sundry newsletter  Issue #1 · November 2nd, 2015 · View in your browser

Hi! Thanks for subscribing! This is the first issue of Sundry, a reading list for curious minds. Feel free to reply to this email with your thoughts on how it can be improved.

1. Are we thinking about addiction all wrong?

You may have heard of experiments in which rats were put in cages with free access to drugs like heroin. The rats would quickly become addicts and die. The results of such experiments are the inspiration for the thinking behind the ongoing War on Drugs. Now, a group called Kurzgesagt, along with author Johann Hari claim that these experiments are flawed. They say the problem is not caused by the chemicals but by the cage. Their idea is that if people were given opportunities for social activities, and liberty, there would be much less drug use. The opposite of addiction may thus be connection, not sobriety.

• Asymco: Young americans are abandoning MP3 players, game consoles and ebook readers

2. What are the secrets of being likeable? 

Robin Dreeke, the former head of the FBI's behavioural analysis program shares his tips on how to quickly build rapport with anyone. The basic idea is that people prefer people who are interested in them. To get you started, establish time constraints (don't be the awkward lingerer), speak slowly and suspend your ego.

+ Aeon: Can we measure free will?

3. WhatsApp’s co-founder on how the app became a phenomenon

This Wired interview provides some previously little known tidbits on the inner workings of the 50-people company that provides critical messaging services for more than 900 million people, daily. We learn about how WhatsApp uses Erlang and FreeBSD, the consequences of the Facebook acquisition and their unique work environment.

+ AVC: Software is the new oil

4. The big ideas behind Andy Warhol's art and how they can help us build a better world

The School of Life, a project by philosopher Alain de Botton, produced a 6-minute video that shows four enduring ideas from Andy Warhol's thought. I found one particularly interesting: celebrities can improve society by distributing glamour differently. Warhol gives the example of how we can grant maids higher status by showing the nation's President exclaiming, while cleaning the toilets, “someone's gotta do it!”. This might help provide some well-deserved recognition for the job and thus a little more happiness for the people who work it.

5. “Too Weak, Too Strong”

In a sweeping account of what is currently happening in Syria and Iraq, published in the London Review of Books, Patrick Cockburn lucidly spells out what the very complex power relations at play. A key takeaway from his piece is that any party involved in the war is simultaneously too strong to lose and too weak to win.

6. Why Adele uses a flip-phone in her “Hello” video

The person who made the video is 26 year-old Xavier Dolan who won the 2014 Palme d'Or in Cannes. He explains that seeing iPhones and Toyotas in a video is a “reminder of reality” and a killer of narrative, hence the use of a now-obsolete flip-phone. This seems to illustrate the relative loss of wonder caused by these “overmarketed” objects.

7. The neuroscience of bass

The humain brain can keep time more easily with lower registers (bass instruments) while it can more simply distinguish pitch changes in the higher ranges (lead guitars etc.). There is thus an innate psychological basis that explains why bass lays down a track's rhythm and why it is the foundation upon which great melodies are built. Go bass!

• Photo: The interior flight deck of Space Shuttle Endeavour

*Thanks, 

Ulysse*