Hello, reader. This issue is delayed because I was on vacation and decided to postpone writing it until I got back home. I’m currently sitting in a bakery, working and writing, and you know, it’s not so bad? I used to scoff at the idea of working at a coffee shop, instead holding onto a puritan-style idea of working only at the “office”. But I’ve slowly starting forcing myself into places that are unconventional for me, to expand what I expose myself too. So many of my interests, hobbies, and friendships have come from unexpected places–so why not embrace that?
Anyway, with that meandering out of the way (I’ve just had my monthly cup of coffee), here we go.
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1. ‘The Life of Pablo’ Reinvented the Album As We Know It. Why Has No One Followed Suit?
‘The Life of Pablo’ is an album by Kanye West that was released and updated, just like a piece of software. The question this article is asking is: why aren’t other musicians and music producers using this option that’s available to them? Of course, it’s a very new tool/feature to use, and I think most people think of a particular album as a static, immutable entity.
Streaming hypothetically throws this nightmare out the window. Artists no longer need to commit to manufacturing tens of thousands of physical records upfront and hope that they all sell. After all, in a streaming environment, songs and albums are fundamentally just a combination of 0s and 1s that algorithms analyze and spit out as sound, to fans who pay a monthly subscription for access. Not only is the concept of “inventory” irrelevant in this world of infinite shelf space, but the cost of experimentation and modification around artwork, track order, track content, and other features of digital releases also plunges dramatically as a result.
2. Can we heat buildings without burning fossil fuels?
This is a nice feature from BBC. It talks about how one of the biggest losses of heat from homes during winter is when warm water is flushed down the drain into the sewer system. So in Brussels, they’re attempting to reclaim that heat and use it to reheat the homes from which the heat was expelled. Seems quite similar to hybrid electric vehicles that have regenerative braking to recover lost energy.
3. Two Lolas
This was a beautiful comic from Believer magazine. Lola is Philipino for “grandmother” and in this comic, Kate Gavino talks about her grandmother, and another grandmotherly figure, Nenita, who entered her life later.
4. People Born Blind Are Mysteriously Protected From Schizophrenia
Nobody understands why people who are born blind are somehow protected from schizophrenia. It’s quite bizarre, but this article tries to pry out some of the ways this could be happening. Much of it could be because of the brain reassigning regions traditionally used for vision to other activities. What’s very surprising about this is that blindness later in life is known to cause hallucinations, and increased risk of schizophrenia and psychotic symptoms.
5. The Grand Unified Theory of Rogue Waves
Again, this is about something in nature that we don’t understand. There are waves in the ocean, and sometimes, there are huge “rogue” waves. There are two competing theories as to how these rogue waves arise: the first is that independently traveling waves sometimes “add up” to give a rogue wave, and the second is that waves interact with each other in a nonlinear way so as to give rise to a rogue wave. And hence, right now, we’re seeking a grand unified theory of rogue waves. Exciting times.
6. Spectacular Mushrooms and Fungi Documented by Photographer Alison Pollack
7. Garbage Language
This is a nice article about the prevalence of useless “business-talk” in so many corporate settings. I’ve never worked in a big corporate or even a medium-size firm, so I don’t know how valid these claims are, but I know they exist and they’re part of the reason I don’t want a corporate job if I can avoid it.
8. Costco Capitalism
I loved this piece from Bryan Lehrer about how Costco does things the way it does. Costco is an American retailer which operates almost as a wholesaler. Its shops are in large unfinished warehouses and they sell everything in bulk quantities. They’re absolutely loved by their loyal customers. How do they do it?
9. The Cowpea: A Recipe for Resilience
More stuff from Emergence Magazine (can you tell this is my favorite place to read things on the internet by now?)! This was so good. The cowpea is a type of field pea originally from West Africa that has made its way to the USA because of the history of slaves moving to plantations in the US. It’s become an important cultural tradition.
10. Hit the Mute Button: Why Everyone Is Trying to Silence the Outside World
The clinical psychologist Paul Gilbert, author of Living Like Crazy, sees such responses in Jungian terms. “We’re becoming more persona-dominated,” he says. “We all put on an act about how people want to see and hear us. We do it all the time on social media.” For him, the Uber shush feature is a welcome chance for us to rest those personas for a few minutes. “Human beings evolved in small hunter-gatherer groups where everyone knew one another,” he says. “We aren’t necessarily adapted to be interacting with strangers all the time. People find it incredibly tiring. At least in a taxi, you have an opportunity to sit and be quiet.”
That’s it. Bye. -Kat.