Kickoff for July 1, 2024
A happy Canada Day to everyone in ... well, Canada. Hope you're able to take some time off, relax, and so a few summer-y things. Just remember that those of us below the equator are in the throes of winter. Have some pity!
And as I mentioned in the last edition of The Kickoff, this is the first of five editions that contain six rather than nine links. Let me know how you're liking this change (or not).
With that out of the way, let's get Monday started with these links:
Vaclav Smil and the Value of Doubt — Wherein we take a dive into the writing and thinking of the Czech-Canadian academic, and his (well founded) scepticism about growth, technology, and environmental movements.
From the article:
Those numbers surprise people whose sense of environmental progress is shaped by car commercials and by news stories about breakthroughs in solar panels, algae-based fuels, and organisms that turn carbon dioxide into stone. They also annoy environmentalists who view Smil’s observations as backward-looking and counterproductive, and they contribute to what one journalist described to me recently as Smil’s reputation as “a sourpuss.”
What If… Listicles Are Actually an Ancient Form of Writing and Narrative? — Wherein James Vincent argues that creating lists not only helped develop writing systems but also helped evolve the way in which humans thought and the way in which they viewed and classified the world around them.
From the article:
This categorization of knowledge in early Mesopotamian society is evidenced by what archaeologists call “lexical lists:” tablets that simply list different classes of objects like the index of an encyclopedia. The exact function of these lists, which cover everything from types of trees to body parts and names of gods, isn’t entirely clear. They might have been used to teach vocabulary or as practice for scribes, but what they show is ancient humans grappling with the problem of classification.
Blood and bright ideas: How we made light cheap — Wherein Tony Morley walks us through how and why basic illumination went from being an extreme luxury to something in just about every home.
From the article:
We have forgotten how unrelentingly dark the pre-industrial world was. Switch on a nightstand lamp or kitchen light, and you instantly and effortlessly summon into existence more illumination than was available to entire pre-industrial households. Artificial light has historically been the expensive privilege of the wealthy and powerful, while simultaneously being laborious and dirty to produce and maintain, and extremely limited in availability and quality for nearly everyone — but most especially for the world’s poor, which until industrialization was basically everyone.
Your Brain on Emoji — Wherein we find out about the origins of those cutesy little icons and why they might not* be making us and our communication less intelligent as some people seem to believe.
From the article:
[I]t doesn’t really matter whether we are calling to mind a concept from a word or an icon. On the whole, for higher-level cognition in which the brain is making complex meaning from inputs it receives, it can integrate all sorts of elements, including facial expressions and tone of voice, he says. And emojis are just another type of this input.
The Deep and Enduring History of Universal Basic Income — Wherein we discover that the titular idea isn't anything new, why it's been gaining traction and adherents in recent years, and how the idea of universal basic income has evolved from its earliest days.
From the article:
It functions as a cushion for people who are unable to work either because of social distancing or because of the economic downturn, and at the very same time it functions as a bonus for the essential workers asked to remain on the job during a pandemic. In both ways, it helps reduce the severity of the recession by stimulating the economy from the bottom up. To some extent, these policies represented politicians catching up with activists who had been calling for quantitative easing for the people (rather than for bankers) since the start of the Great Recession in 2009.
The Republic of Cows — Wherein we learn about an Alaskan island called Chirikof, home to a surprising number of cattle, and why those beasts have been given free rein over the island.
From the article:
At last count, over 2,000 cows and bulls roam Chirikof, one of many islands within a US wildlife refuge. Depending on whom you ask, the cattle are everything from unwelcome invasive megafauna to rightful heirs of a place this domesticated species has inhabited for 200 years, perhaps more. Whether they stay or go probably comes down to human emotions, not evidence.