The Atlantic’s Ed Yong Wins 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting
If you’ve not yet read this – do yourself a favour.
Author: neil
[Link] A Centuries Old Idea That’s Making Cities More Affordable Today
“Reasons to be cheerful” shines a light always on the little – or not so little – things that give hope of a brighter future.
This one, in particular, caught my attention. Law, in its various forms, is often badly written, horribly enforced & rarely questioned – and sets up the background of our collective lives.
The U.S. has a whopping 54 million spare bedrooms. As cities and states liberalize their housing regulations to allow more people to live together safely and affordably, it is making a dent in the country’s housing crisis. Legislative changes like this one in Washington are ahead of their time — and a reason for some subdued excitement.
[Link] Declaration Revised
One of my favourite authors, Robert Fulghum, celebrated his birthday recently & revised his personal ‘declaration’:
Ever since that recent day in June, the man I know has been thinking about the advantages of having been around for quite a while. By now, one knows some things, or should. By now, one has come to some conclusions about the quality of life. And before plunging on into the future, it might be useful to consider what he knows that makes the time to come workable and wonder-full.
[Link] Culture in the Hybrid Workplace
After such profound blurring in our personal and professional lives, code-switching is difficult. You’re aware that every moment you spend working is a moment you’re not spending with a child, with a parent who needs care, with your partner. Now a lot of employees are asking, “Does this job work for me? Do I care at all about what I do for a living?” Increasingly, the bar is rising, and people are saying, “My work has to be more than a job. It has to fit in with my life’s purpose.”
via McKinsey Publications
[Link] The Fragility of Strangers
via Wendy M. Grossman, writing about the Fastly.com incident:
it’s more likely that stuff like this will also increase, will be harder to debug, and will cause far more ancillary damage – and that damage will not be limited to the virtual world. A single random human, accidentally or intentionally, is now capable of creating physical-world damage at scale.
[Learning] Slides Mastery
By far one of the best PPT tutorials I have come across.
[Link] Why No Single Job is Ever Enough
Wisdom from the School of Life:
we truly have talents in many more job areas than we will ever have the opportunity to explore. Large parts of our working personalities will have to go to the grave unexplored – and therefore make themselves felt in protest before they do so.
[Link]: How We Shut Down What We Want
Leo Babauta reflects:
Somehow the world taught me that what I want is not acceptable, that I should only want what seems reasonable, doable, or won’t inconvenience others.
[Link] The Future of AI
Ali Minai reckons we’ll be slaves of the machines long before they become our masters.
Long before there is a danger of machines becoming gods, they will become essential to our lives. We already see that with non-intelligent machines: It is almost impossible to live in the world today without access to motorized transportation or instant communication. …
We will help our machines get smarter because we will need them more and more as our servants. Long before they become their own masters, we will already be their slaves.
HT: 3QuarksDaily
[Music] Mamadou Diabate on the Kora
Kora: A string instrument with a harp-like sound, the it has been a part of traditional African tribal music for centuries — and for the most part, traditional settings are where you can expect to find it.