Good morning! It’s a midweek Kat’s Kable because this weekend was socially busy (and fun!). I have to run to quickly make & have breakfast, and then get to work, too - so I don’t have much time and honestly, not too much to say either. I will share one thing, though: I read Becky Chambers’ Psalm for the Wild-Built this week, and when the robot Mosscap is asked how it can deal with a potentially meaningless existence, it simply replies, “Because I know that no matter what, I’m wonderful”. May we all embody that energy.
1 Terry Gross and the Art of Opening Up - The New York Times
So good! I haven’t really watched much of Terry Gross’ interviews, but I know she’s possibly the best one alive right now. I enjoyed this profile of hers so much - the way she prepares for and brings herself to her interviews, the way she lets her guests share things that they’ve never shared before. I’ll now have to catch up on the back catalogue of Fresh Air (her show) in double time.
2 Middle-Aged Love: Rereading in Your Forties and Beyond - Uncanny Magazine
I’m a big fan of re-reading books. I was just thinking earlier to myself about how it’s like each Important Book in my life is like a mile-marker, and a checkpoint against which to measure myself. I’m not in my forties (yet, lol), but I was constantly nodding along when I read this piece about rereading by Marissa Lingen.
3 FLIP Fluid on Flip Dots - Mitxela
Good lord, this is so good! I recently started following Mixtela (Tim Alex Jacobs) on YouTube and have loved his videos - his most recent one, though, was definitely my favourite. He makes a large flipdot display and then gets it to do a fluid dynamics simulation based on how you tilt it (to control the gravity). It’s so, so fun. I’m sharing the writeup on the website here, but I’d highly recommend the full YouTube video.
4 64 Reasons To Celebrate Paul McCartney - Ian Leslie
This one is going to take time to read, but it’s a cute and detailed account of the many ways Paul McCartney is an all-round cool person. I learnt a lot of interesting things about him, and I think you will too. In particular, I liked learning about his struggles with depression and how he prioritized his family compared to some of his other musical peers.
5 Spaghetti Underground - New York Review of Books
“The MTA’s new redesign of the New York City subway map is the latest of many attempts to capture the sprawling network on paper.”
So fun! Transit maps are necessarily reductive, and there are a lot of subjective decisions that go into choosing the balance between geographical fidelity and ease of use. This history of New York’s subway maps goes into the design decisions and the political debate around the iconic MTA map that is well known well beyond just New York.
6 The Ancient Waterways of Phoenix, Arizona - Longreads
I’ve never been to Phoenix (but always found the name so fascinating) and enjoyed learning about the waterways that cut right through the city - or to put it better, the city that built itself around the ancient waterways. The irrigation canals of the city predate the city by almost 2000 years, and were once the largest irrigation system in the Western Hemisphere. The open water canals, though, became a source of political contention in Phoenix, and there’s been a lot of attempts to contain them and also restrict access.
7 Nick Kyrgios, the Reluctant Rising Star of Tennis - The New Yorker
A 2017 profile of Nick Kyrgios - almost ten years later, we’ve seen his career fizzle out and never really achieve the heights we thought he would. What I found really interesting (and didn’t notice back then) is that Kyrgios’ reluctance and reservation towards the tennis world existed back then - I guess I just ignored it. To some extent, it feels as though his career arc has been inevitable.
Many people assume that Kyrgios is in denial about his ambition. “I think deep down, in his own way, he’s becoming more professional,” Paul McNamee, a retired Australian player and a former C.E.O. of the Australian Open, told me. “But to admit that and to fail—he would not cope with that, maybe.” Kyrgios resists that analysis. “Some days, I’m really good,” he said. “I like going out on the practice court and training with my mates. But I don’t know about fully engaging and giving everything to it. It’s just a game. It’s just a sport. It’s such a small part of my life.”
8 Learning to Love Dill, Russia’s Ubiquitous Herb - The New Yorker
“Talia Lavin on rediscovering dill in Russia, where the herb is sprinkled on seemingly everything.”
9 The cycling of phosphorus is the basis for all life on Earth - Aeon
Fun science-y and historical exploration of the history of phosphorus. The way our life is set up biologically, phosphorus can be considered a “rate-limiting” element. It’s the rarest of the most necessary elements for life, and thus its concentration determines the entire quantity of biomass on earth! And of course, given how we’ve been using synthetic phosphates for our agricultural systems, we’ve thrown the phosphorus cycle out of alignment.
10 The Everlasting Forrest Fenn - California Sunday
“Five years ago, a legendary art dealer left his home in Santa Fe, traveled to an undisclosed location somewhere in the Rocky Mountains, and hid a 42‑pound chest filled with priceless treasure. Why?” I don’t have much to say about this piece apart from the short summary above. Is that even real!? Someone leaving a box of treasure in the wilderness with just a cryptic poem to figure it all out, and thousands of people then attempting to find it?! Crazy.