📚 Holidays, Inspiration and tedious work, City designed by women, In defense of plagiarism
History of the Ampersand + a lot more for the curious YOU
Hi and welcome to the post #152.
This last week we had two long weekends (Festival of Holi on Monday, then Good Friday). This led to the following observation:
I did send a reminder post for the newsletter, so I am not going to pick that point.
But the topic of holiday reminded me of a super interesting post by Patrick McKenzie (patio11) on the topic, and that’s the first recommendation in today’s post. It’s quite a fun piece, do give it a read.
Here’s a quick view of the lineup:
And now, onto today's finds…
🗓️ Financial System and Holidays
Patrick McKenzie’s “Financial systems take a holiday” is based on the following observation:
Technologists describe their systems as having “uptime” and measure it in “nines”, such as “We have five nines of uptime”, which means that a system has 99.999% uptime or, equivalently, about five minutes of downtime per year. Five nines is admirable in many circumstances and would be considered disastrously below expectations for e.g. Google Search.
Nonetheless, many financial systems do have availability which is far closer to five twos. They aren’t fully open for business during holidays, weekends, or outside of business hours. It turns out that “holidays”, “weekends”, and “business hours” are far deeper topics than one might think.
Patrick being Patrick, he does not stay to just one interesting observation, but brings a tonne of good insights in one single post. You’ve to read it to experience it.
Just as a sneak preview, here’re the things you can expect to know more about - Japanese holiday calendar issues, history of Black Friday & Cyber Monday and the challenges they bring upon the financial system, relation between culture & systems and how crypto tries to solve for holidays.
🏞️ Inspiration and Tedious Work
Billy Oppenheimer tells us about how inspiration happens. And make no mistake, it does not happen by chance. There is a lot of tedious work that goes behind it. He has 6 stories to tell his side. I loved them all, but this one is my favorite.
And while we’re on this, here’s one more thing for the keep.
A good idea is of no use to you unless you can find it.
🏙️ City Designed by Women
Cities are supposed to be built for all of us, but they aren't built by all of us.
Every city in the world has been designed and built by men. But what if the other half had a go?
The BBC team tries to find some answers in what would a city designed by women be like?
They talk to feminists working in urban planning in the city of Barcelona to find out what they think needs to change to make cities better for women.
Why Barcelona? Because, for the past four years (then) the city has had a female mayor with a profoundly feminist agenda.
6 key ideas - toilets, playgrounds for all, public transport, superblocks to kill the car, more seats and places to relax and finally women’s safety (say no to sleaze).
Just 8 minutes to get a glimpse of very different ways of thinking about public places.
On Superblocks
If you’re keen to know more about Superblocks, Vox has published a great deep dive here. 5 articles diving deep into the past, present and future of this novel idea. There are a lot of things to learn about traffic, society, urban development and housing in these pieces.
(via Refind)
[&] History of the Ampersand
Jonny Gibson tells us more about the history of the ampersand. There are many super fascinating facets covered in this brief piece. I am picking two.
The ampersand is simply a ligature of the letters E and T (et being the latin word for and).
The etymology of the word will remind you of how you sang (and gleefully enjoyed) your ABCDs (elo-meno-p #iykyk).
(via Refind)
🪞 In Defense of Plagiarism
Alex Tabarrok’s “In defense of plagiarism” helped me understand ‘plagiarism’ in a new light. He starts with the definition.
Google plagiarism and you will find definitions like “stealing someone else’s ideas” or “literary theft.” Here the emphasis is on the stealing–it’s the original author who is being harmed. I prefer the definition of plagiarism given by Wikipedia, plagiarism is the *fraudulent* use of other people’s words or ideas. Fraudulent emphasizes that it’s the reader who is being cheated, not the original creator.
Who is being cheated puts a totally new perspective and helps expand intellectual property thinking quite forward. You can read the post to understand it more.
Here’s the quick summary:
In short, the focus of any charge of plagiarism should not be on whether someone else’s words have been used. The use of other’s people’s words is a necessary condition for plagiarism but it’s not sufficient. The focus should be on whether readers have been harmed by a fraudulent use of other people’s ideas and words.
🙂 Pleasure and Happiness
Paul Bloom’s “Three intriguing findings about pleasure and happiness” is unlike the sort of discourse you read on psychology. He admits that a lot of people think his field (psychology) is bullshit.
So he goes on to share a few reasons behind it. I am skipping those.
