Hello! It’s been a somewhat weird week, but thankfully the reading has been going well. I read Winter by Karl Ove Knausgaard, and am currently reading some excellent books - Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse and The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem. Recently, I started sending nice excerpts from the books I read by email to some friends. If you want to get them too, let me know by replying to this email and I’ll add you to the list.

If you got this from a friend and want to subscribe, here’s the link.

1. The unstoppable rise of veganism: how a fringe movement went mainstream

From Guardian. Veganism has, to my happiness, been increasing its reach and relevance as a movement. What do you think about it? I am in general liking the Guardian ‘s recent coverage series on factory farming, food and agriculture.

“We’re riding on that wave of veganism getting into the mainstream,” Davidson says. “People are curious about it and they’re finding out that vegan food is not just a boring salad, it’s experimental, and the food traders are amazing – people can have a drink, listen to music and hang out. First and foremost, we want to offer a positive platform, whether you’ve never had a fried jackfruit before or you’re a longstanding vegan.”

2. Can Planet Earth Feed 10 Billion People?

Related to the previous piece - this is an adaption from Charles Mann’s book The Wizard and the Prophet , which I am going to start reading this weekend! The Wizard school of thought is led by Norman Borlaug, who was instrumental for the worldwide “Green revolution”. The Prophets, headed by Wiliam Vogt, say that you cannot farm the Earth above her carrying capacity, and if you do, there will be adverse impact on the environment in the future. The prophets are of the view that excessive fertiliser and genetic modification use is not sustainable. Where do the two viewpoints meet? Do they? What I learnt that was amazing in this essay was the effort to get major crops to actually change their photosynthesis regime - from what they do now to something called C-4 photosynthesis, because it requires far less nitrogen. All in all, a crash course on modern agriculture, its benefits, pitfalls, and where we can see ourselves in the future with respect to food.

3. Beware the Big Five

The Big Five - Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon. They have so much data about us; now it is up to them to be well-behaved with it. This piece also brought up the interesting point that technology companies these days do little research of their own (although this is changing, I feel) - they make money off technologies developed by scientists who have no commercial interest in them.

What do you feel about privacy on the internet? I am worried, and will slowly start to take things off the cloud and give up the convenience it has offered.

4. How Facebook helps Shady Advertisers Pollute the Internet

Again, one piece related to the previous one. Affiliate marketers on Facebook manage ad campaigns for companies looking to advertise to the right people. Initially it was a hit-or-miss job, but now thanks to Facebook giving advertisers more and more data about prospective customers, it has become more efficient. Here:

Affiliates once had to guess what kind of person might fall for their unsophisticated cons, targeting ads by age, geography, or interests. Now Facebook does that work for them. The social network tracks who clicks on the ad and who buys the pills, then starts targeting others whom its algorithm thinks are likely to buy. Affiliates describe watching their ad campaigns lose money for a few days as Facebook gathers data through trial and error, then seeing the sales take off exponentially. “They go out and find the morons for me,” I was told by an affiliate who sells deceptively priced skin-care creams with fake endorsements from Chelsea Clinton.

5. The Dangerous Downsides of Perfectionism

“Many of us believe perfectionism is a positive. But researchers are finding that it is nothing short of dangerous, leading to a long list of health problems – and that it’s on the rise.” Something worth thinking about. I’ve always believed that perfectionism isn’t worth it.

The rise in perfectionism doesn’t mean each generation is becoming more accomplished. It means we’re getting sicker, sadder and even undermining our own potential.

Perfectionism, after all, is an ultimately self-defeating way to move through the world. It is built on an excruciating irony: making, and admitting, mistakes is a necessary part of growing and learning and being human. It also makes you better at your career and relationships and life in general. By avoiding mistakes at any cost, a perfectionist can make it harder to reach their own lofty goals.

6. Does Having a Day Job Mean Making Better Art?

This has been doing the rounds on the internet and is a nice piece to read.

Once upon a time, artists had jobs. And not “advising the Library of Congress on its newest Verdi acquisition” jobs, but job jobs, the kind you hear about in stump speeches. Think of T.S. Eliot, conjuring “The Waste Land” (1922) by night and overseeing foreign accounts at Lloyds Bank during the day, or Wallace Stevens, scribbling lines of poetry on his two-mile walk to work, then handing them over to his secretary to transcribe at the insurance agency where he supervised real estate claims.

But then there is another category of artists-with-jobs: people whose two professions play off each other in unexpected ways. For these creators, a trade isn’t just about paying the bills; it’s something that grounds them in reality. In 2017, a day job might perform the same replenishing ministries as sleep or a long run: relieving creative angst, restoring the artist to her body and to the texture of immediate experience. But this break is also fieldwork. For those who want to mine daily life for their art, a second job becomes an umbilical cord fastened to something vast and breathing. The alternate gig that lifts you out of your process also supplies fodder for when that process resumes. Lost time is regained as range and perspective, the artist acquiring yet one more mode of inhabiting the world.

7. The Fabulous Story of North Korea’s Fabric made of Stone

Vinalon is a North Korean fabric that is not, like nylon and polyester, made from petroleum. It is made from lime and coal - literally stone. The government and leadership said that it signified their self-reliance, but Vinalon was not as successful as it was purported to be. They still had to import the electricity to make it. A fascinating story, and it talks about North Koreans not surviving or thriving because of this fabric Vinalon, but rather in spite of it. Also there’s a fantastically entertaining propaganda video in the article - don’t miss it.

This is from The Economist. Is there really a connection? Wow.

Wherever it is widely practised, polygamy (specifically polygyny, the taking of multiple wives) destabilises society, largely because it is a form of inequality which creates an urgent distress in the hearts, and loins, of young men. If a rich man has a Lamborghini, that does not mean that a poor man has to walk, for the supply of cars is not fixed. By contrast, every time a rich man takes an extra wife, another poor man must remain single. If the richest and most powerful 10% of men have, say, four wives each, the bottom 30% of men cannot marry. Young men will take desperate measures to avoid this state.

9. The Case for the Subway

The New York City subway is no longer a magnificent engineering marvel - it is an old derelict that is barely held together. However, without it, the city will lose all that lends it value as one of the foremost cities of the world, both culturally and economically. The estimated cost to modernise and expand the system is pegged at over $100 billion. Yes, that is a huge amount, but not so huge compared to the $2 trillion that the city brings in economic revenue each year. Another interesting point that this piece brings up is the fact that the subway has not received the profits it wrought by increasing the value of real estate around it. Also, some great pictures of the innards of the system.

10. The beauty is in the details: A peek inside the amazing world of a miniature maker

“Micro-mechanician Bill Robertson builds sophisticated, fully working replicas of rare tools, gadgets and houses from the 17th and 18th centuries. His exquisite creations put history’s hidden details in the palms of our hands.”

That’s it. I sorted things this time trying to keep a connect between adjacent items. #1 and #2 were related, as were #3 and #4. It’s fun to sometimes put constraints on myself and curate that way. Write back with anything, and I’ll see you next week.