The Monday Mix (04/04/2022)
Hey friends,
Not much to report this week, so I’ll get straight into it.
I wrote a new post on Medium last week. It’s a reading list of some books to learn more about European history that should help you make sense of the circumstances the continent finds itself in today.
I’ll probably post it here on Wednesday, but if you want to read it now, then here’s the link for the Medium post.
IKEA and Old Growth Forests
The climate crisis has taken a backseat recently due to the war in Ukraine but it’s a problem that’s not going away. One of the best ways to mitigate climate change is through trees and the rewilding of large parts of land.
Ironically, the Chernobyl explosion led to a rewilding of the local area due to its evacuation following the explosion. This led to a resurgence of nature, with trees and animals such as wild boars and horses moving back in.
This is why this story about IKEA chopping down old-growth trees, trees that have stood for a very long time, is concerning. We need these trees to remain where they are rather than chop them down for furniture. As someone who worked for IKEA while I was in Australia, this disappoints me and leaves me conflicted. I loved working for the company. They were brilliant, considerate and very generous. I also liked the fact that they were environmentally conscious.
While renovating the store in Melbourne, we always recycled what we used, in particular the cardboard which went into a massive machine to be recycled. This article has left me conflicted about the company and made me revise some of my opinions on IKEA.
1968
The year 1968 was one of the most eventful of the last 60 years. We’ve lived through some momentous times recently, perhaps none more so than 2020, but the importance of the events that happened in 1968 is clear when you look back.
The assassination of US Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy, who might have won the election that year otherwise, the assassination of Martin Luther King and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia to name a few.
Even by recent standards, this is quite the list of occurrences.
This essay is interesting in that it shows that, while history doesn’t repeat itself, it does rhyme and that many historical struggles are still relevant today. Indeed, the rights Martin Luther King was fighting for are under grave threat today, and could be argued, were never attained in the first place. While the successor to the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation, has just invaded another country.
The years may change but events have an uncanny way of replaying.
The French Art Thief
I don’t want to give too much away about this article, as it’s an incredible story. The basic story is about a French art thief, whom the French press referred to as Spiderman, who stole some of the most famous paintings in the world and his them in a graveyard.
It’s one of those stories that sounds so crazy it couldn’t be true, yet it is.
Book I’m reading - The Road To Unfreedom by Timothy Snyder
Timothy Snyder is one of the best historians on the planet and this book is a fascinating insight into the Ukraine crisis. As I mentioned in last month’s reading list, Putin has been festering about Ukraine for a while, and here Synder goes into the historical and recent political contexts that are playing out today. I’ve nearly finished the book and it’s provided an invaluable insight into what’s going on. If you want to learn more about how the situation in Ukraine got to where it is today, this is one of the best books to read.
Quote I’m pondering: “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche
That’s all for this week.
Until next time,
Tom