Top Of The Week
Homo Algorithmicus
Alex Gendler | Point | 3rd February 2025 | M
Stern critique of the philosophy popular among Silicon Valley tech leaders. "In many ways, rationalism is the result of people with STEM educations attempting to tackle questions that had long been the purview of the humanities, guided by a stubbornly autodidactic conviction that definitive answers could be reached through a rigorous application of logic untainted by psychological biases" (3,700 words)
Please Take Off Your Apple Watch
Watches Of Espionage | 4th February 2025 | U
Open letter from a former CIA officer to JD Vance, imploring the US Vice President to stop wearing a device that "offers unique data collection and access for exploitation and even manipulation" — an Apple Watch. This expert would be "genuinely surprised" if other intelligence services haven't already hacked Vance's device, leaving it vulnerable to being transformed into a "hot mic" (1,300 words)
The Mediterranean Diet Is A Lie
Alessandro Ford | Politico | 3rd February 2025 | U
…Coined by American physiologist Ancel Keys who studied working-class residents of Nicotera, a coastal Italian town. His research supposedly uncovered a mostly plant-based diet based on moderation, communal eating, negligible salt and sugar. A more iconoclastic theory claims that the diet was not discovered so much as invented. The Nicoterans’ leanness was because of a different reason: hunger (3,000 words)
When Are Tariffs Good?
Noah Smith | Noahpinion | 6th February 2025 | U
Tariffs can be a useful part of a national security strategy, protecting existing civilian industries that can then be quickly flipped into military production mode in a time of war. Highly targeted tariffs can also foster "national champions" and create world-leading companies in their niche. This also applies to nurturing new entrants to a market. Broad tariffs do nothing for these goals (2,500 words)
Serious Music
Liam Shaw | LRB Blog | 31st January 2025 | U
Concert pianists are in a bind: should they risk severe muscular spasms with practice or let their skills atrophy? Perhaps try a robotic exoskeleton, a fingerless glove that can open and close the wearer's fingers individually up to four times a second. Expert pianists who practised with the exoskeleton reported an increase in playing speed – an ability which surprisingly transferred to the untrained hand as well (1,000 words)
Video: Legendary Road | YouTube | Diego Poncelet | 11m 02s
Nail-biting yet beautiful footage of an expert downhill skateboarder reaching speeds of up to 100km/h on a mountain road in Switzerland.
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