Category: ideas

The most radical change that instant information has made is the levelling of content. There is no longer a distinction between things that everyone knows, or could readily know, and things that only experts know. – The New Yorker

Turns out humans of the 21st century, who turned in droves to exciting new recipes and, of course, baking at the beginning of the pandemic, are quite tired of doing all of the work they used to offload onto restaurant workers. Also, there’s this: “The pleasure of cooking food for friends and family or hosting dinner parties is gone.” – NPR

That is, biological organisms may be making choices with goals in mind. This is a big change in the mindset of biology researchers. “The latest research suggests that it’s wrong to regard agency as just a curious byproduct of blind evolutionary forces. Nor should we believe that it’s an illusion produced by our tendency to project human attributes onto the world. Rather, agency appears to be an occasional, remarkable property of matter, and one we should feel comfortable invoking.” – Aeon Magazine

Ask some science writers. Or, if you want to stay happy, maybe don’t. “The most optimistic scenario they could muster: a series of deescalating surges, mitigated by a slowly disseminated vaccine and perhaps some herd immunity.” – Los Angeles Times

Western political thinkers ranging from Herodotus to Algernon Sidney did not think that a free society is a society without rules, but that those rules should be decided collectively. In their view, freedom was a public good rather than a purely individual condition. A free people, Sidney wrote for instance, was a people living “under laws of their own making”. – The Conversation

Back in 1647, Christmas was banned in the kingdoms of England (which at the time included Wales), Scotland and Ireland and it didn’t work out very well. Following a total ban on everything festive, from decorations to gatherings, rebellions broke out across the country. While some activity took the form of hanging holly in defiance, other action was far more radical and went on to have historical consequences. – The Conversation

“If you have a discussion among the crew about which way to turn, you will not turn in time, and you hit the iceberg directly. The past 10 years or so have been discussion. That sickening crunch you now hear—steel twisting, rivets popping—­­is the sound of the ship hitting the iceberg.” – The Atlantic

“The 15-minute city represents the possibility of a decentralized city,” says Carlos Moreno, a scientific director and professor specializing in complex systems and innovation at University of Paris 1. “At its heart is the concept of mixing urban social functions to create a vibrant vicinity”—replicated, like fractals, across an entire urban expanse.” – Bloomberg

“If knowledges are environmentally embedded, and have to be activated through skilled practices, our orthodox idea that the privileged pathway for knowledge acquisition is cognitive, from one brain to another, is challenged. Think about it: we have never been able to ‘think’ without more-than-human extensions.” –Psyche

The evolutionary explanation for human connection to nature is a colossal safari through the African savanna, where our ancestors fought, fed, and frolicked for millions of years. The biologist E.O. Wilson speculated on this story in Biophilia, a slim volume on human attraction to nature. Wilson defined biophilia as an “innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes.” – Nautilus