Ennui And Bias

Assistant To The Regional Manager

Paul Bloom | Small Potatoes | 9th February 2026 | U

Notes on a post-scarcity utopia. It is oft-said that if all our material needs were satisfied, humans would suffer from ennui and loss of purpose. Struggle gives life meaning — or does it? In a world without want, positional goods, which mark one’s status relative to others, would still matter. The desire to matter in some way and to someone would still remain. Attention itself is a positional good (3,100 words)

The Bias Against Left-Handedness

Meagan Bojarski | Mental Floss | 10th February 2026 | U

Many languages bias people against left-handedness. In Latin, right is “dexter” and left is “sinister”, which acquired its association with evil in later usage. In Arabic and Hindi, the word for left also denotes “easy”, implying that a task must be easy to be done by the left hand. A clumsy person has “two left feet” in English. “Left luck” denotes bad luck; “getting up with the left foot” is connected to a bad day (1,600 words)