Links
Back to doing cryptic puzzles, after such a long hiatus. Found Lovatt’s Daily Cryptic to start getting back into it.
This is fascinating: a mission to cut food waste launched a multi-million dollar business. We’re rescuing a ridiculous amount of food from the local supermarkets, and much of that would have gone to the tip otherwise.
Lewis Lapham – Momento Mori – how I’d love to write like this! The wonders of medical science raked from the ashes of the war gave notice of the likelihood that soon, maybe next month but probably no later than next year, death would be reclassified as a preventable disease.
The Dawn Chorus is a collection of bird song from around the world. I found one from a place I grew up in!
Phil Gyford wrote a python script to automate the task of blocking spam addresses in a mailbox.
Heat, fuel, and oxygen are the ingredients of a fire, and applying it in a education setting is the subject of Jeremy Weinstein’s post on NoTosh. My young fella is also obsessed with fires so the Swedish Torch technique here will be of much interest to him.
Hendrik Karlsson’s post on the design process of his life had this gem of a video from Ryan Singer describing what Form Context Fit is (Christopher Alexander’s book Notes on the Sythesis of Form)
Oliver Burkeman: What does it mean to be ‘done for the day‘?
Anthony Howard: What are your tips for hearing another perspective? The story he shares about watching "Sale of the Century" on TV – the same body of water being called by two different names doesn’t make one of them wrong! Strait of Calais = The English Channel.
Podcasts
A McKinsey conversation led by Raju Narisetti on leadership
Quotes
Volunteerism relies on an unsustainable supply of free labour. It is beset by internal strife, burnout, and lack of resources. People like their comfortable and bourgeois lives – cosplaying as a relief worker eventually becomes tiresome.
– Terence Eden in a review of Lifehouse by Adam Greenfield
The transition from tenseness, self-responsibility, and worry to equanimity, receptivity, and peace is the most wonderful of all those shiftings of inner equilibrium, those changes of personal center of energy.
–William James
Words & concepts
Too cheap to meter: a commodity so inexpensive that it is cheaper and less bureaucratic to simply provide it for a flat fee or even free. Have mobile data and minutes become like this, but telcos don’t know how else to make money on their investments? Water metering was introduced as a conservation measure in NY city!
Saice or Sais: A groom, or servant with responsibility for the horses
Music
hey, nothing is a new find. Loved listening to their music on Bandcamp.