Kickoff For March 3, 2025
Welcome to March! Will it be as wild a ride as February was? I threw away my crystal ball a while ago, so I can't tell you. All I can advise is for everyone to buckle up and be ready for the unexpected.
With that out of the way, let's get Monday started with these links:
The world of tomorrow — Wherein we dip into the wasn't the future wonderful? files and join Virginia Postrel in pondering why the reality of our now never lived up to the wild visions of the future that were formed in years past.
From the article:
When the glamorous future becomes the real-life present, however, it loses its mystery and reveals its flaws, especially to those who have never known any other way of life. Sure, running a vacuum cleaner is easier than beating a rug or scrubbing a floor, but cleaning still feels like a never-ending choreWelcome to March! Will it be as wild a ride as February was? I threw away my crystal ball a while ago, so I can't tell you. All I can advise is for everyone to buckle up and be ready for the unexpected.
With that out of the way, let's get Monday started with these links:
The world of tomorrow — Wherein we dip into the wasn't the future wonderful? files and join Virginia Postrel in pondering why the reality of our now never lived up to the wild visions of the future that were formed in years past.
From the article:
When the glamorous future becomes the real-life present, however, it loses its mystery and reveals its flaws, especially to those who have never known any other way of life. Sure, running a vacuum cleaner is easier than beating a rug or scrubbing a floor, but cleaning still feels like a never-ending chore. No house runs on magic. Over time, experience dispelled the glamour of progress. A new generation wasn’t longing for more of the same.
Why the Classical Argument Against Free Will Is a Failure — Wherein Mark Balaguer explores the idea of free will, why some argue there's no such thing, and the problems inherent in that argument.
From the article:
There’s a big problem with the classical argument against free will. It just assumes that determinism is true. The idea behind the argument seems to be that determinism is just a commonsense truism. But it’s actually not a commonsense truism. One of the main lessons of 20th-century physics is that we can’t know by common sense, or by intuition, that determinism is true.
Papermaking: A Rags to Riches Story — Wherein Patrick Hasting explains why many books that are hundreds of years old are still in such great shape by walking us through the process to make the paper on which they were printed.
From the article:
Although discarded cloth rags represented the essential material in these fine, expensive reams of paper, the wealth of skilled labor and human ingenuity involved in the production process has allowed these treasured books to enrich the lives of readers across a span of 500 years. From rags to riches indeed.
'There was almost a utopian feeling to it': How StumbleUpon pioneered the way we use the internet — Wherein we hark back to an earlier, more innocent and playful time in the history of the web and get reacquainted with a service that helped shape many a journey across the online world.
From the article:
The site's legacy lives on more than a decade after it drifted out of the mainstream. And with all the enduring love for StumbleUpon, many feel its disappearance as a marker of how the web itself has changed – once a sprawling playground of serendipity, now a tightly supervised ecosystem of platforms optimised for profit, efficiency and control.
The First Virtual Meeting Was in 1916 and It Had Breakout Sessions — Wherein we take a step 100+ years back in time to experience the original conference call, a mass meeting of American electrical engineers over phone lines, which was an astonishing technical feat at the time.
From the article:
According to the Philadelphia Evening Ledger, the telephone connections involved traversed about 6,500 kilometers (about 4,000 miles) across 20 states, held up by more than 150,000 poles running through 5,000 switches.
When are we going to have the courage to stop the climate crisis? — Wherein Sally Rooney looks at the more (human) factors causing catastrophic climate change while trying to answer the titular question.
From the article:
Global ecosystem breakdown and soaring temperatures require us to think outside – and against – the framework of our current political system. If we want the children of today to have a future on this planet, we cannot keep obediently colouring inside the lines.. No house runs on magic. Over time, experience dispelled the glamour of progress. A new generation wasn’t longing for more of the same.
Why the Classical Argument Against Free Will Is a Failure — Wherein Mark Balaguer explores the idea of free will, why some argue there's no such thing, and the problems inherent in that argument.
From the article:
There’s a big problem with the classical argument against free will. It just assumes that determinism is true. The idea behind the argument seems to be that determinism is just a commonsense truism. But it’s actually not a commonsense truism. One of the main lessons of 20th-century physics is that we can’t know by common sense, or by intuition, that determinism is true.
Papermaking: A Rags to Riches Story — Wherein Patrick Hasting explains why many books that are hundreds of years old are still in such great shape by walking us through the process to make the paper on which they were printed.
From the article:
Although discarded cloth rags represented the essential material in these fine, expensive reams of paper, the wealth of skilled labor and human ingenuity involved in the production process has allowed these treasured books to enrich the lives of readers across a span of 500 years. From rags to riches indeed.
'There was almost a utopian feeling to it': How StumbleUpon pioneered the way we use the internet — Wherein we hark back to an earlier, more innocent and playful time in the history of the web and get reacquainted with a service that helped shape many a journey across the online world.
From the article:
The site's legacy lives on more than a decade after it drifted out of the mainstream. And with all the enduring love for StumbleUpon, many feel its disappearance as a marker of how the web itself has changed – once a sprawling playground of serendipity, now a tightly supervised ecosystem of platforms optimised for profit, efficiency and control.
The First Virtual Meeting Was in 1916 and It Had Breakout Sessions — Wherein we take a step 100+ years back in time to experience the original conference call, a mass meeting of American electrical engineers over phone lines, which was an astonishing technical feat at the time.
From the article:
According to the Philadelphia Evening Ledger, the telephone connections involved traversed about 6,500 kilometers (about 4,000 miles) across 20 states, held up by more than 150,000 poles running through 5,000 switches.
When are we going to have the courage to stop the climate crisis? — Wherein Sally Rooney looks at the more (human) factors causing catastrophic climate change while trying to answer the titular question.
From the article:
Global ecosystem breakdown and soaring temperatures require us to think outside – and against – the framework of our current political system. If we want the children of today to have a future on this planet, we cannot keep obediently colouring inside the lines.