in today’s world?). It’s about learning how to navigate and leverage those inputs and call on new ones for better, less passive thinking. It’s about intentionally returning to the basics to feed our own imagination from time to time.

These habits aren’t mutually exclusive; you may find that strategising while train travelling solo is a great combination. I know I do. The goal is to take a step back and be intentional: from balancing action and strategy to deliberately stimulating or distracting our mind — since our brains never really turn off, we might as well level the playing field.

Crystal Mountain Trip: