Sundry: Losing weight playing chess (!), AC technology, addiction, building pyramids, monsters
S U N D R Y
Paul Romer, Nobel laureate in economics, goes to Burning Man. There, he claims, might be the solution to urban planning — nytimes.com + learn everything about the NYC street grid
The history, economics, and environmental impact of air conditioning technology — theguardian.com
Chess players can burn 6,000 calories a day during a competition. They have the same blood pressures as professional athletes. And can lose up to 1 kilo per day. Why is that? Stress and anxiety. So yes, you can shed weight by sitting idly for hours. A fascinating read — espn.com
The science of addiction, by Judith Grisel, a previously-addicted scientist. A chilling finding: “primates given ecstasy twice a day for four days (eight total doses) show reduction in the number of serotonergic neurons seven years later.“ — marginalrevolution.com
How to trade FOMO (the fear of missing out) to JOMO (the joy of missing out) — nesslabs.com
Why are we so afraid of monsters? Their distinctly unnatural shapes and figures are surprising, which makes them hard to ignore. In turn, the ideas and symbols they represent become very spreadable — nautil.us
A new study claims that people are talking faster in less-efficient languages, such as Japanese or Basque — theatlantic.com
How the Egyptians built the pyramids of Giza, or a tutorial in how to build pyramids, if it strikes your fancy — analog-antiquarian.net
Curated technology links
For the news/media industry, the Spotify business model is not appropriate. Perhaps technology for personnalisation is better — niemanlab.org
In 2015, conversational ecommerce was hailed as the future of online shopping. It did not turned out that way. Massive, topical group chats can act as a useful, crowdsourced concierge service. Very interesting — a16z.com
How the iOS App Store search algorithms favoured Apple’s own apps, with impressive and useful data graphics — nytimes.com
Face recognition and the ethics of AI — ben-evans.com
How is a video game programmed? — quora.com
In other words, today’s cloud and mobile companies — Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, and Google — may very well be the GM, Ford, and Chrysler of the 21st century. The beginning era of technology, where new challengers were started every year, has come to an end
About 40% of American heterosexual couples meet online. This is crazy data.
Travis Kalanick is selling all his Uber shares www.bloomberg.com/news/arti…
Maybe the strategy was not Lindy? eu.usatoday.com/story/spo…
Practical tips for defusing tension at the holiday dinner table
“While rushing the Bill Clinton DVD to market, we inadvertently shipped out 100 copies of true hard-core nasty-style pornography to our customers. When we asked people to send their porn discs back so that we could send them the proper thing . . . . no one did.” — www.quora.com/What-are-…
Apple is overhauling how they test and debug iOS. I am thankful. iOS 13 was dire — Apple iOS 14: Features, Changes, Testing After iOS 13 Bugs
Antibiotics resistance, Estonia, the next dot com bubble, metro logos, and Jamaican sprinters are on the menu for Sundry’s new issue. It’s a weekly reading list for curious minds distilled from 70+ eclectic sources. Subscribe here: sundry.ulysse.xyz/subscribe
Is there any simple way to import Mailchimp campaigns onto Micro.blog? All help appreciated!
I will be pushing a new edition of Sundry, my weekly newsletter, tomorrow. Subscribe if you want to! Curated links from a distillation of 70+ sources. Topics include science, art, tech, psychology, etc. Sundry
A collection of anime UI — animeuserinterface.tumblr.com
In-depth analysis of Neon Genesis Evangelion font usage — fontsinuse.com
Advice wanted for note-taking tools. Looking for something that satisfies the following criteria: cross-platform (iOS/Mac), ownership (files accessible from Finder, syncable through Dropbox, unlike Simplenote), native formatting (iA Writer is no good). Any thoughts? Thanks!
In conclusion, a human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind. The ability to think about what is not happening is a cognitive achievement that comes at an emotional cost.
Isn’t it interesting that we can’t say for sure whether coffee is good or bad for the heart? Been reading all kinds of contradictory studies and claim all morning.
Butternut squash sweets. With the taste of family tradition and centennial know-how. Tripoli's souk, Lebanon
Mosaïque du Bon Pasteur, 5-6 B.C, representing the fauna of the Levant, National Museum, Beirut, Lebanon
