I’m sending #29 again, because the one I’d sent a few minutes ago got diverted to spam for quite a few people. I’d used a URL shortener for the links, because that’s supposed to keep my emails out of spam and the Gmail “Promos” tab, but that clearly didn’t work. Would appreciate it if you could check your spam folders if Kat’s Kable is in there, and just mark it as “not spam”. And if anyone knows how to avoid spam, that would help a lot too. Apologies for all the trouble, there are some extra links to make up. :)

Also, if you haven’t yet, watch Patti Smith’s performance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVXQaOhpfJU at this year’s Nobel ceremony. It’s phenomenal. She’s so composed and the audience just seems to gravitate towards her.

  • ‘And yet, you try’: A father’s quest to save his son - Beautiful. Milan Nair, a young Indian-origin American, was a brilliant young kid, doing research and winning science fairs in school. But one day they discovered that Milan had a glioblastoma multiforme, a tumour in his brain. In gut-wrenching irony, that’s what his dad studied as part of his research. His research turned into something personal and agonising, with success marked not by a landmark paper publication, but by a son’s cure.

  • The Power of Will - Another brilliant piece about a kid diagnosed with cancer, this ends on a happier note. Parents run from hospital to hospital, raise millions of dollars for medication, and even end up founding their own drug company to perform clinical trials. Very touching, and very poignant.

Will Lacey was just a baby when doctors diagnosed a rare form of cancer and told his family there was only one end. Nobody then could imagine the journey ahead, from hospital rooms to board rooms, research labs to government offices, a furious race between hope and death.

  • The Great A.I. Awakening - Google Translate used to use pretty dumb technology (at least it seems dumb now) and they recently moved over to an artificial intelligence, neural-network based approach. This is a very long piece but it explains everything. From what Google Translate is, the people behind it, to the research and the science. I don’t like reusing superlative descriptions, but this piece is also brilliant.

  • Artificial Intelligence Could Dig Up Cures Buried Online - *Doctors are so busy saving lives, she thought, that they couldn’t possibly keep up with all the papers published every day. *We need something that can sift through all the papers that we put out to spot and share those ‘miracle’ cures.

  • Confessions of an Instagram Influencer - Thoroughly entertaining. “How many followers do I get to before I get offers to do paid posts?” “How candid is candid?” This is for all those millennials out there (teehee, me too). PS. Watson, IBM’s AI engine is used to find cancer cures, which it does by sifting through literature (what piece #4 in this list talks about). Recently a Condé Nast asked IBM if they could devote some Watson time to identify potential Instagram influencers. For all those people who say AI won’t impact too much of our lives, ha!

  • Last Tree Standing - Beautiful photo-essay about the trees in California. We thought that nothing could happen to the GIANT giant sequoias, but sadly they’re hit as well. Why are we doing this to all of our natural treasures? (Also, after seeing all the trees fall in Chennai, oh well)

  • Why Great Writers Write - Farnam Street is a great blog, and this is some super stuff from them. If you’ve ever wondered about why writing is good for the soul, or what it means to write regularly, or something of that sort, you should read this. Couple it with Joyce Carol Oates’ delightful essay telling all writers to run, run, run http://www.nytimes.com/1999/07/19/arts/to-invigorate-literary-mind-start-moving-literary-feet.html?pagewanted=all.

  • How Casinos Enable Gambling Addicts

*The National Council on Problem Gambling estimates that one in five gambling addicts attempts suicide—the highest rate among addicts of any kind.

“The business plan for casinos is not based on the occasional gambler. The business plan for casinos is based on the addicted gambler.”*

  • Finding a Video Poker Bug Made These Guys Rich—Then Vegas Made Them Pay - The ultimate jackpot is finding out that a gambling machine isn’t truly random, or finding a code in one that lets you cash in every single time. These guys found it, but they were still hunted down by the law. This is something I find weird. If you find a bug in a machine that you’re welcome to play, and game the system, how is the casino entitled to sue you?

  • What Makes Things Cool - Very nice introduction to the world of modern industrial designing. One of the most influential designers, Raymond Loewy, came up with a grand theory of what makes things fashionable. New things shouldn’t be too similar to existing things, nor should they be too new. He called this MAYA - most advanced yet acceptable.

Here are some more.