Hello there–here I am with another list of 10 articles. Don’t have much else to say this time. As always, feedback is always welcome. Just reply to this email, and I’m happy to read and respond. I’ve been lagging behind on my emails, so I might not reply immediately, but I will, eventually.
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1. The Problem of Free Speech in an Age of Disinformation - New York Times (soft paywall)
This essay starts off with a story about the transfer of power in the US if Joe Biden were to beat Donald Trump (the piece is from October). A think-tank assessed various hypothetical scenarios and made a report, which was then misconstrued into something like, “Democrats are plotting revolution!”. And then this piece goes on to explain further, reminding me of the piece from issue 225, Why bad ideas refuse to die. The USA’s First Amendment and general thinking implies that more ideas = good, even if some of the ideas are bad. However, that might not be the case.
The spewing of falsehoods isn’t meant to win any battle of ideas. Its goal is to prevent the actual battle from being fought, by causing us to simply give up.
Censorship of external critics by the government remains a serious threat under authoritarian regimes. But in the United States and other democracies, there is a different kind of threat, which may be doing more damage to the discourse about politics, news and science. It encompasses the mass distortion of truth and overwhelming waves of speech from extremists that smear and distract.
2. Exploring the People of Middle-earth: Sam Gamgee, Hero and Servant - Tor
The first time I read the Lord of the Rings, I thought of Sam as the ideal companion. Now, after many rereadings of the books as well as reading of various commentary, this piece included, I see it quite differently. Yes, Sam is great. But he’s also a victim of an internal class system, even within the nine members of the Fellowship of the Ring. But there’s more to him: he has perhaps the most honest eye and blunt speech among all the characters in the book. Everyone else minces words at times, sometimes out of necessity, but Sam does it very less. This “profile” of Sam is altogether quite enjoyable.
3. The misuse of colour in science communication - Nature communications
This is a nice article (more a paper than an article) which identifies many cases in which colour is suboptimally used in scientific communication. The abstract then says:
“Here, we present a simple guide for the scientific use of colour. We show how scientifically derived colour maps report true data variations, reduce complexity, and are accessible for people with colour-vision deficiencies.”
It’s pretty dense and not the most readable thing, but I found it very interesting and also instructive, because I thought that the default standards were optimal, but it turns out that they have their demerits.
4. Not So Simple - Plough
The piece’s premise is:
“Who hasn’t dreamed of living a more wholesome, less frenetic life? Ten years ago economist Mark Boyle tried living without money. Two years ago he foreswore modern technology as well. We asked him what he’s learned since he ditched his stupidphone and logged off antisocial media.”
It’s, needless to say, very interesting, and will probably pique many of ours interests. Many of us are frustrated by modern life and all the technology we deal with, and sometimes dream about escaping it all. Is it easy, though?
Words like “giving up,” “living without,” and “quitting” are always in danger of sounding limiting and austere, drawing attention to the loss instead of what might be gained. Alcoholics are more likely to be described as “giving up the booze” than “gaining good health and relationships.” In my experience, loss and gain are an ongoing part of all of our lives. Choices are always being made whether we know it or not. Throughout most of my life, for reasons that made perfect sense, I chose money and machines, unconsciously choosing to live without the things they have replaced. The question concerning each of us, then, one we too seldom ask ourselves, is: What are we prepared to lose, and what do we want to gain, as we fumble our way through our short, precious lives?
5. Ad block and you don’t stop - Normcore Tech
This is just amazing–I use adblock software on my browser when using the internet, but I never really thought about how they work. Now I know better.
6. Out of the ashes - Aeon
This was also quite interesting. If, say, we were to lose all fossil fuels right now, what could we, as a species, do? Could we continue on the path we’re on? This piece examines our dependence on fossil fuels, as well as considers examples and scenarios where the primary source of energy is something distinct from fossil fuels (e.g. large charcoal-run industries in Brazil).
7. The Hungry People - The Walrus
“Europeans like to go on about the innovations colonizers brought to the Americas. But what of the innovations they took away?”
This is something I think about often, even though I’m not directly related to the people of the Americas.
Non-Natives like to think that the Mayflower had Wi-Fi, that the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa María brought with them consumer goods, Facebook, and nuclear medicine. In reality, they brought very little from Europe that Natives wanted beyond weapons and metalwork.
The second error non-Natives make when discussing the Columbian Exchange is in omitting what Indigenous peoples sent to Europe. They didn’t just get our land. What we sent in agricultural know-how was the key to the growth in the centuries that followed their arrival in our countries, raising them out from beneath their grass roofs and setting the stage for the world’s material development.
8. Ethical Tech Starts With Addressing Ethical Debt - Wired (soft paywalled)
But a “move fast and break things” mentality results in limited testing and deployment of software that isn’t ready. This is such a known problem that there’s even a term for it: “technical debt,” the unpaid cost of deploying software that will ultimately need to be fixed after it’s clear what the bugs are.
Debt accrues when these issues are not tackled during the design process. When the bugs are societal harms, however, it isn’t seen as bad tech, but rather unethical tech. “We never thought about misuse” is the precursor to another kind of debt: ethical debt.
9. You Are Not Crazy for Hating the Idea of Work - Alex Mell-Taylor on Medium (soft paywalled)
Really excellent piece on the history of “work” as the way many of us know it now–confined to jobs that we dislike, subject to employers’ whims, and a deep-seated dissatisfaction with things we’re told to do in order to make ends meet. I don’t know if I have anything constructive to say about this now, except, “it didn’t have to be like this”.
The first thing I want to validate is that your feelings of hatred, anxiety, depression, and alienation towards your job are entirely normal. There is a lot of shame surrounding this topic because unemployed people are often considered lazy, parasitic or worse, but your dissatisfaction with your work is a common one.
10. Stop Trying to Vote with Your Fork - Sarah K. Mock on Medium (soft paywalled)
Very excited whenever I read something by Sarah Mock (I just pre-ordered her book). This article from her is from a while ago, and it talks about how a lot of the “ethical” or “informed” choices we make while buying food and groceries aren’t really as impactful as we think. In some sense, those of us doing so are just a minority group that the same industry caters to–the same industry that we profess to dislike and disengage from.
See you next time–Kat.