Hello. Here’s this week’s.
- Practice Doesn’t Make Perfect - The ten thousand hours rule isn’t exactly true, and perfection isn’t purely a function of talent. What should you do to become perfect, then? This New Yorkerpiece talks about various other factors too, and how each of one of them is important (and sometimes, out of our hands).
- To the Moon, North Korea? Or Does a Rocket Have a Darker Aim? - Umm, yes. Something like that, maybe. Here’s a picture of North Korea celebrating their space program in 2013.
- What the cleaner saw: dirty secrets of the upper crust - Very fun Guardian piece about what this one cleaner learnt while cleaning apartments.
When I took a job cleaning New York apartments, I had no idea what I would find out about my clients - Healing the divide
Every day, hundreds of Israeli volunteers drive ill Palestinians from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to hospitals in Israel. Shaul Adar joins them on the road and learns why they see their neighbourly help as a step on the journey to peaceful coexistence. - âThe Quest to Make a True Blue M&M - Entertaining. Blue is apparently the least appetising colour to us, I did not know this.
- Every Body Goes Haywire -
To this day, I guard a hidden hope that I will receive a new diagnosis, one that clearly explains the severity of my symptoms. I fantasize that a different diagnosis, even one as complex and debilitating as my mother’s, would better resolve the constellation of my symptoms, or lead to a clear course of treatment that might return me to my former self.
There are still days when I think I dreamed this up, that I caused or created it. I’ve become so accustomed to pain and fatigue that I forget there are clearer, more energetic days. The career I imagined for myself isn’t possible anymore, but I do have a job now. It doesn’t require me to commute, work regular hours, or check in every day, but it does, crucially, provide health insurance. - The Rise and Fall of Silk Road - Pretty old piece that I came across only now. Extensive and detailed account of Silk Road, the dark net website that, when in existence, was a huge market for free trade of all things illegitimate.
- The Fight over Transparency in the Meat Industry - Something that I feel quite strongly about. You should read this to get an idea of the sort of dynamics that’s taking place between the meat industry and animal activist groups.
- Is China’s gaokao the world’s toughest school exam? - Haha, they haven’t seen India’s JEE yet, but this is pretty intense too. Also, I learnt that if you want to gain admission into an engineering program at Tsinghua University (one of China’s best), you also need to be a great 100m and 200m sprinter. The things you can get away with only when you have too many people.
- More on China; What Chinese corner-cutting reveals about modernity - Your balcony fell off? Chabuduo. Vaccines are overheated? Chabuduo. How China became the land of disastrous corner-cutting.
The men and women who build China’s houses will never live in them. If what you’re making represents a world utterly out of reach to you, why bother to do it well? - My Shattered Istanbul - Heartbreaking, but also a very good history of why Turkey is now in the state that it is in.
- An Enigmatic Ex-con, His Improvised Religion, and the Georgia Town That Watched It Fall - A piece about the Nuwaubians, and an absolutely crazy movement.