He further lists ten robust findings that psychologists have discovered (or at least substantially built upon) in the last few decades, most of which are of interest to non-specialists. These are worth reading. Sample a couple of them below:
Memory is not an accurate recording, and despite what many of us think, our recollection of the past is highly distorted. False memories are not difficult to implant, and if you think you have an accurate memory of something that happened a year ago, you are almost certainly wrong.
There is a universal list of things and experiences that frighten people regardless of where they have been raised, such as snakes, spiders, darkness, and heights. This suggests that our fears have been shaped by natural selection.
And then he goes on to zoom in on three papers on happiness and pleasure to prove his point further. Now these are the best bits and I will urge you to check out the post to experience them. Here're the titles of the three studies to pique your interest.
George Loewenstein, “Anticipation and the Valuation of Delayed Consumption”
Matthew A. Killingsworth and Daniel T. Gilbert, “A wandering mind is an unhappy mind”
Redelmeier, Donald A., Joel Katz, and Daniel Kahneman. "Memories of colonoscopy: a randomized trial."
Really fund & insightful read. I hope I find a lot more such interesting pieces on psychology.
(via Commoncog)
📝 Writing Letters
Most of us don’t write letters anymore. If we do, they are driven by dire circumstances. “What we gained (and lost) when our daughter unplugged for a school year” is a story borne out of one such circumstances. What a beautiful piece! I yearn for such enlightenment and experiences. Maybe one day!
Something in the act of writing, sending and waiting days or weeks for a reply, and in the physical and social challenges experienced by our daughter at a distance, is changing all of our personal operating systems. Without the ever-present immediacy of digital connection, even just temporarily, can a family be rewired?
In Amelia’s case, letters let her speak at her own pace, meandering in expression, sharing the trivial and private, sending away the stress, marking in ink the joys and messy uncertainties. They point to a certain kind of gift, but not like my wife and I had imagined.
Amelia’s experience involves not just the luxury of removal — the taking away of social media. It also includes an addition, something the letters capture and embody: the gift of agency. Far from home at 13, in a messed-up world, she has landed where there is intellectual space and the means to practice a method for asserting and exploring who she is and wants to become. She has found a room of one’s own.
📻 Wild Memory Radio
I could not really find words to define Wild Memory Radio so I am sharing a quick screenshot from how they define it.
Beautiful concept. I tried a couple of memories, they are so touching. Nothing fancy, but the connection with ‘things that you care about’ comes out strongly. It’s like going through your camera roll on the phone and describing some of those ‘clicked’ moments that just happened.
What’s also intriguing about this project is that it is conceived by “WeTransfer”. I wonder what inspires folks there to pursue such a thing which seems hardly connected with their core business!
(via Storythings)
✨ Everything else
Rob Alderson has killed it with the latest post in his “Video Yes Please” newsletter. High art meets picky feedback in smart and funny AICP campaign is my favorite. If you’ve worked on any creative endeavors, you will relate to every second. What beautiful storytelling.
Ian Fieggen is a computer programmer and graphic designer, but his real claim to fame is his Ian's Shoelace Site. As he says - “Fun, fashion & science in the Internet's #1 website about shoelaces – and home of the Ian Knot, the world's fastest shoelace knot. If you want to lace shoes, tie shoes or learn about shoelaces – this is the place!” Btw, he goes by Professor Shoeless on Youtube. (via Janel’s Brainpint newsletter)
Scott Kelby tells us how to use your iPhone for Travel Photography. Only simple tips & tricks - nothing fancy. Two things that I discovered and found super useful - 1) How to take better food photos & 2) We should only use optical lenses and not use the digital zoom. (via Recomendo)
StickerBaker is an open source sticker maker. You may not need a sticker today, but still check this out. I loved playing around on this one. BTW, I am still looking for an exciting sticker for “Stay Curious”. (via Janel’s Brainpint newsletter)
The most beautiful shots in cinema history: Scenes from 100+ films. I don’t know any objective criteria that selects such curation, but the output is visually stunning. Also, the scene that I know of did bring a vivid memory of the movie it was from. Quite a nice watch in just 3 minutes. (via Storythings)
That's all for this week, folks!
I hope I've earned the privilege of your time.
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Super interesting piece about what cities built by women could look like. Have you read the book 'Invisible Women'? It speaks about women are excluded in city planning, office planning, health care and things like car crash testing to terrible results. Give it a read!