Hi pals! It’s Victor! Here’s some links to enjoy this summer:

Wikipedia is the best website

• Nomophobia is the fear of not having a working mobile phone, rooted in behavioural addiction.
• From the pharaonic times to the 1960s, the water level and clarity of the river Nile was measured with… a Nilometer.
• Because army tanks are very soundproof, a lot of them have a tank phone directly on the outside, which allows communication between the crew and outside infantry. (Yes, I was very disappointed that this wasn’t an article about the Nokia 3310’s shell.)
• In the early 2000s, the band KISS sold a piece of merch for the truly dedicated fans: a customised vinyl-covered coffin, autographed and obviously called Kiss Kasket. (There’s pictures on their archived website and it’s very metal, and also very Photoshop CS3.)
  • ”In addition, ‘KISS® Kasket’ can also be used as a Giant KISS® Cooler, enabling fans and their friends to enjoy ice-cold sodas and beer served directly from the ice-filled, completely waterproof ‘KISS® Kasket.’”
• Illeism is the act of referring to oneself in the third person.

Heatwave manifestation

Mildly interesting

• The first time surveyors estimated the height of Mount Everest in the 1850s, they measured multiple times and found the average to be exactly 29,000 feet. However, they were worried the public might think this nice, round number is a heavily rounded estimate, so instead they falsely reported the height to be 29,002 feet to add credibility.
  • They turned out to be pretty close; the latest measurement in 2020 is 29,031.69 feet.
• A brief history of instant coffee, a now-unremarkable miracle that took decades of chemistry innovation (and it’s not over: modern coffee makers are still at work to make instant coffee taste nice).
• In Victorian times, mail was delivered up to 12 times a day in large cities. “The system was so reliable that Londoners used it the way we use text messages: fire off a note in the morning, get a reply by the afternoon."
• Thrilling long read about Rodney Wilkinson, a South African man who blew up a nuclear power station then disappeared in 1982. No, it’s not just clickbait.
• RIP Tony Krueger, the software engineer who put red squiggles under misspelled words in Microsoft Word. (I wonder what kind of small-but-huge UI breakthrough will be celebrated in a few decades).

Everything is depressing

Sorry it’s more AI bullshit:

• The Dead Economy Theory: “we can laugh at them but we have to take this seriously”. This is a really clear analysis IMO of one of the biggest existential risk of AI.
• AI enthusiasts are in a race against time, AI skeptics are in a race against entropy: an excellent, nuanced view from Charity Majors about the organisational pulls between “boosters and haters” in product-engineering organisations.
  • Equally good followup: a convincing argument that refusing to engage with AI out of moral compromise or “purity politics” is ineffective, and instead we should deeply engage together to make AI boring again (like the Regular Technology it is, which people agree with in the first place).
• Apropos of nothing, Austin Kleon: “I don't think writing should be easier. There are already too many words out there. You should have to scrape and struggle for the right ones before you release them into the world. You should have to build a piece of writing like a toy house out of popsicle sticks.” Amen.

Good to look at

• Highly illuminating if you ever feel “stuck” and kinda depressed: so you wanna de-bog yourself. Cognitive biases: exposed.
  • See also: 6 secrets from philosophy's most honest madman (is it Slavoj Žižek? Yes, it’s Slavoj Žižek).
• An extremely delightful list of the 100 greatest bird names. Tag yourself, I’m Vampire Ground-Finch.
• The Water Dictionary is a tool to recreate water profiles of different areas using bottled waters.
• This very fun interactive map shows the (approximate) population around a given point.
• Slow Ways is a citizen-made national walking network that connects all of the UK’s towns and cities.
• And finally: Tiddies, a short story by RS Benedict.

Happy Pride,

Victor