Friday 15 May | We\Visit: combatting loneliness with video calling

From our colleagues at TUDelft Stories:

Visiting a loved one who’s critically ill: normally that’s possible, but due to the coronavirus, visiting ICUs is no longer permitted. The result is a lonely fight behind closed doors. In an attempt to combat the loneliness, researchers at Delft University of Technology have come up with We\Visit: a tool that facilitates video-calling by appointment. And it was developed at lightning speed after the Reinier de Graaf hospital sounded the alarm.

Check out the article and www.tudelft.nl/en/stories/ for more TUDelft Stories!

Studium Generale created a Corona Care Package to make #StayingIn as pleasant as possible. In the following weeks we will share videos, blogs, articles and podcasts within four focus areas: Mental Health, The World After Corona, Arts & Culture and other online events.

HESIODOS​, the creative platform of TU Delft, would like to invite you to their first online event! Thursday the 14th of May, at 8pm, they are hosting an abstract painting event where you can all paint on your own, while watching and getting tips from amazing guest artist Mahtab Sharifi​. Bring whatever you have laying around: acrylics, markers, color pencils… a piece of paper or a canvas and paint along with us with the theme “connect with your body”.
Mahtab is not only studying for her Master’s degree EPA at TPM, but also an incredible freelance artist. Hesiodos has published numerous paintings of hers in the past. If you want to see her painting process and what goes through her mind while creating these pieces of art don’t miss this evening!

How to join​: the link for the zoom meeting is ​https://tudelft.zoom.us/j/93742889546​, just remember the 14th of May at 8pm.

Finally, the Hesiodos editorial board (all volunteer students and staff) would like to remind you that we have an open call of art for our magazine until the 16th of May, so if you have a creative soul and want to share your creations with the rest of your colleagues at TUDelft, please send us your works at ​contact@hesiodos.nl​.

For more information on the magazine’s publishing process and future events visit their webpage ​www.hesiodos.nl​ and follow them on social media: @Hesiodosdelft, fb: /hesiodosdelft.
See you on Thursday!

Thursday 14 May | Why we do not want to talk about the economic effects | Caspar Chorus

Now that we seem to have ‘flattened the curve’ and the number of corona victims reduces, our eyes are opened to the ravage the crisis has left. The government is still pressing us to stay home as much as possible, but we are getting restless. We look around and see the damage to our company, family, education or psychology. And the cry for a hopeful perspective gets louder. Yet, we still are reluctant to let go of the measures altogether in order to save the economy. Why is that?

In this short video, professor of choice behavior Caspar Chorus (TPM faculty, TU Delft) explains our reluctance to talk about the economic effects of the corona measures.

Studium Generale created a Corona Care Package to make #StayingIn as pleasant as possible. In the following weeks we will share videos, blogs, articles and podcasts within four focus areas: Mental Health, The World After Corona, Arts & Culture and other online events.

Wednesday 13 May | The power of images: the people working in health care

After weeks of uncertainty, the dust that the corona pandemic has spread seems to settle a little. Fewer cases of infection and disease are announced every day. The measures have loosened a bit, so now we can breathe a bit easier. Perhaps this applies most to the health care workers, who have been working around the clock for the last few weeks. Who are those people who have been fighting on the front line?

Arts are a great way to add a face and a feeling to abstract matters. And photography can tell an entire story with a single image. In this series of portraits of health care workers, the power of the image is shown once more. Check out this powerful series and see who the people behind the masks are.

Text is in Dutch, but the portraits speak for themselves. By photographer Jiri Büller.

Studium Generale created a Corona Care Package to make #StayingIn as pleasant as possible. In the following weeks we will share videos, blogs, articles and podcasts within four focus areas: Mental Health, The World After Corona, Arts & Culture and other online events.

Tuesday 12 May | We’re Stuck in a Science Fiction Novel

Sci-fi author Kim Stanley Robinson suggests we’re all stuck in a science-fiction novel.

The drastic changes to society, the draconian measures taken by some governments, the sense of being in a historic period, and the speed in which it has all happened seem more typical for fiction than for reality. Even as Wuhan was paralyzed in January and February, most of us didn’t imagine what the corona virus would do to us at home. But now, says Robinson, “The virus is rewriting our imaginations.”

Characters in science fiction often deal with massive changes to their reality. Aliens, terminators, time machines, etc. Reading about how they deal with those changes can, according to Robinson, make us better equipped to deal with our own uncertain future. It shows us how to rethink reality, how to turn on a dime when the situation demands it.

If you look at it this way, the corona pandemic (our current “sci-fi” reality) could be a major lesson in dealing with global crises. A warm-up for the next sci-fi script that we’ll find ourselves in. What do you think? Has our experience of reality shifted? Will we be better equipped to imagine a world after the climate crisis? And finally, what do you do when you find out you’re a character in a novel?

Studium Generale created a Corona Care Package to make #StayingIn as pleasant as possible. In the following weeks we will share videos, blogs, articles and podcasts within four focus areas: Mental Health, The World After Corona, Arts & Culture and other online events.

Monday 11 May | Universal Basic Income & Mental Health

In these times of economic uncertainty, there is once again talk of a universal basic income, which has the potential to save many from poverty. The potential economic benefits are becoming increasingly clear, but one factor that so far has not received as much attention is how a guaranteed income might improve our mental health.

