Updated , from Leeds in the north of England where I am on a work trip.
One of my daughters got a Magic 8-Ball for her birthday recently. She was very excited at the prospect of getting a Magic 8-Ball and has wanted one ever since her friend brought one into school to show the class. She is visually impaired and the 20-sided dice, suspended in dye, that reveals a response to the question you ask of the Magic 8-Ball is just too hard to read. Having looked around for a talking one without success, we've decided to make one as a project we can do together. So, I've now started learning about the electronics we need to build a talking Magic 8-Ball that still gives its response when shaken. Currently I'm down a rabbit hole of Arduino microcontrollers which have opened up all sorts of possibilities for other things we could build together. Hope to have a functioning breadboard prototype done soon.
A book out earlier this year by Tony Juniper called Just Earth, has got me back into thinking about inequality, which he argues is one of the biggest barriers to tackling the climate crisis. From there I started reading the work of Tim Jackson, who is a leading figure in the 'Post-Growth' movement and have started to dive more deeply into this topic. In short, it asks a compelling question: is the current economic model — with its single-minded focus on GDP growth — sustainable (it's not!), and does it create the conditions for humans to really thrive (it doesn't)? Having tackled this question, the next big question becomes what could an alternative economic model, that's not based on never-ending growth, look like? And that's what I'm diving deeply into at the moment, enjoying reading with a learning focus.
Last year I started learning HTML, CSS, JavaScript and Linux after installing Ubuntu on an old Mac. Mostly it was for the challenge of it, but also to know how to build things for myself. Like this page. I've been heavily influenced by Derek Sivers's writings on programming and tech independence. After many months, I'm back to learning more programming.