Graeber and Wengrow offer a history of the past 30,000 years that is not only wildly different from anything we’re used to, but also far more interesting: textured, surprising, paradoxical, inspiring. - The Atlantic
Planning applications for tall buildings in London plummeted by a third last year. Has the age of piling people into great glass shafts, of cities competing for ever higher spires, finally come to an end? - The Guardian
Postliberals, as Matthew Rose argues in his new book A World After Liberalism, agree on little. They know something has gone wrong, and they suspect the origins of the problem date back several centuries. - Hedgehog Review
In my experience, when people say they need to “listen to the most affected”, it isn’t because they intend to set up Skype calls to refugee camps or to collaborate with houseless people. - The Philosopher
"As with chemistry, the important thing is not just how the elements behave in isolation, but how they come together. Each language has rules for these combinations, which native speakers (and many teachers) generally grasp but don’t or can’t explain." - The Economist
But they definitely help define the internet: "Years later, after the movie itself has been largely forgotten, you will still find images from it circulating, speaking a new dialect." - The New York Times
If sex is everywhere, it’s also nowhere: as birth rates plunge globally, we are engaging in the act less and less. The significance of this change shouldn’t be underestimated, as how we conceptualise sex and relationships is at the root of how we organise our societies. - The Conversation
How a receptor detects a smell remains a deep riddle to scientists. The odorant’s shape appears to determine which olfactory receptors it binds to; beyond that, we have no idea why molecules smell as they do. - Believer
“Social media has gone from techno-utopianism to dystopic weaponization. Perhaps Timothy Leary was more accurate than he realized when he branded the internet the new LSD. Tomorrow’s brainwashers could not help exploring the possibilities.” - Washington Post
More and more, findings in deep learning are inspiring new theories of how our brains work. Neural networks need to “dream” of weird, senseless examples to learn well. - Nautilus
The worry is that scientific processes have been undermined by perverse incentives to the point that it’s difficult to know what to believe. - London Review of Books
Just as your memory is a construction, so are your senses. Everything you see, hear, smell, taste, and feel is the result of some combination of stuff outside and inside your head. - MIT Technology Review
For one thing, there is no empirical basis for claiming that differences within a generation are smaller than differences between generations. - The New Yorker
Other worlds and other possibilities aren’t just about kind of fantasy possibilities, but actual other worlds that exist alongside us now. And that can hopefully help make what we’re doing mean more and maybe make a difference in the lives of those around us. - The Conversation
