Hello there, reader! This is Vishal with another mid-week issue of Kat’s Kable. I woke up this morning on a mission. I walked straight to the kitchen, prepped some veg for lunch, made myself tea and sat down to write the newsletter. It’s only 8am and I am already pleased with the day.
I really don’t have much to say this time, except for the fact that I am systematically plowing through Iain M. Banks’ Culture books in rapid succession and enjoying them! If you’ve read them too and have thoughts (of course you would, he explores such interesting themes), tell me! With that, I’ll leave you to this week’s list.
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1. Game Changers: How Videogames Trained a Generation of Athletes - Wired (soft paywalled)
Cool! Not very surprising, of course, that modern sportspeople are picking up strategic cues from the videogame editions of their sports. This article focuses on Madden NFL in particular, the videogame version of the American football sport. I think the coolest part for me here was when some athletes talk about veterans with the line, “I played him on Madden” rather than “I watched him on TV”. Times do change, heh. This also reminds me of this: NASCAR Driver Uses Video Game-Inspired Trick On Final Lap, And It Actually Worked.
2. The Age of Social Media Is Ending - The Atlantic (soft paywalled)
Honestly I am sure you have read a few pieces like this, and to some extent this one repeats similar talking points to ones I have read multiple times, but I think it’s still useful to put on the newsletter: social media is/was an experiment, in particular the rapid graduation from old-style field-specific social networks to algorithm-driven social “media” as we call it now. The author says that the new social media’s days are numbered, which is entirely a good thing. I agree that it’s been a massive experiment and would be glad to see something else take its place. What that would be I am not so sure.
3. The Death of the Key Change - Tedium
For many years, the common factor uniting the most popular pop music was a key change, particularly at the chorus to change the “vibe” of the song in a quick and brute force way. Modern digital music editing has changed songwriting to be a “vertical” rather than “linear” process, which has been one of the primary factors behind the demise of the key change. Quite fascinating.
4. Whatever the Problem, It’s Probably Solved by Walking - The New York Times (soft paywalled)
The writer Rebecca Solnit pointed out that walking “is how the body measures itself against the earth.” And through such physical communion, walking offers up its crowning gift by bringing us emotionally, even spiritually, home to ourselves. When on the last day of our walk my son turned to me and said, “Dad, that’s the only ‘10 out of 10’ thing I’ve ever done in my life,” I knew he had arrived not only in Santiago de Compostela, but, more meaningfully, in himself.
5. My Decade of Temporary Homes - Esquire
I enjoyed this personal essay by Rachel Heng. She talks about how she was first consigned to temporary homes when her dad was arrested and their home was seized. Since then, she’s moved countries (continents, really), and still finds that her “rootlessness” affects her on a pretty regular basis. Not only does she explore that theme, but she also explores her relationship with her absent (and incarcerated) father. It’s inspiring, because the essay started off by making me feel Heng was a fragile person, but by the time you get to the end, you realize th extent of her resilience.
6. 10 Days in Havana - The Fight Site
This is really why I love the internet. I don’t follow fighting, boxing, or any of the mixed martial arts competitions going around the world. I still really enjoyed this essay/travelogue by Taylor Higgins where he writes about training and boxing in Havana for ten days. He really gets into it, and I love the way he documents his interactions with the local boxers. His pinned tweet on his account (@TaylorOnSport) sums it up: “Amateur boxing is a simple sport. Two men fight for 9 minutes and at the end, the Cubans win.”
I’ve always found the whole ‘life-changing experience’ thing very cliché, but there’s no other way to describe my time spent in Cuba. It’s a country that, in the face of perilous circumstances, has remained defiant - none moreso than its people, who are truly what makes the island so special. Perhaps one of my favourite stories from the trip is how, on one night when there was a lengthy blackout, all you could hear was the sound of trumpets in the darkness. And that same spirit is what ultimately defines the Cuban style of boxing, or at least how I understand it; expression, creativity and freedom. A rock-sold technical base provides the fighters with the platform to show their personality, and under the bright lights, they come alive. When I returned home to London the following day, one of the first things I remember was seeing my neighbour over the fence. We waved at each other and made small talk out of courtesy, before heading inside to the comfort of our homes. I thought back to Cuba - its streets lined with people of all ages chatting, singing and dancing - and found myself longing for the sense of community. Even with all my home comforts, nothing felt quite as precious as that.
7. Why Not Mars - Idle Words
Hmm, strong opinions here, basically about why a (manned) Mars mission is a colossal waste of money at this point. Which I sort of get, especially when the author quotes that NASA’s Moon and Mars budget in 2022 was larger than the entire National Science Foundation’s in the US. And that’s crazy! And of course, the usuals, primarily “how do we keep people alive for that long in a spaceship” and “we are going to irredeemably do some bad cross-planet microbial contamination”.
8. Riddle solved: Why was Roman concrete so durable? - MIT News
Not a longform piece, but something I liked learning about. Roman concrete has been super durable, so much so that some structures from long long ago survive to this day. One possible reason could be the existence of bright white chunks/mineral features called “lime clasts” which don’t exist in modern concrete. The interesting thing is that these were thought to be defects rather than something useful, and it’s taken some modern research to dig down to the bottom of it.
9. The Saw/Sand Redemption - PrzeKrój magazine
Comforting and nice piece about the benefits of working with reclaimed timber.
But by building bridges with each other, the past, and the environment around us, the art of woodwork allows us to rekindle old forms of community and emotional comfort. Reclaiming old wood in the name of sustainability and in happy contravention of capitalist drives holds its own redemptive value. While people have always carved, turned, joined and framed, its continued popularity tells us that there is something still intrinsically fulfilling about it – evidently, something about recycling the ligneous lineage of wood is good for us.
10. Galileo’s Anagrams and the Moons of Mars - Math Pages
Ha! Scientists in the 1600s communicated their discoveries to each other by riddles and codes. Galileo, when he discovered the moons of Jupiter, sent Kepler this:
“smaismrmilmepoetaleumibunenugttauiras”
which Kepler, funnily enough, interpreted as Mars having two moons (which he himself discovered subsequently!). Entertaining.