Newsletter for friends #01: Things and thoughts from May & June
To human readers of my personal blog,
Today I’m starting this little monthly newsletter for my friends on the Web, further embracing my foray into living a simple digital life. In part inspired by Philip Thomas, it’s a calmer way to stay in touch against the slurp of social media. Fewer people, no stress and FOMO, time not wasted, and deliberate connections.
Let’s exchange thoughts and links once a month. Here are some notable things I’ve been up to or enjoyed since May.
Reading
- Infinity in 15 kilograms
- Consumption-to-creation ratio
- How NASA astronauts are training to walk on the Moon
- Dispatches from the media apocalypse
- London–Calcutta bus service
- This section is going to explode in the next edition!
Writing
- Published editions #174, #175, #176, #177, #178 and #179 of my Moon Monday blog+newsletter, focusing on China’s insane lunar exploration advances
- Moon Monday #180 explains how rocket plumes from lunar landers could affect robots and humans nearby
- Wrote a tribute for Srinivasa Hegde, Mission Director of India’s first lunar orbiter Chandrayaan 1
- New resource pages on my space blog: ISRO Chandrayaan and China and Luna
Space, personally
- The Space Review republished my article on the uphill battle for Indian private rocket companies
- Welcomed three organization sponsors of my space writings! Meet Astrolab, Open Lunar Foundation, and PierSight.
Notable microthoughts
- Rules to effectively use social media
- It’s high time for western media to stop calling national space agencies local NASA
- How to have the most productive Mondays ever
- Would you consider time to publish a story or new development to be the most important aspect of journalism?
Life
- LED bulbs with built-in batteries are such a cool idea. It has helped me conveniently ignore Bangalore’s abrupt power cuts.
- Finally getting back in the game 🏸
- Bangalore has much better metro cards than Mumbai. One can get one on demand without submitting any documents, which also makes it private. Recharge information is printed on the card itself, with many options. Recharging via a human at a station also works. Can it get any easier?
- Purchased the Lifetime Pro plan for my space blog as well as Journal J. I’ve loved using Ghost for my blogs, and I’m convinced that with MagicPages, Jannis offers the best, most accessible way to run a Ghost blog+newsletter—all with terrific support. 👨🏻💻
Pictures
If you know me, I’d love to hear from you on how you found this newsletter for friends. If you don’t know me but connected to something in there, feel free to let me know or subscribe to get future posts.
Don’t know what to say? Reply with one interesting link.
Let’s not live an internet without intent.
– Jatan