What Inspired You This Week?
Discover what people have submitted, in this week’s edition of our community-curated newsletter.
We're a nonprofit startup aiming to create a healthier internet by finding the highest-quality content online. To do that, we ask everyone around the globe to send in content that sparked new understanding, inspiration, joy, and more. 🌍✨
Our team member Mia shared this video:
🙇🏽 Sparked inspiration: "I was blown away by this amazing new development in technology and health care. Super cool!" —Mia, USA 🇺🇸
✨ Sparks from you, the Sparkable Community! ✨
Articles 📝
👁️ Sparked awareness: "Provided a clear and believable description of how Large Language Models will be changing knowledge work." —Tuomo, 32, Finland 🇫🇮
Ethan Mollick
🧠 Sparked new understanding: "This triggered me to change my view from a 'quantity' to 'quality' mindset and to take a closer look at what types of communities are worth fostering and/or being part of." —Paula
💪 Sparked rebellion: "The medical profession often tells women that our pain and discomfort is ‘normal’. This eye-opening article considers how we could be given more choice over how our bodies age, and sparks questions about whether we should accept ‘the way things are’." —Jo Clark, United Kingdom 🇬🇧
What if We Could Get Rid of Menopause? (an article of the Wall Street Journal, via MSN)
Videos 🎬
🖤 Sparked compassion: "Often we see the differences between us and them. This shows that we have so much in common. Really touched my heart!" —Dominique, 25, Switzerland 🇨🇭
👁️ Sparked awareness: "Shows how important it is to be conscious of our emotional state, our thoughts and how we can control what is happening within." —Apurva
Your turn! 📢
🔗 Submit a link!Community Spotlight 🌟
In each edition, we highlight a Sparkable member or friend.
Mardiya Siba Yahaya
Digital sociologist, learning designer, researcher, and Global Community Manager at TeamCommUNITY.
Implications of datafied societies on minoritized communities in the Global South, design justice, inclusive societies, and practices of care, community and sustainability. All of that describes only some parts of Mardiya's work. Their research encompasses digital labor, gender and cybersecurity, surveillance, counterpublics and digital identities. As a movement builder, their goal is to design and facilitate sustainable and collaborative communities. Mardiya has lived in Ghana 🇬🇭, Rwanda 🇷🇼, South Africa 🇿🇦, and Kenya 🇰🇪.
What's your biggest question at the moment?
What would our public life, spaces and affective experiences be like if minoritized communities and people who understand gendered, sexual, racial, and ethnic marginalities designed it?
Are there specific technological innovations that give you hope for the future?
Circumvention technologies, technologies that allow digital rights defenders to track shutdowns, harmful speech and protect themselves, technologies that have advanced the work of artists (and protected them from AI exploitation), e.g. Glaze. Community networks that extend internet accessibility to rural areas and are communally governed. Technologies that enable quick response to disasters and have improved healthcare over time. The bicycle, and technologies that allow digital right defenders securely and safely build and maintain counterpublics, and cross regional networks.
What initiatives are you and your organization working on that you believe will make a significant positive impact on digital rights?
At Team Community, we are working and strengthening our:
- Weekly, monthly and series of virtual community cultivation events and initiatives. This includes our weekly text-based chat Glitter Meetup where community members can network in a cross regional way, our Regional Meetups, our popular VPN Community Initiative Village, and the various private spaces we host for diverse organizations and members on Mattermost. Also our informal concierge desk where we help you address any requests, problems, or needs you may have.
- Wiki, which we have begun updating with key resources and tips.
- Our Digital Rights Weekly Newsletter, where you can sign in and receive a weekly and free of charge roundup about the most noteworthy digital rights headlines around the world.
- Digital Rights Job Board, where every week we update the most popular Digital Rights Job Board in the field.
- The Global Gathering, annual in-person event that brings together digital rights defenders around the globe.
- Service Branch, designed to help us download the expertise we have to you, but also support Equity in our space.
What podcast episode has inspired you recently?
Read the full interview
Discover Mardiya's career advice, lessons learned, and insights on work-life balance. Plus, don't miss their thought-provoking book recommendations! 📖
Contact Mardiya
Mardiya's Website | Mardiya's LinkedIn
See more featured community members
Meet other fascinating folks in responsible tech, digital rights, and peacebuilding, and get their valuable insights:
Aha moment 💡
My recent "aha" moments have been multiple layers of the same revelation: there's an interesting correlation between storytelling, trust, human relationships, systemic influence, and personal habits.
A person's identity consists of their values, roles, and beliefs about themselves. Motives are a combination of their identity and beliefs about the world and others around them (including whether or not it's safe to reveal their values to others).
Trust is the belief that someone will help you or won't harm you because of who they are. Our ability to form relationships with others depends on our ability to understand a person's identity and to believe our own identity is understood and respected.
Our understanding of a person's "character" informs us of what actions they will or won't do. Another person's willingness to understand and respect who we are means they won't ask us to do things that conflict with our personal values.
You can't expect another person to do something that fundamentally conflicts with their character. If you want to convince another person to change their attitude, beliefs, or behaviors about something, you have to appeal to them in ways that align with who they are or who they wish to be.
A little laugh to top it off 😄
This post was selected by @vardon.world.
