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- I crave lively streets
It is because of one’s giving that one is given to. One must not wait to have something given to one. One must not become a beggar of the spirit.
— Fumitake Koga & Ichiro Kishimi
I often think about what would make the perfect place to live. It’s a tricky question because my answer keeps evolving over time. Still, I believe it’s important to reflect on—and, honestly, it’s also just fun to dream about.
I’ve lived in the French countryside, Paris, China, Argentina, an island, Morocco, and now Sri Lanka. Experiencing so many different ways of living has made me constantly question what suits me best. That’s one of the perks of a digital nomad lifestyle: we absorb different cultures, which expands our sense of what’s possible.
But maybe that’s also its downside. With so many options, we end up asking ourselves too many questions, and all these possibilities can lead to choice overload.
Learning to choose is hard. Learning to choose well is harder. And learning to choose well in a world of unlimited possibilities is harder still, perhaps too hard.
There’s one thing, though, that has consistently come up when I imagine an ideal place to live. For the longest time, I couldn’t quite pinpoint it—until recently.
More than anything else, I crave lively streets.
I want to live somewhere kids play outside, where old people—like I saw in China—pull up a chair in the shade and spend the afternoon watching the world go by. A place where adults gather for evening drinks while keeping an eye on the kids, where shops spill onto the sidewalks, and where cars don’t dictate the rhythm of life. A place where walking is the default, where conversations happen spontaneously, and where the streets belong to the people.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been drawn to places with these features. It also feels like this was more common in the past, but we’ve been robbed of it by car-centric city planning.
I don’t know why, but I have a feeling that bringing back lively streets could help solve many of today’s problems: encouraging kids to play outside and become more independent, fostering closer connections between neighbors, reducing loneliness, and strengthening the sense of community. It wouldn’t be a perfect fix, but it would certainly help.
So even if I don’t find a place like this, I hope that wherever I eventually settle, I’ll find a way to bring this vision to life.
— James
Tools & Websites
GoFullPage is a free web extension that captures screenshots of entire web pages. It automatically scrolls through the page, freeing you from standard screen size limitations.
Flexoki is Steph Ango's—Obsidian founder's—new project. It's an inky color scheme for prose and code, […] designed for reading and writing on digital screens [and] inspired by analog inks and warm shades of paper.
Cora is a new email inbox that shows you only emails needing your response, helps draft replies in your voice, and summarizes the rest in two daily briefs. They also have a beautifully creative website ↓
James’ Library
Article | If you resonated with the opening essay, you'll love this companion piece by Stephanie H. Murray. She tells the story of two Bristol mothers who came up with an inspired idea: experimenting with closing their street to traffic. The experiment also produced some unexpected results. As children poured into the street, some ran into classmates, only just then realizing that they were neighbors. Soon it became clear to everyone present that far more children were living on Greville Road than anyone had known. That session, and the many more it prompted, also became the means by which adult residents got to know one another, which led to another revelation for Ferguson and Rose: In numerous ways, a world built for cars has made life so much harder for adults. |
Video | Dumb Ways to Die started as a rail safety campaign for Metro Trains Melbourne before taking the internet by storm. I stumbled upon it recently, and I have to say it's a really catchy song with horrific lyrics ☠ |
…Aesthetic Corner…
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Are matchbox becoming trendy again? I’m seeing more and more boxes with cool designs, and so did José Pablo who compiled them all in this tweet. Inspo for all designers.
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The Palma 2 is BOOX's new lightphone. It features an eInk screen, runs on Android, and includes BOOX's native reading app for highlighting, annotating, and translating text. At $279.99, it's designed for distraction-free use.
Sustainable Living
Pilsok is a Ukraine-based brand, founded by Dmytro Isaienko in 2007. They make mainly backpacks, but also shopping bags, sacoches, and even chalk bags for climbers. All of their products are upcycled, meaning they transform discarded materials into new products of higher value.
Their latest line of bags were made using airbags taken from disassembled cars. It takes about three airbags to create one backpack.
In the process of creating the accessories, the team cuts each airbag and then separately combines them with each other. Because of this, each item has a unique design.
I love these kinds of projects that are at the same time really cool, but also translate into a sustainable approach to making things.
Friends of James
Beehiiv — the powerhouse behind all my newsletters, helping me craft, design, grow my audience, and monetize effortlessly.
Notion — my go-to tool for the last 6+ years, where I store all my notes, manage tasks, and essentially run both my life and businesses.
Webflow — the engine behind all my websites, letting me design, build, and launch seamlessly without code.
Make — the tool that runs my business on autopilot, handling all recurring and time-consuming tasks
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