Link List #86: The final push to recognize climate change, kickboxing grandmas in Kenya, and conversations on art in Myanmar - Friends of Friends / Freunde von Freunden (FvF)

Link List #86: The final push to recognize climate change, kickboxing grandmas in Kenya, and conversations on art in Myanmar

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It’s official. We could have taken measures to avoid the temperature increase related to global warming decades ago. But we didn’t. The New York Times recently dedicated an entire issue of its magazine to the report. Elsewhere in the world, sexual assault victims gain control over their bodies in Kenya and a contemporary art scene is blossoming in a rather unexpected location while we’re dreaming of beach escapes, book in hand.

    • 1 Mentioning The New York Times’ latest long-form interactive read on climate change is a no-brainer. Accepting the fact that our planet is warming due to the indiscriminate burning of fossil fuels, however, has been quite a task for at least two generations. At the start of the 1980’s, scientists predicted that conclusive evidence of warming would appear on the global temperature record by the end of the decade, at which point it would be too late to avoid disaster. Nathaniel Rich’s essay Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change now documents the research period from 1979 until 1989.
    • 2 Calling something a “thriving art scene” is surely one of those overused travel journalism clichés. Yet Yangon, the commercial capital city of a country very much torn between the past and the present, free speech and decades-long oppression, may actually be one of those unexpected gems. In Myanmar, formal censorship has only been lifted in 2014. Hence it’s unsurprising that many of its contemporary artists strive on experiential natures. Yangon: Conversations on Art delves into that flourishing scene and its main players.
    • 3 Watch out for these kick-ass grandmas. They were victims of sexual assault, rape, and murder for decades. Now a group of elderly women living in Korogocho, reportedly Nairobi’s most dangerous slum, have teamed up to fight their predators. However sad and unright their circumstances, the more inspiring is this initiative. Watch their story on National Geographic.
    • 4 Ever thought about Paris and Kinshasa in the same context? Well, the city of love and capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo both have 13 million citizens. But now for the curious part: Paris has 927 departing flights a day, Kinshasa has just 13. To learn how a city’s globalization, wealth, industry, and tourism translates to its connectivity, give What Airport Traffic Tells us About the World’s Megacities a read.
    • 5 Picture this: a beach, a sunbed, and your favorite book. Hours, perhaps even days, go by; you lose track of time. What does immersing yourself in a book do to your brain? looks at the effects beyond those shadow tan lines.

Hopefully you enjoyed the reads from this week’s Link List, but if you’ve still got an internet itch to scratch, you can find more here.

Also be sure to check out the FvF Mixtapes for some tunes mixed by our friends and favorite artists, and subscribe to our newsletter to stay up to date with FvF stories.

Text: Ann-Christin Schubert
Photography: Daniel Müller

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