A Mind That Can’t “See” Mental Images

Yasemin Saplakoglu | Quanta | 1st August 2024

1% to 4% of the general population experience aphantasia — an inability to conjure mental images. Described over 140 years ago, the term was coined in 2015 as a play on “phantasia”, Aristotle’s word for “mind’s eye”. “You might think aphantasia makes for a very impoverished mental life. It’s possible that people with aphantasia are less likely to have mental health problems marked by vivid mental images” (2,800 words)

Why We Should Give Votes To Kids

Molly Kingsley | Critic | 2nd August 2024

Democracies are united in excluding “minors” from voting, on the logic that children are not competent to make good decisions. Yet, they are as much citizens as adults. Politicians are not incentivised enough to prioritise children’s interests in policy-making — as they are with the elderly. “It would be inconceivable to suggest that any other group be excluded from our most fundamental democratic processes” (1,600 words)

Podcast: Long Journey To Make Malaria Vaccines | Readout Loud. It has taken forty years for a malaria vaccine to become commercially available, given the complicated nature of the disease (34m 15s)

Video: Clever Way To Count Tanks | YouTube | Numberphile | 16m 45s

How many tanks was Nazi Germany producing during WWII? The Allies used mathematics and probability to find out, and were on the mark. 

Skill Issues

Lily Scherlis | The Drift | 18th July 2024

Behavioural therapies hold that a good life entails skilled emotional management. Before they became popular, “the idea of directly teaching emotional regulation was a novelty in therapy”. Its creator, Marsha Linehan, had been institutionalised for self-harm. Eventually cured, she drew a blueprint for a new therapeutic practice based on her experiences. “More than sessions with a psychiatrist, I needed skills” (4,600 words)

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The (Dis)Assembly Of Information

Miles Kellerman | False Positive | 29th July 2024

At its core, a financial transaction is an exchange of information. Underground banking systems work on this premise, and have existed for far longer than modern states. The Hawala system operated on the ancient Silk Road, obviating the need for traders to carry money on dangerous routes. To this day, it is used in cross-border payments. Hawala brokers use pre-agreed secret codes to maintain trust (3,900 words)

Early Bookcases, Cupboards & Carousels

Suzanne Ellison | Lost Art Press | 28th July 2024

How early scribes stored their weighty tomes. Interesting throughout, with beautiful illustrations. The 8C Codex Amiatinus shows Prophet Ezra in front of a shrine-like cupboard — one of the “oldest images in the Western world to show a bookcase”. Cupboards with bi-fold or tri-fold doors stored the more valuable books. A 16C bookwheel has rotating gears to hold books at a 45 degree angle (2,400 words)

from The Browser twelve years ago:

The Brain Set Free

Laura Sanders | ScienceNews | 27 July 2012

“A baby’s brain is a thirsty sponge, slurping up words. In a fully set brain, signals fly around effortlessly, making commonplace tasks short work. A master of efficiency, the adult brain loses the exuberance of childhood. But it need not remain in this petrified state. In a feat of neural alchemy, the brain can morph from marble back to limestone.” Could there be a way to recapture its youthful flexibility? (3,300 words)

Why Do People Believe True Things?

Dan Williams | Conspicuous Cognition | 28th July 2024

Those who study misinformation often ask “why do people believe false things?”. Methodologically speaking, this is the wrong question. “The modern panic about “misinformation” and “post-truth” is historically illiterate. There never was a “truth” era. False, biased narratives are the norm throughout human history. The truth is not the default — it is an exceptional, fragile, improbable achievement” (3,500 words)

Is Sleep Training Harmful?

Tom Vaillant | Pudding | 14th July 2024

Newly minted parent dives into the internet’s most polarising parenting debate. Sleep training involves letting babies cry themselves to sleep in a safe environment. Critics — prolific on social media — argue that the “cry it out” method has long-term mental effects on babies. No research to date shows that sleep training does harm, and a majority of paediatric sleep researchers advocate for it (3,100 words)

This Likert Life

Deborah Thompson | The Offing | 23rd July 2024 | U

“You might not have heard of the Likert scale, but you’ve probably been Likerted your whole life. Likert seeps liquid-like into every crevice of everyday life. The coffee shop requests my five-scale rankings on the staff’s friendliness. My healthcare provider is stalking me to Likert a cancelled appointment. How important is it to you (very, somewhat, moderately, slightly, not at all) to just enjoy a moment?” (1,100 words)

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Enough Creativity is a weekly letter to return to a gentler and more stimulating life, with practices for rest and community, creative stories and treasures from far flung corners. Each week is thoughtfully designed and different. Try it to find out if it's for you.

Video: Mycorrhizal Fungi | YouTube | SPUN | 4m 16s

How did the ancestors of plants move from fresh water to land 500 million years ago? Wonderfully animated explanation of mycorrhizal fungal relationships, which made life on land possible.

Never Again in Russia

Olga Ametistova | Verfassungsblog | 25th July 2024

Russia's "never again" narrative is focused not on the Holocaust, but on what is perceived as "Victory in the 'Great Patriotic War' against fascism". A brief moment of honest reflection about WW2 in the 1990s was superseded by this ideology. "Ritualised and declared as a kind of state religion, it became a Victory Myth – and the cornerstone of national and later extreme nationalist ideology" (2,500 words)

Yes, We Still Have To Work

Noah Smith | Noahpinion | 25th July 2024

There has been a "vibe shift" on the left. "Worker" used to be an identity prized by socialists — with the caveat that work should not be harmful, exploitative or unpleasant to those doing it. More recently, universal basic income and the "anti-work" movement suggest growing support for the idea that all work should be abolished. Would we be better off as "glorified pets"? Of course not (2,300 words)

Podcast: Outbreak | Hysterical. Compelling opening episode to a series investigating an epidemic of what was thought to be mass hysteria among girls at a high school in upstate New York in 2011 (28m 54s)

Video: Nanoscapes | YouTube | Kristina Dutton | 3m 48s

Images of butterfly wings, shot at microscopic and then nanoscopic scale, that reveal the alien landscapes and intense pigmentation contained within.

How Many Children Had Lady Macbeth?

Julianne Werlin | Life And Letters | 19th July 2024

Shakespeare’s England was in the grips of Malthusian cycles — the population grew until it reached the limits of its resources, and then fell due to want and disease. Aristocrats had a different problem: unlikely to starve, the progeny of the rich were so numerous that they invariably experienced downward social mobility. Most of them could never attain their parents’ status (1,500 words)

Fabricating Dreams

Laura Vigo | Montréal Review | 2nd July 2024

The 53 stations of the Tokaido is the “most formidable series ever printed in Japan”, based on the post-stations dotting the 490-km long road connecting Edo, the shogun’s seat, to the old imperial capital, Kyoto. The result of a collaboration between a small publisher and an amateur artist of the samurai class, these 19C prints established landscape as the defining genre of Japanese print-making (2,600 words)