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May 26, 2025

Kickoff For May 26, 2025

Over the next few weeks, there might be some disruption in our usual publishing schedule. Nothing bad, but I'll be very busy. Still, I'll try to keep these emails coming through all of that.

With that out of the way, let's get Monday started with these links:

The weird psychology of airports — Wherein Steven Taylor attempts to unravel the whys behind the ways (not all of them good) in which people behave when at an airport or on an passenger airliner.

From the article:

Personal boundaries also become fluid. As well as anti-social behaviour, airports may play host to pro-social behaviour, where strangers share their travel and holiday plans, speaking with unusual intimacy. In no man’s land, normal social inhibitions don’t apply. And alcohol can further lubricate this social cohesion.


The Comet Panic of 1910, Revisited — Wherein we learn about the terror, rife in some circles, surrounding the passing of Halley's Comet by the Earth in the early part of the last century, and about a personal chronicle of that hysteria found in a cave in Puerto Rico.

From the article:

The terror, however, was real enough in some quarters. Suicide deaths in at least four countries were attributed to the panic. People also lowered themselves into wells or sealed off their homes and papered over the keyholes to fend off heaven-sent death. And some took refuge in caves, as researchers recently discovered in Puerto Rico.


Barcoding Brains — Wherein we learn about connectomics, a technique for modelling the brain, its origins, and what it could mean for neuroscience researchers.

From the article:

Connectomics is itself just one facet of neuroscience directed at transforming human health and well-being. In the long term, alongside neurodynamics and computational neuroscience, connectomics could pave the way toward brain-computer interfaces or even whole-brain emulation — rendering an entire brain in silicon rather than flesh. But even in the near term, the impact of connectomics could be catalytic for health and medicine.


Constantly scrolling on your phone? Why we can’t stand feeling bored — Wherein Madeleine Aggeler explores the concept of boredom, why we both push back against boredom and (in some circles at least) romanticize it, and whether there's not a middle ground between the two perceptions.

From the article:

[W]hen we keep ourselves busy and distracted all the time, we might perceive a sudden lack of stimulation as scary or overwhelming. Not only that, the thoughts and emotions that we were too busy and distracted to process during the day can flood into the mental space boredom creates.


Atomic grains of sand: How the history of humans is written into the fabric of the Earth — Wherein we learn about how everything humans have done over the centuries — from construction to warfare — has embedded some form of evidence or the other into nature.

From the article:

"We know there was an accident in one of these industries," explains Loizeau. "There was some spilling of mercury because there was a break in a tank and we really find this peak in the sediment." Plus, traces of elements such as barium in the cores could be linked to the rise of the automobile, adds Loizeau – because car brakes often contain barium.


What Does the Title ‘Esquire’ Mean, Anyway? — Wherein Dan Nosowitz explores the history certain people using a certain title and the conspiracy theories around that title and its use.

From the article:

One of the weirder movements in modern American political action attempted to attack a title so vigorously that it would have essentially collapsed the entire history of the American government. The movement didn’t succeed, because it was both factually wrong and wildly misguided, but it was wrong in a really interesting way.

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