Original Photo © Alan Levine, cogdog on Flickr.
CC BY 2.0
This semi-regular series of posts collects all the most interesting things I find on my travels around the internet.
Enjoy 🙂
Starting with an optimistic story – as humans, we’re getting better all the time at treating cancer.
Very interesting video explaining how time works, and how it relates to the movement of Earth through space. I finally intuitively get the difference between sidereal days and solar days!
This one might need a health anxiety trigger warning, but as someone who has been known to struggle like this, I found this story of a doctor struggling with his own health anxiety to be very comforting. The details are different, but the experience is likely familiar to anyone else in the same rubbish boat: The perils of being your own doctor
Why do maps have north at the top?
I’ve heard many discussions of “Dunbar’s number” before – the number of people our brains are able to keep track of, long thought to be around 150. The Monkeysphere is a really interesting discussion of the consequences this limit has for society, and explains a lot of mysteries I’ve always wondered about: including why we care so much less for huge tragedies when they happen far from home.
A strange, occasionally funny, pretty interesting alternative history of humanity, which appears to suggest that all history will end by 2050 once we finally accept that we’re simply a species of traders now. Probably about 60% serious.
Wonderful story about being arrested in Kazakhstan as a travelling student – so well-written and with some fantastic real-life characters. Not too long a read either!
Jonathan Haidt discusses the widespread political tension between globalists and nationalists. Fascinating read.
Incredibly long but powerful investigative journalism. A journalist goes undercover at a for-profit prison. Needless to say, he sees terrible, terrible things. Settle in for a seriously long read, but it’s worth it.
An interesting essay from 1995 about the central metaphors that underline both conservative and liberal politics.
A dense read on Meta-Productivity – essentially “how to acquire self-knowledge, and what it can be used for”
Another dense read, this time on what it means for a political theory to be “slow” or “fast”. I like the idea of “slow theory” – it often feels like we demand simple answers to complex problems when no simple answer could possibly exist.
The long-held human tendency for witchhunting and how it is now manifesting online – the curious case of popular YouTuber Marina Joyce
Dark, upsetting, but very moving story about recovering from drug addiction
Interesting essay on everything we owe to the Null Hypothesis and how it can lead to happiness.
Fifty years ago, Claire Wilson was shot in one of the first American mass shootings. Here’s the story of the consequences it’s had for her life.
Hopefully you found some of these interesting, useful, entertaining, or all three.
Please share your thoughts on them in the comments!
Hi Neil
Thanks for sharing ‘stuff’ and particularly the personal bits – well done on EVERYTHING you attempt and/or achieve, small and big, we can do what we can do and when we are well the world is our cockle, when we are not, the cockle will be waiting for when we are.
Will be reading more 🙂
All the very best