still scanning stuff from our last trip to morocco.
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when i started this walking on history series, i was inspired by all the sidewalk memorials we stumbled upon in berlin. but what about other kinds of history… like natural history?
there’s this olive tree a couple of towns over, in the middle of a touristic resort by the ria formosa. it’s huge and gnarly and falling apart a bit, the trunk wide and open enough to fit someone inside. and it’s also mind-blowing…
…because it’s one of the oldest trees in the world, with over 2200 years old. just let that sink in for a minute.
this tree was here before the visigoths invaded the peninsula from the north, before the moors took their place from the south, before the christians kicked them out. when portugal officially came to existence in the 12th century, this tree was already a thousand years old, bearing fruit and witness to it all. it “saw” the first sailors leaving towards the unknown a few centuries later, saw the empire rise and fall… and these days, it mostly sees tourists and hears their children’s laughter, splashing in the nearby pool.
it’s still here after all these years, like it’s always been, stretching our perspective of time and making us feel tiny in comparison. a few years ago, we planted a small olive tree on our backyard and now i wonder how long (hundreds of years? thousands?) it’ll live and what things it’ll see. i guess we’ll never know… and i’m ok with that. :)
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our favourite youtube channels
maybe it’s a sign that i’m getting old, but what’s with kids and youtube these days? i don’t even mean the creepy, seriously wrong stuff, just… the rest. for instance, i have an 8-year old cousin who’s hooked on minecraft tutorials and a channel about some brasilian brothers doing weird stuff. :| i watched some episodes of the latter at his insistence and got the impression even game play-throughs would be more interesting… somehow, i just can’t get the appeal.
and yet, not having a tv in the house, we end up watching quite a bit of youtube stuff on our lunch breaks. luckily for us, there’s a lot of quality content being uploaded these days! i thought i’d mention a few of our favourites channels, in case you’re looking for interesting stuff to watch now and then.
– on the serious side of the spectrum, we watch a lot of ted talks still, though the format is getting a bit old and it’s harder for them to make an impression on us these days. i guess we’re growing de-sensitised to it, despite the great content.
– also on the more serious/philosophical side, the school of life is nice. i was suspicious at first, but their curriculum series won me over. i enjoy the empathy and perspective that it brings.
– moving over to the science department, we’re fans of veritasium. it’s about physics and experiments, but from a cool contemporary point of view.
– i’m not sure how we found out about tom scott’s channel but it stuck. he focus not just on science, but also an interesting mix of historical facts and quirky places that i enjoy discovering.
– the same tom and a bunch of his friends also produce another show called citation needed. basically, they try to guess facts from an obscure wikipedia page, without much information to go on. tangents and hilarity ensue, with lots of mystery biscuits in between.
– and last but definitely not least, the brain scoop! emily graslie was a volunteer at a small university museum in montana, when hank green (from the vlogbrothers) checked it out on one of his videos to his brother. everyone was delighted by her enthusiasm on that episode, so a new channel was born featuring emily and the museum.
i recommend watching her videos in chronological order, and following along as she is then later offered a position as chief curiosity correspondent at one of the largest natural history museums in the world.
so… there’s still hope for youtube, i think! :) do you have any other good tips? let me know!
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analogue wednesday #129
marrakesh windows.
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study with me?
back when we were in berlin, we had something called the early morning study sessions. i’ve written about them before, but in short, everyday we’d meet the same friends at the coffee shop around the corner at 7am, studied for an hour and then went home to continue with the rest of our day.
maybe it was the consistency of it, or perhaps the accountability factor, but every morning when the alarm rang i jumped out of bed thinking “our friends will be waiting, we need to go!“. so we went, and it worked beautifully. i learnt more in those months than i had in a long time, just silently reading and taking notes next to our equally absorbed friends.
i miss this morning ritual terribly. there’s still so much that i want to learn and that i never seem to be able to get to. but there are no nice cafés in the village, our closest friends live 20km away… and i know these are just excuses, but i’ll be the first to admit that my self-motivation was never all that great.
so, keeping in mind this is the age of the internet, i propose an experiment: what if you and i got together on skype bright and early (sometime between 6-8 gmt?), and just quietly learned, researched, crafted or worked on our own projects for a bit? maybe everyday, maybe a day or two per week — whatever suits your schedule.
i know this is not for everyone and maybe it sounds a little crazy… but there must be at least one person out there willing to give it a try, right? in any case, i thought i’d ask. if you’re an early riser and there’s something you’d like to make time to study or learn in the morning, let me know — we’ll see if it works! :)