Hello there, reader, and I’m coming to you cool and fast on a Thursday morning - it’s been a morning of frenetic typing as I have a bunch of things for work that I have to finish like… I should have finished them last night. Alas, now that I’m 8 hours late, I may as well be 10 hours late, right. Here’s a fun quick version of the Kable - with nine articles instead of ten. Well, that’s just because while typing it out I realized that one of the ten wasn’t really one I’d like to recommend to… over a thousand of you! In the last month every time I’ve sent the Kable out I’ve got about five people unsubscribing, and because I do virtually no marketing, I have no new subscriptions. I’m still over a thousand, and that really feels surreal when I think about it. So. Thank you for sticking around.

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. This works if the website has a “soft” paywall. If that doesn’t work, you can access the website using a different browser on the same device, or use a different device altogether. Another, slightly involved, method is to try to disable JavaScript and reload the page. This works on some websites for me.

1. Why Physics Is Unreasonably Good at Creating New Math (Nautilus):

We’re now in an era where physicists are working out details of new physical hypotheses and theories - and this process is creating a lot more new mathematics than what mathematicians themselves are doing! The article is a play on Wigner’s article “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences” which is a commentary on just how good math is in explaining physics. Our current mini-period is a slight variation on this.

2. The truth about British stoicism (BBC):

Fun article about how British stoicism and their “stiff upper lip” came as a reaction to their over-emotionalness and an overcompensation in toning that down.

3. The Promise and the Politics of Rewilding India (New Yorker, soft paywalled):

Nice 2022 report (a pretty detailed one!) about different rewilding projects taking place in India, and how India’s different geographies and topographies need different approaches to rewilding and conservation. It also starts off with covering Jodhpur’s Rao Jodha Desert Rock Park - which I really want to visit!

4. A Different Way to Respond When Kids Do Something Wrong (Greater Good Magazine):

“Restorative practices—taking responsibility, making amends, and seeking forgiveness—are an alternative to strict punishments and blame.”

5. Life Inside India’s Auroville, The City the Earth Needs (Atmos Earth):

Nice piece by Riddhi Dastidar about Auroville - I’ve shared other pieces about Auroville, the eco-city just outside Pondicherry in South India in the past - and it’s a nuanced place - good intentions, healthy levels of classism, a desire to develop while maintaining the ecology. It has it all.

6. The Extraordinary Lives Of Coast Redwoods (Noema Mag):

Gorgeous!

7. This Is How You Live on Swiss Time (Afar Magazine):

Pocket recommended me this 2015 travel article by Taffy Brodesser-Akner about her traveling to Switzerland on 24 hours’ notice to cover it for travel. It’s fun, funny and just all round enjoyable.

8. The Dharamshala Sun: What Time Means to Women (Multiplicity Magazine):

Sweet article by Anandi Mishra about a vacation she and her mom take to Dharamshala, and an overall reflection on leisure and what that even means to her mom who has been super busy all her life either with work or catering to everyone else’s needs.

9. Unknown cricketers (Cricket Monthly):

This is a 2015 piece by Samanth Subramanian, and I absolutely loved it! It’s a review of two books, one of which is Autobiography of an Unknown Cricketer , “the layered semantics of Mukherjee’s title: the insistence upon identifying himself as both a cricketer and unknown, and the near-passive-aggressive belief that an unknown cricketer can in some way be exemplary, that his story holds some essential significance.”