Links and thoughts, 8-9/2016

See all the links for this month for August and September. (See April’s post for an explanation of the organization.) Here are some highlights.

• Podcasts
  • Why Uber is an Economist’s dream (Freakonomics)
  • Invisibilia, about the invisible forces that control human behavior - ideas, beliefs, assumptions and emotions. I started listening to it this month and really like it.
    • 7/15/16 Flip the script: Noncomplementary behavior - a peaceful solution to terrorism
    • 7/22/16 The secret emotional life of clothes: A formative experience with the power of clothes in a Nazi concentration camp
  • Radiolab
    • The Girl Who Doesn’t Exist: Attempting to join society without a birth certificate.
    • 596 Becoming a badger: The grass smells different after rain, like switching the music to Mozart.
  • Rationally speaking
    • 167 Samuel Arbesman on “Why technology is becoming too complex”
    • 168 Dan Moore on “Overconfidence”
  • Making friends (Reply All): On tulpas, intelligent companions imagined into existence. See also /r/Tulpas.
  • Can capitalism survive an “economic singularity?” (Review the future): Transitioning from a work-based economy and culture, universal basic income, speciation into the gods and the useless.
  • Strangers
    • Love hurts - Two years later
    • Matjames and Tyler: Free, Flood, Float
  • The Allusionist, on deciphering ancient languages
    • 42 The key part I: Rosetta
    • 43 The key part II: Vestiges: monolingualism is a byproduct of the nation-state
  • Dreamland (The Memory Palace)
  • Writing Excuses - a podcast that teaches fiction writing
    • 11.37 Casting your book, with Gama Martinez
  • Making up ground (99% invisible): San Francisco built from ships; Singapore stealing sand; islands for the rich
• Cube composer: A puzzle game inspired by functional programming
• 100 incredible things I learned watching TED talks
  • 63. There may be another way to run a successful, modern economy: the Chinese way h
  • 74. Since more and more websites are trying to tailor their content to you, you may get caught up in a digital “filter bubble” and not get “exposed to information that could challenge or broaden your worldview”. h

• Amoralism 101 (John A De Goes) h

  Personally, I believe that’s why moral language developed: a way to extract something you want from others by talking about your desires as if they were objective facts of the physical universe.

• Hugging strangers in airports (Malcolm Ocean) h
• Against the research vs. olympiads mantra (Power Overwhelming) h
• Redwood ritual: dust in the wind (Secular Solstice)
• Slatestarcodex
  • All debates are bravery debates h
  • A philosopher walks into a coffee shop
• Heteronormativity hurts straight people too (Thing of things)
• A Bird’s-Eye View of Nature’s Hidden Order (Quanta)
• Life on the infinite farm
• Science fiction short stories
  • Light of other days
  • The Star, Arthur Clarke
• Writing
  • Brandon Sanderson’s 3 laws
    • 1 h
    • 2 h
    • 3 h
  • Writing prompts reddit
    • Squirrel magic
    • Ever since you were little you could read minds. You mastered it through the years, but one day you’re with your SO and you hear a second voice in their head.
• Books
  • The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers: McCullers gets in the head of the characters in a natural/free-flow way, so it’s easy to resonate with their hopes/fear/anger/etc.; she weaves their perspectives/lives together very well into a vibrant world. It feels very in touch with humanity. A lot on how people connect/don’t connect/hang their hearts on each other. People are lonely. End is sad, makes me think.
  • I’m continuing to read The Great Conversation: A historical introduction to philosophy. Notes.