Phew; this break was getting to me. I realized that curating this newsletter was/is part of my weekly routine to the point where when I read something, one of the peripheral thoughts I have is, “can I include this this week?”. It helps me critically analyze written pieces as well; is it interesting? Is it too much of a ramble? Does it have nice pictures? And so on. So… I’m back.

A fun thing also happened; I’m on the India Newsletter Directory. The last entry in the “General News and Opinion” section.

I’m currently away at a conference right now, and expect this coming week to be terribly busy. Fret not, reader, since you can be assured that Kat’s Kable will be out next weekend too, perhaps delayed.

For the past few weeks I’ve been thinking about what I want to get out of reading books. I try to think of reading books as pretty much separate from reading longform on the internet. In 2018 I was doing quite well, and read over a hundred books. That was a goal I’d been aiming for for four years, and it was nice to finally see it through. It didn’t give me the satisfaction I expected, though. So perhaps, I’m thinking, this year I’ll read the large books I’ve been putting off for years–Ulysses , Infinite Jest , David Copperfield , War and Peace , you get the point. And I also want to reread formative and important books that I’m beginning to forget and lose–East of Eden , For Whom the Bell Tolls , Cat’s Cradle , and so on. Do you have any reading goals for the year? I’m all ears to know.

Long introductions are here to stay; they’re fun to write and make the newsletter seem more ..personal and real, I think. Any thoughts?

If you got this from a friend and want to subscribe, here’s the link. Also, if any of the links are paywalled and if you don’t want to pay for a subscription, try opening the link in incognito mode in your browser; it usually works. It does for me.

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Other Newsletters
I was introduced to email newsletters a few months before I started this one, my own. Whether daily, weekly or monthly, they are a wonderful, deliberate and personal way of sharing writing, experiences, and curiosities. I’m currently sharing a few every week as a way of spreading the cheer.

1. Sci-Fi Writer Greg Egan and Anonymous Math Whiz Advance Permutation Problem

The following question shouldn’t surprise you as being part of an online anime forum: If viewers wanted to see the series in every possible order, what is the shortest list of episodes they’d have to watch? What’s amazing, though, is that another user on 4chan (the forum in question) was able to make significant progress on this problem. Technically, it’s called finding the length of a superpermutation. For example, if there are only three episodes, then if you watch the episodes in 123121321, then you would’ve watched all the possible permutations of 123. Interesting math and an interesting story; what more do you want? Look at the author list of the paper that resulted:

2. The Riddle of the Roaming Plastics

We’ve been dumping a large quantity of plastics in the world’s oceans, and we’ve identified a number of large gyres that serve as massive waste dumps, but we still cannot account for a large quantity of plastics that we’ve thrown away. Where are they? Or rather, what are they? Are they in their original form? Do they disintegrate? In my reading on this topic, one of the most interesting things I realized was that when drying polyester sportswear in a washing machine, microplastics are released into the discharge water, which eventually will end up in some water body or the other.

No doubt, the world’s “wicked problem,” to quote Liboiron, is daunting. The baffling complexity of the oceans, the persistence and volume of plastics already there, and the millions of tonnes added each year can make all the hyperspectral imagery and mathematical models in the world look a bit quixotic. To say nothing of a couple hundred beachcombers picking up fishery tags. The efforts underway today are ambitious, experimental attempts to resolve a pressing global problem—they’re acts of faith in the way that ambitious science so often is. Faith that through our own ingenuity and intelligence, we’ll manage to intentionally fix a disaster we created unwittingly and have just begun to comprehend.

3. There’s No Such Thing as a Free Watch

I use Instagram often, and while I don’t see them much lately, I’ve seen a number of advertisements for “free” watches. The pictures will be flattering, and the watch face will be attractively minimalistic. The watch itself will be free, but you’ll be charged a small quantity for shipping. This is an amusing view of this phenomenon; how good is this watch? How bad can a free watch be? Pretty bad, as you’ll see.

4. Colossal 2018

I never did any best-of-2018 lists, but I’ve seen a bunch of them. They’re overwhelming, honestly, and tell you how much you don’t know and don’t have time to look at. This one, however, I found a little different. I subscribe to Colossal ’s weekly newsletter, and it is almost always a pure visual delight. This list of their ten best posts from 2018 was similar, albeit maybe even better than their usual content. Below is #10 of the list: what happens when you crush crayons in a hydraulic press?

