Via Warren Ellis, an excellent 15-minute talk by someone with the unlikely name of “Clay Shirky” about what he calls the “cognitive surplus,” how we’ve dissipated it in the past, and how we might dissipate it in the future.
“Looking for the mouse” is a fantastic metaphor. Well worth watching the whole thing.
… [...]
… there’s a difference in how it feels to go to bed at 9:30 p.m. and get up at 4:30 a.m. as compared to going to bed at 8:30 p.m. and getting up at 3:30 a.m.
8:30 p.m. felt like a profoundly unnatural time to go to sleep. I think my body thought I might [...]
Inmate Count in U.S. Dwarfs Other Nations’ - New York Times
From the Department of Bad Ideas With Bad Repercussions:
The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners.
Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent [...]
Spotlight: Livestock impacts on the environment
From a summary of a report by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization on the environmental impact of global livestock. Emphasis mine. If you buy their methodology, it implies that some moderate changes in diet and some moderate changes in food/water subsidies could make as big a difference [...]
When you consider something like death, after which (there being no news flash to the contrary) we may well go out like a candle flame, then it probably doesn’t matter if we try too hard, are awkward sometimes, care for one another too deeply, are excessively curious about nature, are too open to experience, enjoy [...]