MargaretC
@margaretc
MargaretC
Geopolitics and
Space: the new frontier, a wild and lawless place. It is already central to communication, economics, military strategy and international relations on Earth. Now, it is the latest arena for human exploration, exploitation - and, possibly, conquest. We're heading up and out, and we're taking our power struggles with us. China, the USA and Russia are leading the way. From physical territory and resources to satellites, weaponry and strategic choke points, geopolitics is as important in the skies above us as it is down below. If you've ever wondered if humans are going back to the Moon, who will benefit from exploration or what space wars might look like, the answers are here.
“If you can’t decide, pretend you’re deciding for a friend.”
Solomon’s paradox is a robust finding that we're better at solving other people's problems than our own, because detachment yields objectivity. But research has found that viewing oneself in the 3rd person yields the same detachment and objectivity. So if... See more
One way to prune is to see where best-book lists overlap, on the theory that books that appear most often must be really worth your while. That is what a website called thegreatestbooks.org has done. Its creator, Shane Sherman, a computer programmer in Texas, has used more than 300 lists to come up with a list of lists, which he calls, not entirely... See more
How long would it take to read the greatest books of all time?
Jacob Falkovich says that single people often seek out similarity when complementarity is what makes relationships cohere long-term. It’s a great observation. But how to operationalize it? Maybe: look for someone you can’t initially understand, but also don’t feel like walking away from.
Sasha Chapin • Getting married soon
Maybe: look for someone you can’t initially understand, but also don’t feel like walking away from.
Patience and listening are good. Some craziness is useful,
‘because to some people it looks like a big empty space with nothing in it, but for us, it’s a really important place filled with wildlife and lovely, wonderful communities, and we wanted to protect them.’ She’d appealed to the critical difference between ‘space’ and ‘place’ – one a malleable territory largely
Julian Hoffman • Irreplaceable: The fight to save our wild places
A great thing about taking notes is that it subtly encourages you to live a ‘notes-worthy life’
You end up seeking interesting conversations to build your memex; experimenting with new recipes to add to your collection; reading more widely to find surprising connections etc.
Anne-Laure Le Cunfftwitter.com
I write down what I observe in my notebooks. I do this for two reasons. The first is that Writing inculcates habits of precision a carefulness. The second is to preserve whatever knowledge I possess for you, the Sixteenth Person.
I am guilty of bad practice. Only one system of numbering is needed. Two introduces confusion, doubt, uncertainty, doubt and muddle. (And is aesthetically unpleasing.)
In accordance with the first system I have named two years 2011 and 2012. This strikes me as deeply pedestrian what happened two thousand years ago which made me think that year a good starting point. According to the years names like 'The Year I named the Constellations' and 'The Year I counted and named the Dead each year a character of its own. This is the system I shall use going forward
Because they were living in the future, they were interacting on a daily basis with the new, enabling technologies of the internet and cultivating new ways of thinking, feeling, and acting through those interactions. The team realized that the winning metaphor wasn’t a digital superhighway, with traffic speeding along a well-defined path, and fixed... See more