Gaia

A globe resembling the planet Earth seen suspended in the air inside a cathedral.

This week was lectured by Prof. Tim Lenton, and this module keeps setting off lightbulb moments for me. How did life on earth get to be self-regulating? What is life, and what is its effect on the planet? James Lovelock had started looking at the composition of atmospheres of different planets while working at NASA. …

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Week-ish notes – study tools

An open lined notebook with three pens placed diagonally across the pages. The pens are light blue, dark blue, and black, arranged from top to bottom on a white surface.

You might start a day with the best of intentions, but sometimes it takes just a few things for it to go off the rails, and the best thing to do is just accept the loss and move on rather than making it worse beating yourself up about it. I have great difficulty achieving focus …

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Limits to Growth

Global Systems Thinking is an optional module for the Food Studies MA at Exeter, but the more I follow it, the more relevant it feels. I wanted a solid underpinning in systems thinking, having been interested in it for some time, but not being able to properly articulate what it was about, or really understand …

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Food, farming and agroecology on Bluesky

A promotional graphic for starter pack focused on "Agroecology and Food Systems" hosted on Bluesky. The design features a banner with the text "JOIN THE CONVERSATION" at the top, followed by images of several individuals framed in circular portraits. The title "Agroecology and Food Systems on Bluesky" is prominently displayed in the lower half, with a butterfly icon symbolising the Bluesky platform.

My social local is currently Bluesky. Bluesky does starter packs, ready-to-go lists of accounts to follow around a particular topic, with suggested feeds that aggregate further content. I’ve created a starter pack on agroecology and food systems that you might want to follow if you’re interested in a quick start in a new place. I …

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Systems

This week, we’re looking at systems; a lot of this is through the lens of population change. World population and exponential growth Note, the decreasing amount of time between each 1 billion increase. What is the limit to human population growth? James Dyke suggested that this may be a thermodynamic limit, other limits may include …

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Global Systems Thinking

Thank you to Doug Belshaw for the inspiration to blog notes on my Master’s. I did something similar when I read International Studies with the Open University, in fact, to trick myself into getting assignments done I effectively blogged them before taking them back into a more referenced and academic format for submission. I might …

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