Weekend Reading

Happy Sunday! I'm in my nook drinking a cup of cranberry blood orange black tea after a long night of solid sleep. The weather forecast promises enough warmth in the day ahead to lay out and soak up some sunshine. I'm already feeling good about this day of rest.

Here's what caught my eye this week:

The Big Squeeze: Can Big Cities Save the Earth? 
Jeremy shared this link with me earlier this week – I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. First, the images of the high-density residential high-rises made me feel claustrophobic. Then the fact that if the whole world lived like Americans we'd need over 4 more planet Earths to support them made me feel overwhelmed.

If you are happy to live with a modest diet, one pair of shoes and a bike, you won't be drawing on as much of Earth as, say an American would. If all 7 billion of us want to live like Americans, with refrigerators and air conditioners and cars and running water and TVs and strawberries in winter — then we will have a space problem.

I'm even more motivated to have a lighter footprint after seeing it from this perspective.

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If you know me in real life you probably know that I'm fascinated by BitCoin. But the thing is... I have no idea how it works. Probably because when it comes down to it, I don't really understand how money works. I get the basic concept, of course. I make an income, I pay my bills, and I don't have debt but I don't understand how the value of money is determined or how the federal reserve works. I especially get confused when thinking about exchange rates across borders.

Back to BitCoin... BitCoin is decentralized, democratic, and fee-free money. It doesn't have borders and is open-source. It almost sounds too good to be true (and a lot of people are really good at arguing that very point). My friend Matt sent me a link to this site, We Use Coins, that explains it pretty well.

I still have lots of questions and uncertainties around BitCoin but I think I may dive in and get a "wallet" soon.


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I'm beginning to feel like I need to understand more about development and the web. I feel safe in the hands of the few coders I use, but at the same time web development is a language I'd like to become a bit more fluent in. If even to just communicate with my web developers a bit better. 

Zoe Rooney's blog is a fantastic resource. 

And I've started reading Gwen Bell's newest eBook called Git for Publishers (though, I think this one may be over my head). 

Sarah over at SillyGrrl is always offering up loads of advice and tutorials. She's also a circus performer – so, how cool is that?

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Have a great Sunday, y'all. Let' me know what you're reading. And especially let me know if you have any opinions about BitCoin or other web resources.