Counterflows #61: Sustainable Remote Work, New UNESCO Sites, Nomad Politics
A nomadic writer's guide to borderless living.
Welcome to Counterflows by Lauren Razavi. These emails are where I share the best links about borderless living, plus updates on my writing, speaking, and policy work to enhance people’s understanding of digital nomads.
Want to support what I do? Forward the newsletter to a friend or buy me a virtual coffee. You can also pre-order my first book, Global Natives: The New Frontiers of Work, Travel, and Innovation, launching later this year.
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Hi friends 👋
I’m heading to Berlin next week to visit Sabrina Faramarzi, a badass journalist and activist who I first met back in my Guardian days.
We share Persian heritage, a strong aversion to bullshit, and the ambition to do work that matters. This’ll be my first proper trip since March 2020, so I’m looking forward to getting into it and exploring Sabrina’s adopted hometown.
If you have Berlin recommendations, hit reply and let me know. I’m a fan of speciality coffee, good food, cocktails, street art, museums, and pretty much anything that fits into the category of “cool shit”.
I’ll still be working on the book while I’m there, so I’d love to know about beautiful writing spots too (like the cafe at Edinburgh’s National Museum—what a gem).
Are you in Berlin? Let’s meet up! The coffee’s on me.
-Lauren
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✍️🏆 Global Writing Competition Launches with $50k Prize (Medium): Creator platforms are battling it out for the best writers. Open this month only, Medium’s global competition features judges like Natalie Portman and Roxane Gay and offers prizes of $10k and $50k.
😁💻 How to Achieve Sustainable Remote Work (New Yorker): Cal Newport examines the new future of work—an environment, he argues, shaped by results instead of surveillance—in this textured look at the move from in-person to remote.
💸💼 Pay Secrecy: Why Some Workers Can’t Discuss Salaries (BBC Worklife): Do you ever talk about money with your coworkers? This story looks at the sinister reasons American employees often don’t—and the difference a unionised workplace makes, according to research.
🗺️🛕 UNESCO Announces New World Heritage Sites (CNN): From an African national park to an Iranian railway line, UNESCO added 30+ new world heritage sites in 2020-2021. This piece lists them all and delves into how they’re chosen.
🏕️💫 American Travellers Are Chasing After “Dark Sky” Tourism (National Geographic): American cities are home to some of the world’s worst light pollution. In a search for starry skies, city dwellers are heading out into nature in what’s known as “dark sky” tourism.
🎓✈️ First-Class Flights, Chauffeurs and Bribery (Economist): Some parents pay $10k per term for private tutors—on top of private school fees—but what exactly are they buying? This brilliant longform piece (~22 mins) examines the stakes, incentives, and realities of the global tutoring industry.
Nomad Politics: My Conversation with Andrew Keen
I interviewed Andrew Keen as part of the Plumia Speaker Series. As it turns out, he objects to the very the existence of digital nomads, which made for an interesting—albeit rather salty—conversation.
File under “reasons digital nomads need a political voice” and “why a bunch of nomad activists are building a country on the internet”.
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