To start off, this - A playlist of Leonard Cohen’s songs to help you make sense of the worldâ. Cohen’s death makes me feel quite sad, but this list helped. If you haven’t listened to his newest album Make it Darker, do!
- When a Country Melts - A heartbreaking New Yorker piece about the vicious positive feedback cycle that threatens to envelope Greenland and accelerate the effects of climate change around the world. It also talks about a de-facto apartheid that exists in the remote society, where nearly 90% of all businesses are owned and run by Danes, not Inuit natives.
- The Melancholy of Infinite Space
We have no guarantees. Humanity has spread across the globe; populated ecosystems from the equatorial rain forest to the polar ice, but as a species we are new, a species barely a hundred thousand years old. This is far too young for us to begin to guess whether Darwin’s awful mill will judge us a success, or whether we will be wiped away as another dead end, one of a million failed experiments. The Earth has no memory for the dead-ends of evolution. In a few hundred thousand years glaciers would grind our works and our bones into gravel, would grind the gravel into sand, and in a few hundred million years the movement of continents erase the last of any trace of our brief existence, save perhaps for a handful of deeply-buried and enigmatic fossils. - Inside the Frozen Zoo That Could Bring Extinct Animals Back to Life
But…that’s just a list of animals! you say. Chlamydia, LOL! You may not care, as is your right. Most of us don’t. (Though let’s pause to just notice that: your inevitable reaction, not to care. The same way that when you’re drowning, after a certain point, you no longer think of air.) But consider for a second: A place you loved and can never go again. A particular taste, some smoky sense memory from a faraway coast. The infinite possibilities the world has to offer becoming finite. Because of us.
- Small Island, Big Experiment - The way Florida is going about a possible Zika treatment is slightly shocking. They’re planning to mass-introduce mosquitoes into the wild that will prevent the proliferation of Zika-bearing ones in the future. Is this experimentation on humans? On animals? Are these GMOs? How do we even look at an experiment like this?
- When Death Doesn’t Mean Goodbye - Slightly harrowing National Geographic piece which talks about the Indonesian custom of preserving dead bodies for days, weeks, or even years. This practice is believed to bring good fortune to the home and society.
Torajans do not reject medical treatments for life-threatening conditions. Nor do they escape grief when loved ones die. But far from pushing death away, almost everyone here holds death at the center of life. Torajans believe that people aren’t really dead when they die and that a profound human connection lasts well past death. Death for many Torajans is not a brick wall but a gauze veil. It is not a severing but just another kind of connection. Often in Toraja the deep link with a loved one doesn’t end at the grave. Periodically some northern Torajans bring their relatives out of their tombs to give them fresh clothing and burial shrouds. - Innocents: Letter from El Salvador - Heartbreaking, again. The article blurb reads, “Where pregnant women have more to fear than Zika”. Oh well. Antiabortion laws in El Salvador are so out-of-place with this world. In a society where rape is common, this has consequences that are nothing sort of disastrous.
- How chance and probability affect the path of Big History - Long (6000 words), excellent Aeon essay. You should read this.
Does history unfold randomly and by chance, or are there underlying patterns and deep connections between its parts? - How Instagram Is Destroying Our Natural Wonders - Stop geotagging your pictures!
What happens when social media increases the rate of outdoor discovery? How long until every corner of the planet has been Instagrammed and geotagged? These may seem like ridiculous questions, but they’re more legitimate than you might think.
- My Deathbed Playlist (and Yours) - Not the depressing article that you think this is. Maybe you should create one too, just to know yourself better?
- How Europe Left Itself Open To Terrorism - Well, yeah, that. They’ve got to tighten things up, evidently.
- [Video] Beautiful Chemical Reactions - Some cheer for the end. This week’s list has been slightly depressing.
Have a great week. You can always reply to this email if you have anything to say to me.