From Dead Language Society, an explanation for why the English language doesn’t use diacritics even though French does. It’s ironically because of the French.
Recent Links
Category Archives: Linkfarm
Recent Links
Call Me Comrade – Miriam Dobson – London Review of Books – During the Cold War, there were groups that encouraged letter writing between American housewives and Soviet women. Interesting look into the ways this changed the letter writers.
Fergus Macintosh, lead fact checker at the New Yorker, interviewed by Merve Emre – Fascinating. I thought I knew in a general sense what a fact checker did, but I didn’t realize the extent. There’s also an exercise in examining a sentence to find all the things that you think should be fact checked in it.
An exercise in creating art in the style of Bill Beckley – celine nguyen – try it yourself!
London’s Low-Traffic Zones Cut Deaths and Injuries by More than a Third – The Guardian – We have a few of these in the city, but they are all in places where traffic would already be low. The only places that drivers will allow them are places where drivers don’t go in the first place, usually neighborhood streets that are not through streets so the only traffic is from the 20 or so homes on the block. The article talks about a similar study of speed limits where it describes 20 mph as a slow, safe speed limit. If I go 17 miles per hour on my bike, someone will complain that it’s dangerous for pedestrians, but 20 in a car is perceived as “safe.”
Now available on Jstor, the digitizied diaries of the only woman, serving as a stewardess, on an 1890s steam ship.
José R. Ralat at Texas Monthly is the world’s only (known) full-time Taco Editor. One of the common questions he gets is how he does the job in Texas without driving.
Recent Links
But books actually are my entire personality — S. Elizabeth from Unquiet Things discusses the changes in the way reading is perceived now versus in the 80s and 90s, and what it means for reading to be more than a hobby.
What do you expect? – Gavin Francis – Covers two recent books about placebos. Here’s an interesting tidbit: “We know that expensive placebos work better than cheap ones, capsules work better than tablets, and colored capsules work better than white ones. Blues and greens work better as sedatives, while pinks and reds work better as stimulants and painkillers. (Unless you’re an Italian man: Howick notes that blue is stimulating for Italian men, perhaps because the Italian soccer team wears blue.)”
A thread showing the best Gacha machines in Japan – Worth dealing with Bluesky’s terrible thread navigation.
Recent Links
Remember that brief period in 2020 when we knew enough germ theory to realize that Covid was airborne and we needed face coverings, but not enough to realize that germs were extremely small so we needed surgical-level face coverings? This Reddit thread compiles some of the improvised masks that people used for grocery shopping in those days.
’Occupation: Organizer’: How Anti-Politics Becomes Anti-Democracy, by Emma Tai in Convergence. A warning against ACORN-like political structures that don’t allow democracy to flourish within the organizaiton.
Lowell’s Forgotten House Mothers, by Sarah Buchmeier – A review of what we know about the boarding house keepers who were vital to the functioning of the Massachusetts company towns in the 1800s. We don’t know much!
Recent Links
Bluesky thread on why the Carlisle 52 is the best drinkware in America. I know the Carlisle as “the cups they have at Mr. Gatti’s.”
Students studying at the library… but studying the graffiti they find from previous students.
I had just finished reading A Ghost of Caribou by Alice Henderson when I found this article. A Ghost of Caribou is an eco-thriller about a biologist studying a rare species of caribou. It’s endangered because it can only survive with extremely old lichen that grows in old growth forests. An old growth forest is usually well over a hundred years old. This article is about researchers in the UK asking, “is there a way we can make trees older, faster?” It involves gleefully harming trees, for the greater good!
Profile of the philosopher Martha Nussbaum and some of her work.
Recent Links
From Antarctica with Love – We know the story of Scott’s ill-fated trip to the South Pole, but what about the men who managed the base camp and Terra Nova, the men who had to find the party after it disappeared? This long essay describes their love for each other and the traumas of their less obvious role in the expedition.
The Tyranny of Public Opinion – Peter Shamshiri – evidence that voters change their views on issues based on political campaigns.
Rick Astley covers Pink Pony Club and Chappell Roan sings with Elton John.
The War on Cars creates a “classic” ad for riding bikes
Vitamin Q – Stephen Skolnick – The case for neurotransmitter deficiencies responsible for issues like depression being linked to the guy biome. Contains interesting tidbits like, “Tryptophan, in addition to being the most complex of the protein-coding amino acids, is also the rarest in nature. This is why serotonin is intimately tied to satiety and sleep: if you have enough tryptophan in your belly, it tells your body that you’ve almost definitely got enough of everything else.” Head’s up though that at the end there’s a plug for investments in his experimental vitamins.
Journaling about People in my Life – Drewscape – Just what it says, an idea for journaling about people.
Libromancy 