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The Morning News

I have a large collection of books about conjoined twins. I used to be the conjoined twins reviewer for Booklist Magazine, which is a busier reviewing beat than one might expect.

John Green explains his reading tastes.
↩︎ The New York Times Book Review
15h
Frequent-flier programs make aviation cheaper the more emissions you produce. The incentives should be flipped.
↩︎ Quartz 15h

Pasta Grannies is just a joy. Weekly updates show Italian nonne (grandmothers) painstakingly making traditional pasta dishes in their own homes.

20h

There are two views of humanity, people are stomachs or people are brains. In the people-are-stomachs view, more people means more eaters, more takers, less for everyone else. In the people-are-brains view, more people means more brains, more ideas, more for everyone else.

Economist Michael Kremer, a recent Nobel Prize winner, once showed that people are brains, not stomachs.
↩︎ Marginal Revolution
20h
Athletes looking to be politically engaged could do worse than to admire Australia’s David Pocock.
↩︎ The Atlantic 20h
"Modern policing developed in response to the challenge of managing all drivers." What today's cars teach us about policing tech.
↩︎ The New York Review of Books 20h
"Toyota," a series from photographer Christoffer Rudquist.
↩︎ Christoffer.co 20h
Edwidge Danticat: Protesters in Haiti want Haitian-led solutions. "They want an end to impunity."
↩︎ The New Yorker 20h
On the failed promise of USAid in Haiti. E.g., spending $70 million to build two nonfunctioning concrete electricity poles.
↩︎ The Guardian 20h

Purple sky at night—prepare for catastrophe.

As people in Japan prepared to evacuate before Typhoon Hagibis, they looked up and saw an ominous purple sky, a result of “scattering.”

From this post on my modern met: "Meteorologists say the colorful sky is a result of 'scattering,' a weather phenomenon that occurs when heavy rain washes large molecules from the sky, leaving only small molecules. This causes the light to scatter around the moisture in the air, causing the strange violet hues."

21h

“Now, I can be doing something and forget about my phone because it doesn’t light up or vibrate, and then I go to it in my own time. That’s had quite a profound effect on my mental health.”

Making the case yet again for leaving your phone in “Do Not Disturb” mode as much as possible.
↩︎ i-D
21h
Nathan Bailey’s Universal Etymological Dictionary of 1764 defines thunder as “a noise known by persons not deaf.”
↩︎ Futility Closet 21h
The best morning news summary running (since 1999), handmade and now delivered to your inbox for free.
↩︎ TMN Newsletters 21h
Some NBA players think a lack of sleep will do to them—much more quietly—what concussions have done to NFL players.
↩︎ ESPN 1d

Heterosexuality is not a terminal diagnosis but... a possible site of experiment and change.

The problem isn’t heterosexuality, it’s misogyny: an essay against “heteropessimism.”
↩︎ The New Inquiry
4d
A list of all the books by African authors ever nominated for the Booker Prize for Fiction.
↩︎ Brittle Paper 4d
Some early pictures of designer Hubert “Vic” Vykukal's space suits for NASA.
↩︎ Flashbak 4d
Silicon Valley believes in the future of self-driving cars, but it's very NIMBY when it comes to testing them in Silicon Valley.
↩︎ The Washington Post 4d
Over time, political correctness promotes women, supports gay rights, and generally values ideas.
↩︎ Bloomberg 4d

Haruki Murakami’s vinyl collection is on Spotify.

Readers of Haruki Murakami know that his fiction makes a lot of room for music, particularly jazz, rock, and classical.

Well, Murakami ran an advice column for a while at the "Mr. Murakami’s Place" website, where he responded to some 3,716 queries from readers. One guy, Masamaro Fujiki, went to the trouble of gleaning things Murakami wrote about his vinyl collection and put together a playlist of some of the albums mentioned. Murakami keeps about 10,000 records, mostly jazz, to play in his office while he writes. 

Very good for autumn blues.


If you just want the classical albums, there's a playlist for that too.


4d