Hello! I took a week off from regular programming because I needed a break. I’ll also remind you that if you need a break, take one. I’ve had a good and lazy week, spending most of my time reading about plants, home-composting and other such stuff. Now it’s back to math and physics for the rest of the semester. I wasn’t in a great place so it felt like a bit of an ordeal to write the newsletter sometimes, but now I feel better and I also think it’s time to bring back… the special editions! There’s going to be one on tea, one on pictures of animals, and one on video and board games.
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.
1. The Day the Dinosaurs Died
I’m very late to the party reading this, but I’m glad I did read it after all. It’s a wonderful long read from The New Yorker about the way (and day) the dinosaurs died. I shared a piece a few months (or a year) ago about a scientist who was campaigning for the theory that the dinosaurs were not eliminated by a giant asteroid strike, but rather that the dinosaurs were gradually dying off due to increasing volcanic activity and ensuing climate change. It seems like recent developments point even more conclusively towards the asteroid event.
If one looks at the Earth as a kind of living organism, as many biologists do, you could say that it was shot by a bullet and almost died. Deciphering what happened on the day of destruction is crucial not only to solving the three-metre problem but also to explaining our own genesis as a species.
2. Nike and Boeing Are Paying Sci-Fi Writers to Predict Their Futures
Technologies and ideas that first appear in science fiction have quickly started becoming real and even commonplace. To make this transition from science fiction to “science fact” efficiently, major brands and corporations are commissioning sci-fi writers to imagine and create futuristic worlds for them. Fascinating industry.
A number of companies, along with a loose constellation of designers, marketers, and consultants, have formed to expedite the messy creative visualization process that used to take decades. For a fee, they’ll prototype a possible future for a client, replete with characters who live in it, at as deep a level as a company can afford. They aim to do what science fiction has always done — build rich speculative worlds, describe that world’s bounty and perils, and, finally, envision how that future might fall to pieces.
3. The business of kidnapping: inside the secret world of hostage negotiation
Speaking of novel industries and businesses, it’s hard to get more novel than the K&R insurance industry. K&R stands for kidnap and ransom. I learnt so much reading this longread from Guardian. First, that the UK and US strictly don’t negotiate with kidnappers. Second, whether you’re kidnapped by a “criminal” or a “terrorist” organization makes a huge difference. And boy, if you think you’re going to get kidnapped, you better get insurance for it. They’ll send special negotiators and pay your ransom. It’s crazy.
4. Staging Bird Murders to Save a Species
What happens when you rear endangered birds in captivity and need to release them into the wild? You can’t just release them, because they’ll be easy prey for larger birds and other predators. Solutions to this can be as morbid as having the birds see one of their species being attacked/killed/eaten by a hawk. But what researchers actually are doing is this (and I’m not joking): they analyze hawk attacks on these birds, figure out how to sensually replicate it for the birds, and make sure their birds have the same reactions to their simulations as they would do if attacked by a real hawk. Then they are ready for the world. All of this to “build character”.
5. Meet The Man Who Lives With Hyenas
Now that we know how to reintroduce birds into the wild, we need to ask Abbas Yusuf how to live with hyenas and not be killed by them. He has some sort of understanding and friendship with them, and they eat meat from his hand like they’re his pet dogs. Frankly, it’s pretty amazing.
6. The 500-Year-Long Science Experiment
“In 2014, microbiologists began a study that they hope will continue long after they’re dead.”
How do you make sure that scientists of the future keep true to the goals of an experiment started today? It’s not a strenuous experiment, honestly. Every 25 years, a vial of bacteria needs to be “activated” with water and other nutrients, and we need to check if they’re still viable or not. But how do we write down those instructions? On paper? Metal or clay tablets? This again reminds me of the golden record we put on the Voyager spacecraft, and the safety instructions outside nuclear material dump sites.
7. Intellectual humility: the importance of knowing you might be wrong
This article from Vox talks about how important (and sometimes difficult) it is in academia for people to admit that they’re wrong. That they’re findings, or methods, or inferences, are just plain wrong. That’s how the scientific method works (or rather, is supposed to work), but then egos and other things can get in the way.
I’ve also realized how difficult it is to foster intellectual humility. In my reporting on this, I’ve learned there are three main challenges on the path to humility:
- In order for us to acquire more intellectual humility, we all, even the smartest among us, need to better appreciate our cognitive blind spots. Our minds are more imperfect and imprecise than we’d often like to admit. Our ignorance can be invisible.
- Even when we overcome that immense challenge and figure out our errors, we need to remember we won’t necessarily be punished for saying, “I was wrong.” And we need to be braver about saying it. We need a culture that celebrates those words.
- We’ll never achieve perfect intellectual humility. So we need to choose our convictions thoughtfully.
8. The Soothing Promise of Our Own Artisanal Internet
Nice article about reclaiming a corner of the internet for yourself. So much of what we consume via traditional/mainstream digital and social media is thrust on us. We are at the mercy of algorithms and “Big Tech”. Decentralize: subscribe to newsletters and podcasts, use RSS feeds, write a blog, use group chats rather than social networks, etc. Honestly I never thought of group chats as social networks in themselves, but now I do. Also, some people call podcasts the “slow food” of the internet, and that makes sense.
9. Everybody Loves Samin
It’a always worth your time to read an interview with Samin Nosrat. If you haven’t read or watched Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat , please consider it. It’s amazing.
10. Why We Stink at Tackling Climate Change
I’ve thought about this too. The basic premise of this article is that climate change/global warming has occured on a rapid timescale. Evolutionary changes take place over hundreds or thousands of years. Climate change as a concept is only about 50(ish) years old, and thus we’re not equipped to deal with it as a species. But that doesn’t really make sense? What’s our “intelligence” for, then? But I agree that this theory describes why we have so much anxiety these days. Earlier, anxiety and a fight-or-flight response would kick in in the face of danger, and would go away once safety was achieved. We don’t have immediate dangers of that sort anymore, but we still have the fight-or-flight responses that give rise to anxiety. I’m shrugging right now as I realize that I’m not really clear about what I think about thinking about this evolutionarily.
Hope you have a good week ahead. See you later. - Kat.