Curiosity Pill #26
On reading while travelling, art in cruel conditions, the scale of everything big and small, mineral geometry and European civilization
A Reader’s Guide to Planes, Trains, & Automobiles
Did trains, buses, ships and planes increase the amount of writing that gets done? A beautifully written thought piece on the fact that the emergence of long distance public transport ,from the early days of the railway to the plane travel we can enjoy today, increased not only the amount of book sales but also the amount of book writing. “ I want to go further and suggest that there is actually a deep affinity between a book and a means of transport, just as there is an evident analogy between a story and a journey. Both go somewhere. Both offer us a way out of our routine and a chance to make unexpected encounters, see new places, experience new states of mind. But without too much risk. You fly over the desert, or race across it, but you don’t actually have to experience it. It’s a circumscribed adventure. So it is with a book. A novel may well be shocking or enigmatic or dull or compulsive, but it is unlikely to do you too much damage.”
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/04/10/a-readers-guide-to-planes-trains-automobiles/
Humanity at night
Holocaust survivors on the artistic scene present during the long nights at concentration camps, a reminder that the human mind needs art, needs performance, needs a reason to forget and to remember in order to survive, even in the harshest of environments. “In all these individual accounts of suffering and survival, we come across at least some mention of art, learning and cultural life. Most discuss music, literature, writing, education and creativity. Those who were children in hiding highlight the importance of play. I should add that Frankl was an academic, Kerr became a novelist and illustrator, Kofman a philosopher, Kulka a historian, Toll an artist and academic, and Wiesel a journalist and writer. In a sense, then, perhaps it seems less surprising that these subjects were salient for them – although, as Kulka points out, his history lessons in Auschwitz were themselves ‘formative”
https://aeon.co/essays/in-times-of-crisis-the-arts-are-weapons-for-the-soul
The Big and the Small
A step-by-step illustrated journey into human readable sizes, from the size of the observable universe to the size of a proton.“The problem with humans talking about sizes is we just don't have the right words to do it correctly. We can try our best, calling the biggest things 'enormous' or 'huge' or 'vast' but those are the same words we describe elephants or mountains or the ocean.”
https://waitbutwhy.com/2020/09/universe.html
Scientists Uncover the Universal Geometry of Geology
A meeting between the Hungarian mathematician Gábor Domokos and the geophysicist Douglas Jerolmack sparked the research about the fact that every geological structure is a cube, on average , at least from the mathematical point of view , ending up with the publishing of their research in the paper ‘Plato’s Cube and the Natural Geometry of Fragmentation’. A great insight into the research process that the two scientists went through. “Zooming out, the team argues, you could classify most real fractured-rock mosaics using just Platonic rectangles, 2D Voronoi patterns, and then — overwhelmingly — Platonic cubes in three dimensions. Each of these patterns could tell a geological story. And yes, with the appropriate caveats, you really could say the world is made of cubes.”
https://www.quantamagazine.org/geometry-reveals-how-the-world-is-assembled-from-cubes-20201119/
The Weirdest People in the World review – a theory-of-everything study
Why did the Europeans have such a huge impact on human history? A review of The WEIRDest People in World by Joseph Henrich, a cultural evolutionist( a theory that considers that human cultures develop and transmit deep understandings and values across generations). WEIRD is an acronym for the European civilization: western, educated, industrialised, rich, democratic in the author’s view. “Henrich insists that “weird” values are culturally determined and specific rather than universal or natural. Specific doesn’t mean bad. As the book’s subtitle suggests, he credits the “firmware” of “weird” cultural evolution for many of the modern world’s core values: meritocracy, representative government, trust, innovation, even patience and restraint. ”
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Video Pill
LAURA WARHOLIC by Alexander Theroux
Review: Hunt: Showdown
The Fall Guys Experience
Podcast Pill
The Dirt on Houseplants, Podcast: Every little thing
When did we start keeping them, and has there ever been another houseplant heyday? Guests Catherine Horwood, author of Potted History, and Charlotte Salter-Townshend of the National Botanic Gardens in Dublin sift through the facts and expose the shady side of houseplant history.
https://player.fm/series/every-little-thing/the-dirt-on-houseplants
Bookbinding with Moneeza Khan, Podcast: Art illustrated
Traditional bookbinding is done by hand and Moneeza Khan from Lotus Blu Book Art tells us about he she started with it and grew her business. Her dual heritage has been one of her biggest inspirations. She shared her process and how an idea becomes a hand bound book!
https://player.fm/series/art-illuminated/bookbinding-with-moneeza-khan
Design Pill
Carnets Secrets by Andre Juillard
Poetic Pill
Embryo by Gemma Gorga
“All morning, pitting the apricots
to make marmalade. All morning
opening them to remove the swollen,
warm ovum that grows inside
the flesh: scattering of silent apricots
picked over on the antiseptic kitchen
counter. As if she were the head nurse,
grandma boils the pot
with two fingers of sugared water.
The girl runs in and pockets
the pits nobody wants. Under the white
encouragement of the myrtle tree, she rubs
the woody pit against the wall’s rough
bumps, and listens to a languid whistle
rising from the depths of the unborn embryo,
from the afternoon rising up, from the blood,
from doubt—years to come,
years to become.“
Underground Pill
Beautiful Mind - 3 Melancholy Gypsies
“Let's take a date with destiny
Shoot across the galaxy
Just me and she
She and I acting out fantasies
Hobbies me?
Swimming in the Milky Way
Playing marbles with the stars
My noggins spaced out like that
No sense
Why even charge me of malarkey?
Grounded my heart beat
But my mind sky larks
See?
Hold the phrase, "What if?" like a car key
Roll with me
The brain race like road rage
Strap in before you start me up
Where the side walk ends is where I dare to jump
Parachute while shooting out paragraphs“
“I'm a figment of your imagination it appears
So mold me
Shape me
Hold me
Take me
Existence is a window and our dreams are the draperies“
Dictionary Pill
caveat = 1. a warning or caution; admonition. 2. a legal notice to a court or public officer to suspend a certain proceeding until the notifier is given a hearing:
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