Kat’s Kable #317

Hello, dear reader, and welcome back to Kat’s Kable. I’ve just ordered myself a v60 dripper and a light roast coffee, so I am afraid I am slowly getting onto that coffee bandwagon. I do like the idea of carefully and mindfully pouring out my coffee though, and look forward to it. I’ve been tired this week, and I don’t think it’s because of too much to do, but rather my slightly inefficient way of going about things. I had a lovely conversation with a dear friend Friday night, though, and that’s filled me with fresh optimism and zest. Z’est la vie.

And yes, of course of course, I missed last weekend. I don’t have buffer in my life anymore. I don’t have empty pockets of time which can be filled with anything at all, or which can serve as spillovers for me to do my regular things. I don’t know how to feel about it.

Anyhow, I’ll leave you with the week’s list now. As always, ten good things to read.

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1. The time Michael Jordan helped a guy win $1 million - ESPN

This is the story of Don Calhoun, who in 1993 won a competition and hence $1 million by making a three-quarter court basketball shot. The insurance company who secured the payout for the Chicago Bulls tried to block the payment to Calhoun, but MJ himself ensured Calhoun received the money, in 20 $50,000 cheques. What’s really special about this is the way Calhoun got the ball he used signed by MJ and kept it as a family heirloom without any fanfare, meaning everyone at home could play with the ball and be tangibly reminded of what changed their life.

2. U.S. and China wage war beneath the waves - over internet cables - Reuters

Phew. This is interesting and especially given the national security concerns about underwater internet cables, I’m imagining there’s a lot more to this than what’s in this article. But this itself is fascinating reading: the US and China governments fighting battles over which private firms get to deploy upcoming internet cables.

3. How should we understand the weird experience of coincidence? - Aeon

This is a review of a bunch of different people’s different ways of explaining the part of our psyches that are responsible for us to experience coincidences, or more specifically the parts that make us attribute things to coincidences. It’s a fun read despite being quite academic.

4. The Great Inflection? A Debate About AI and Explosive Growth - Asterisk Magazine

“Many working on artificial intelligence and AI-related issues think that our world will change very dramatically once we develop AI capable of performing most of the cognitive work currently reserved for humans. On the other hand, many economists adopt a more cautious stance, expressing doubt regarding the potential for AI to dramatically increase the rate of change.”
This is an interesting conversation, essentially pivoting around a single point: is AI just another technological development that will continue to keep us on our global 2% post-WW2 growth rate, or is it something more than that?

5. There was no great stagnation - Works in Progress

An alternate viewpoint to the same issue: has growth really slowed down in the world and has that come from a stagnation in our science and technology progress? Many say yes, but this article attempts to make the case for an emphatic no. Honestly I don’t think this is a yes/no question but it’s nice to hear different opinions about it. I think Standing on the Shoulders of Gnomes (from Thomas Pueyo’s Substack) is another useful essay to read on this topic.

6. How Christopher Nolan Learned to Stop Worrying and Love AI - Wired (soft paywalled)

Honestly I didn’t love this interview but this is one of those cases where I’m going to share something just because I think it ticks the right boxes to be good and popular. I think there are interesting aspects to this interview, though, also because Nolan talks a bit about the making of Oppenheimer too.

7. India’s “Cecil the Lion” Moment: Inside the Controversial Shooting of a Man-Eating Tiger - Vanity Fair (soft paywalled)

How did I not know about this earlier!? The story is from 2019 and about Kismet, a man-eating tiger that one faction of people wanted killed and another wanted saved. Crazy scenes.

8. Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists - Dynomight

Provocative post about the role of Harvard (and by extension other similar “elite” institutions) in the world. I do understand, to an extent though, particularly the point where you are judged for your ability to get into Harvard, not for your ability to pass the courses there, so why are we judging youth so young and what credit does Harvard lay claim to in this process?

Harvard exists to make society less meritocratic, and it does that while subsidized by everyone else. Give up. There’s a reasonable argument for putting the top professors together in one school, sure, and maybe even PhD students. But undergraduates? Please. We don’t need to sort and classify 18-year olds. It’s absurd. Stop trying to fix it and get rid of it.

“Menu dedications carry with them stories that go beyond being a dish well-cooked and served with flair”
This is a cute collection of stories about items on menus that are dedicated to certain people.

10. Finding Words in the Kitchen (Or: How I Stopped Hating Myself and Started Cooking) - Lithub

This personal essay by Diksha Basu reminds me of Meera Ganapathi’s Trial with Fire in the Kitchen in Kat’s Kable #306, and similarly deals with the intersection of cooking and feminism, and finding space at the intersection of the two by reclaiming the act of cooking for oneself or family.

Many mornings I stand in my kitchen with my laptop open on one counter, rajma cooking on the stove, potatoes soaking near the sink. It turns out, the part of my brain that processes recipes is separate from the part of my brain that makes sentences but they are connected enough that one awakens the other. Today I am making a coconut chicken curry with rice on the side. It’s on the stove now as I write and so far it smells good, I am optimistic. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll toss it.

Kat's Kable #317