Hello everyone! I’m out of town and my laptop is running out of battery, so I’m compiling what I have right now with (perhaps) shorter blurbs of my own. Here goes.
- A Runaway Energy Industry is Costing California Billions - A beautiful infographic essay by LA Times, this talks about the brokenness of the energy system in California - the state does not need any more power, but any new power plants being constructed are guaranteed profits by the state. Why? The longer story is here.
- Why So Many Young Doctors Work Such Awful Hours - This talks about the residency program that most (read: all) doctors must go through before attaining full-time positions themselves. However, they must both work and study, finish extra assignments given to them outside of working hours, and generally burn themselves out. This is another system that needs to change.
- The Key to Good Luck Is an Open Mind
What do these people have that the rest of us don’t? It turns out “ability” is the key word here. Beyond their level of privilege or the circumstances they were born into, the luckiest people may have a specific set of skills that bring chance opportunities their way. Somehow, they’ve learned ways to turn life’s odds in their favor. - Does Depression Have an Evolutionary Purpose? - This, like the previous piece, is also from Nautilus, and it’s an interesting perspective. I’m someone who earlier did not believe that depression was a clinical condition at all. This piece talks about how depression forces its victims to introspect, think deliberately and from a sober point of view - if it teaches us something over some time, does it really have some use?
- How the Technology Behind Bitcoin Could Change the Music Industry - The problem plaguing the music industry is that artists aren’t recompensed for every time their works are played/consumed. The technology behind Bitcoin is called Blockchain, and one way of solving this artist-royalty program is to embed each song’s metadata right into the content itself using blockchain. Therefore, whether you listen on Spotify, YouTube, or via a purchased mp3, everyone knows exactly who the song actually belongs to.
Shoutout! This Wednesday I’m bringing out a music edition - this piece is just a sample. This is something I’m really excited about because I’ve spent a lot of time reading about a lot of things related to music. - The Hunt for the Perfect Sugar - From what I have read on the internet, sugar is not something that is really required in our diets. It’s addictive and most of us consume way more sugar than we actually need to. This is a nice story about the search for the perfect sweetener; what preserves the taste and satisfies our sweet tooth’s craving but doesn’t harm metabolism? Great read which is really a case study examining the merits and demerits of various artificial sweeteners.
- The Rise of the Useless Class - If you haven’t read Sapiens by Yuval Harari, do go read it; it’s a great book. This is an interesting interview Harari gives about a growing danger of the irrelevancy of humans. What happens when digital computing systems we make can do all our tasks better than us?
The crucial problem isn’t creating new jobs. The crucial problem is creating new jobs that humans perform better than algorithms. - The Future of Not Working - Nice piece to couple with the previous interview - it examines experiments where villages are given aid not in the form of goods, food or sanitary equipment, but rather in the form of cash. This is a true, running example of a universal basic income existing in some parts of the world, and Silicon Valley is also very interested; they’ve donated millions of dollars to many such endeavours.
- The Promise of 3-D Printing Body Parts - Many regions of the world do not have access at all to prosthetics of any kind. 3D printing has democratised many realms, why not this one as well?
- How Scientists Are Trying to Unlock the Mysteries of Hypnosis - Hypnosis is something that is actually very useful, and worth studying in the realm of medical science.
- These Elderly DIY-ers Came to Peace with Death - By Crafting Their Own Coffins
- Analogue Loaders - This is a beautiful short film showcasing analogue representations of our digital wait times.
