A blog of aggregated miscellanea and things I like uncovered from my daily travails. I'm Jacob, a peripatetic interdisciplinary designer of British persuasion, having interests in gastronomy, fashion, technology, interiors and sustainability. I'm currently working on online e-Commerce and identity. I enjoy Macs, mountain biking, smelly cheeses, and garlic.
Jacob's Ephemerata
“ The U.S. dollar is no longer the world’s currency. […] The exceptions to this rule include […] any country that has had a recent war. ”
“ There aren’t that many dangerous places in the world. True, Somalia would not make a good vacation spot. But the list of Somalias is short, and the list of amazing places is long. ”
“ You can’t very easily invite somebody to your church and then to supper and inform him that he’s marked for perdition. ”
![Tobacco Will Kill You, Jimmy [Unattributed]](http://18.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ks7m77kXnY1qz4yr8o1_500.jpg)
![Swan tatoo from Sang Bleu magazine [via NYTimes.com]. I find few tatoos aesthetic, but this is frankly stunning.](http://14.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ks7lq8jDy61qz4yr8o1_400.jpg)
Swan tatoo from Sang Bleu magazine [via NYTimes.com]. I find few tatoos aesthetic, but this is frankly stunning.
‘Ya Allah’ by Laya Project. (Make sure you stick with it passed the 30sec mark, and check out the Laya Project for a stunning film and more excellent songs from around India and south Asia.)
Liquid Modernity
…is Zygmunt Bauman’s (a Polish sociologist) term for the present condition of the world as contrasted with the “solid” modernity that preceded it. According to Bauman, the passage from “solid” to “liquid” modernity has created a new and unprecedented setting for individual life pursuits, confronting individuals with a series of challenges never before encountered. Social forms and institutions no longer have enough time to solidify and cannot serve as frames of reference for human actions and long-term life plans, so individuals have to find other ways to organize their lives. Individuals have to splice together an unending series of short-term projects and episodes that don’t add up to the kind of sequence to which concepts like “career” and “progress” could be meaningfully applied.
Such fragmented lives require individuals to be flexible and adaptable — to be constantly ready and willing to change tactics at short notice, to abandon commitments and loyalties without regret and to pursue opportunities according to their current availability. In liquid modernity the individual must act, plan actions and calculate the likely gains and losses of acting (or failing to act) under conditions of endemic uncertainty.
“ Humans are «self-domesticated apes», with natural selection favouring individuals that showed tame and cooperative behaviour, and weeding out the more aggressive and antagonistic among us. ”