5. China’s losing its Taste for Nuclear Power. That’s Bad News.

I don’t remember, but I think I’ve shared something about nuclear power and environmentalists’ love-hate relationship with it in the past. Nuclear power has a minimal carboon footprint; the issues, however, are more difficult to deal with technologically. How do you deal with nuclear waste? What happens when disaster strikes? Is it possible to make a plant that is foolproof to all attacks and meltdowns? China as a nation is slowing down its nuclear energy investments, and this may be a bad sign. The same way that China was large enough to positively impact the worldwide electric bus industry by itself, it’s large enough to influence many other countries to abandon nuclear power.

6. Dairy Farming is Dying. After 40 years, I’m Done.

As always as has become wont with this newsletter, an American perspective on something. The author had an organic dairy farm in the American Midwest, and had to sell his herd of cows as it had become economically unviable to continue his business. He laments the loss of a way of life in America; and says that when dairy farmers don’t get fair prices, it impacts the community at large. And lastly but not least importantly, he talks about the “organic” movement hijacking the original organic farmers. Large organic farms are organic only by technicality, and are able to sell at prices lower than even local small organic farms. This is something that’s true not only in dairy, but in almost all food and across continents. I have seen this happen in India as well. I don’t know what a systematic solution would look like.

They say a farmer gets 40 chances. For 40 years, each spring brings another shot at getting it right, at succeeding or failing or something in between. If that were ever true, it isn’t now. That’s why, after my 40 chances, I’m done. * * *

7. The Insect Apocalypse Is Here

A few months ago, I read a touching small book called The Moth Snowstorm by Michael McCarthy. The title alludes to the “snowstorm” of white moths that would pile up on a car’s windshield as it wound through a country road in England. Sadly now, that snowstorm is lost, as is much other insect life. Hardly any insects have gone extinct, but the numbers of most of them are dwindling, and have fallen to alarmingly low levels. Thus, some people advocate for recognizing a “functional extinction”: the animal or plant is still around, but in such a low population that its original purpose in the ecoysystem and foodchain is lost. They are not prevalent enough to affect their environment anymore. And this is happening with insects; we should take note. To this, I believe the solution is to abandon monoculture cropping, to plant trees and flowering plants that encourage insects and bees, and reduce pesticide use.

By eating and being eaten, insects turn plants into protein and power the growth of all the uncountable species — including freshwater fish and a majority of birds — that rely on them for food, not to mention all the creatures that eat those creatures. We worry about saving the grizzly bear, says the insect ecologist Scott Hoffman Black, but where is the grizzly without the bee that pollinates the berries it eats or the flies that sustain baby salmon? Where, for that matter, are we?

8. How Giant, Intelligent Snails Became a Marker of Our Age

How do we define the domination of humans on earth? Right now, it’s clear that we’re here and large, but maybe a thousand or million years from now, how will we be able to tell? Will there some sort of geological marker? Apparently there can be, and it will be in the form of large snails endemic to Africa that have proliferated across the world. Their bodies will fossilize, and will be found aplenty in the future. But why are they a marker of human expansion and domination? Because we transported them everywhere in our ships.


Related: The broiler chicken as a signal of a human reconfigured biosphere a research paper that says that the broiler chicken humans have evolved for efficient growth and consumption are so different from their medieval counterparts, and it’s all because of human intervention again.

Broiler chickens, now unable to survive without human intervention, have a combined mass exceeding that of all other birds on Earth; this novel morphotype symbolizes the unprecedented human reconfiguration of the Earth’s biosphere.

9. The Case for Architecture Classes in Schools

I loved the enthusiasm of this piece. “Through the organization Architecture for Children, Hong Kong architect Vicky Chan has taught urban design and planning to thousands of kids. Here’s why.” and you should know why! Architecture teaches so many things: how do you work in groups, how do you convert abstract plans to real buildings? How do you deal with disappointment? How do you make do with materials that you don’t prefer?

With design, no solution is 100-percent right or wrong. It’s not like solving a mathematical problem. In sport, you can teach team spirit, but at the end of the day, it’s a competition and it boils down to winning and losing. But in design, there is no absolute answer, and it’s very much like in real life.

10. In the Valley of Fear

The San Joaquin valley in California reminds me somewhat of the setting and mood in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. It’s bleak and uncertain, but even worse, actually. Most of the workers are immigrants, and illegal or semilegal ones at that, so they’re always on the lookout for officials who may come and quickly deport them away. Some families go to schools and to work in the morning knowing that there’s a realistic chance that they will not see each other again at night. It’s pretty harrowing, and the article’s title is totally justified.

Phew. That’s a lot. Thanks for reading this far if you did. See you next week. -Kat.