Helloooo. Welcome! How’s your week been? Mine has been some week, but hey the weekend is here, and honestly the best part of a weekend is Saturday night, which it is for me right now. You’re in the middle of the weekend, feeling the mood, and you’ve got an entire day in which to live it through. I’ve been running a bit late today thus the shortened list and comments from me. Hope you enjoy it.
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1. Stuff I’ve Been Reading: February/March 2019
Nick Hornby is a British writer (in many senses of the word), and this is the latest edition of his column for The Believer. A couple of months ago, a friend S told me about a book she’d read, “The Complete Polysyllabic Spree”, which is a collection of a few years of Hornby’s writing. It’s marvelous – funny, witty, but all while Hornby is almost supremely confident in his abilities and position as critic.
2. Do We Write Differently on a Screen?
This was a nice and stimulating piece on how writing is different from typing. The author also talks about the cultural shift in the writing industry with email. Instant submissions! Instant feedback. Instant everything. I think that typing is nice, and you can be quick and efficient, but there are some things that just cannot be typed out fully. Especially when I need to learn something or work out some math; the notes I make are not some accessory to my thinking, they are my thinking.
3. The Tiny Swiss Company That Thinks It Can Help Stop Climate Change
I’ve shared stuff earlier about carbon recapture strategies, and it seems now that it is imperative for us to utilize these to have any hope at all of reigning in our carbon emissions. This piece is about a company called Climeworks that hopes to reduce the cost of carbon capture by an order of magnitude. I personally don’t know how to feel about carbon capture; it’s required now, yes, but is it the “right” thing to do? But the fact of the matter is that even if we switched to complete renewable energy right now, we would still need carbon capture.
4. A History of the American Public Library
Living in the US, I am a huge fan of the public library system. It’s mind-boggling to think that almost everyone has a public library within a reasonable distance. This is a nice series of pictures that talks about the history and significance of public libraries.
5. Artist Kip Rasmussen on Tolkien, The Silmarillion, and Raising Young Tolkien Fans
I did not realize that this man, Kip Rasmussen, existed and also did amazingly detailed and evocate artwork for scenes from the Lord of the Rings encyclopedia (of sorts), The Silmarillion. Marvelous.
6. She Invented a Board Game With Scientific Integrity. It’s Taking Off.
What could be more fun than a policy analyst with a love of spreadsheets and birds creating a board game that is scientifically sound? She figured out all the formulae with one master spreadsheet. Stuff of dreams.
7. Climate Strange
“The eco-obsessed often get labeled as weirdos – even by their peers. Weird, however, is looking better and better.”
It’s nice that there are some people who try to live with as small a footprint as they can; avoid producing waste by reducing, composting and recycling, avoiding travel when possible, et cetera. Is that even making a big difference? Well, I don’t know about that, but at the very least it now comes across as less ‘weird’. Why it was weird in the first place defeats me.
8. The Big Money
“As soon as they turn 18, members of North Carolina’s Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians become eligible to receive a check that can reach into the six figures. What do you do when you’re young and suddenly flush with cash?”
See you next week. -Kat.