I’m currently into the local sustainable section of The omnivore’s dilemma, reading about Polyface farm feels like a dream, it’s incredible how that way of farming contrasts with the industrial way of highly scaled monocrop fields.

One of the things that came to my mind whilst reading this section was that automation isn’t always synonym with progress, even though the industrial food system has skyrocketed the production of food, it has done so despite the damage it causes to the land and the ecosystem.

It is naive to think that food is food independently from where it comes, plants are living beings and the conditions in which they develop affect how good can they be for us, the same with cow, chicken and fish meat, psychological and physical stress are deeply related with the quality of the meat.

[video] 6 Reasons Why I Choose to Unschool My Children

An explaination of why a family in New Zealand chose to leave their kids out of school.

Exploring alternatives to mainstream education is always interesting, this in particular I found it a little extreme at first. The idea of not going to school is excellent as a child, in my experience I would say that most children don’t like going to school for anything else than seeing their friends; but as an adult that has gone through that whole system it’s another story.

Even though I can see the problems in mainstream education (standardize the teaching for 30+ children in a single classroom, measure only logical-mathematical intelligence over other kinds of intelligence, encourage memorization over comprehension, etc), I am not convinced that unschooling is the best alternative, the main concern it raises is what is an unschooled to do if they want to pursue a career? According to the comments they could get the certifications needed to attend to university or something like that eventually.

I have a degree in statistics and most of the things saw during highschool I dind’t feel like I needed them. I can see an unschooled that got interested in mathematics and statistics pursuing a career in the field and have a satisfactory outcome, IMO university isn’t that hard if you are truly interested in the themes.

Another thought is that maybe unschooled children wouldn’t be likely to pursue traditional careers, as they are exposed to alternative lifestyles through their development they wouldn’t necessarily be attracted to the mainstream way of living that depends 100% on earning money to not die of starvation.

[video] The Strange World of YouTube’s Corporate Propaganda

A video looking into the youtube’s creator academy videos, the advice they give and the motivations behind them.

The comparison between the wendy’s hot drink video and the youtube creator academy, the idea that the YCA is basically youtube’s equivalent of a corporate training video is very interesting, it shows the power youtube and by extention google, has over the video consumption in the internet, rewarding more a kind of content is a way to control what kind of content is produced.

Another interesting point the video makes, and the one that I find more troubling is how through the YCA youtube presents itself and how it rewards the content being pushed to the platform as “a force of nature”, and that you have to comply with it or else.

That is a reminder that centralization is a bad thing on the internet, it may be convenient to consume all your content in a single website, but the company behind that website gains more control over what content you consume, the same applies to other types of sites,e.g. google controlling what you can access on the internet and facebook controlling what you are allowed to say online.

[music] [youtube] [bandcamp] Camino 84 : Yacht Rock Breaks 2

The second and in my opinion the better of the two Yatch Rock Breaks albums of Camino84. A beachy, relaxed album of two songs clocking in 25 and 23 minutes respectively. A journey through funky chill samples and sounds that will transport you to better times.

Don’t let the lenght of those songs scare you, as they are structured as a few mini-songs inside each one, a sudden change of rythm always announce the next section in a smooth transaition, each section more chill and funky than the last.

Personally this is one of my favourite albums and it’s a delight to listen from time to time.