If you had a guaranteed basic income, what would you do? Would you still study? Perhaps study harder, or pursue other extracurricular activities like attending our events perhaps? Would it make you worry less and improve your outlook on life? Read this article on The Conversation on how universal basic income could have far wider implications than just keeping our economy running.

If you want to learn more about the basics of basic income, watch the TED talk by Rutger Bregman below. Dutch speakers can watch Rutger in action in his talk at Studium Generale Delft on Universal Basic Income and five other Big Ideas to Change the World.

Studium Generale created a Corona Care Package to make #StayingIn as pleasant as possible. In the following weeks we will share videos, blogs, articles and podcasts within four focus areas: Mental Health, The World After Corona, Arts & Culture and other online events.

Friday 8 May | Why you should make useless things by Simone Giertz

At @TUDelft we are all about ‘Impact for a better society’. That implies creating technology that is useful and has a clear purpose. Well, not necessarily…

In this joyful, heartfelt talk featuring demos of her wonderfully wacky creations, @SimoneGiertz shares her craft: making useless robots. Her inventions — designed to chop vegetables, cut hair, apply lipstick and more — rarely (if ever) succeed, and that’s the point. “The true beauty of making useless things [is] this acknowledgment that you don’t always know what the best answer is,” Giertz says. “It turns off that voice in your head that tells you that you know exactly how the world works. Maybe a toothbrush helmet isn’t the answer, but at least you’re asking the question.”

Which of your own (real or imaginary) inventions are you most proud of?

Studium Generale created a Corona Care Package to make #StayingIn as pleasant as possible. In the following weeks we will share videos, blogs, articles and podcasts within four focus areas: Mental Health, The World After Corona, Arts & Culture and other online events.

Thursday 7 May | Two live events today: Health Webinar & Movie Night!

Do you want to stay healthy and build new habits during the pandemic? Or rather just sit back with a Netflix series and discussion? Why not both!

Interactive Webinar Staying Healthy at Home (2pm)

Today at 2pm, Studium Generale and the Health Coach Programme offer a live webinar Staying Healthy at Home. This interactive webinar will give you insights in healthy patterns and how to form new, sustainable habits to improve on your lifestyle.

Zoom link (open from 13.45 hrs): https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84201877641?pwd=Z0wyR0hhSHpIL0xCZGRKOVlyR2xzUT09

Movie Night & Discussion: Daughters of Destiny (7pm)

This evening at 7pm, VOX Delft and the TU Delft Debating Club are jointly offering a movie night & discussion on the documentary ‘Daughters of Destiny’ about a fully funded school for children from the lowest caste in India. After watching the first episode on Netflix Party, the discussion continues on Zoom.

Zoom link: https://tudelft.zoom.us/j/91884395107

Studium Generale created a Corona Care Package to make #StayingIn as pleasant as possible. In the following weeks we will share videos, blogs, articles and podcasts within four focus areas: Mental Health, The World After Corona, Arts & Culture and other online events.

Wednesday 6 May | Virtual reality exhibition Design for the end of life

The corona pandemic confronts us with all sorts of issues we usually don’t really (want to) think about. Death is one of them. Yet, the amount of people that have died from corona and questions on what to do with the deceased was all over the news the last couple of weeks.

Thinking of death, ranging from practical decisions to the more philosophical questions, became inevitable these days. February 2020 the TU Delft Library, Studium Generale, design museum Cube, film theatre Lumen, Theater de Veste and many more partners, organised a multidisciplinary programme around these matters. A programme that is very relevant, now more than ever.

The exhibition ‘(Re)design Death’ in Cube shows how #designers interpret the needs that people confronted with death may have, now and in the future. With contributions from TU Delft students and researchers. Since visiting the museum is off limits now, you can visit this worthwhile 360 degree exhibition via virtual reality here.

Studium Generale created a Corona Care Package to make #StayingIn as pleasant as possible. In the following weeks we will share videos, blogs, articles and podcasts within four focus areas: Mental Health, The World After Corona, Arts & Culture and other online events.

Tuesday 5 May | Liberation Day: Reflecting on Fascism & corona

Today the Netherlands commemorates the end of WWII and, in a sense, the end of fascism in Europe.

In today’s SG Corona Care Package, anarchist writer Jay Fraser warns readers to consider the return of (what he sees as) a fascist sentiment in the wake of the corona crisis. “Eco-fascism,” as he calls it, revels in the end of (some of) the human species so as to make space for other lifeforms. Like the deer, wild boars, or pumas that are showing up downtown in locked-down cities across the globe.

“When somebody asks if humanity is the ‘real virus’,” Fraser writes, “they set up a system in which the Earth is a being and humanity a problem that needs to be solved.” Think back to your history lessons – do you agree that this is a fascist ideology? Or is it going too far? What place do you think wildlife will take in #TheWorldAfterCorona, and what about us humans?

Studium Generale created a Corona Care Package to make #StayingIn as pleasant as possible. In the following weeks we will share videos, blogs, articles and podcasts within four focus areas: Mental Health, The World After Corona, Arts & Culture and other online events.