Kickoff For August 20, 2018
Welcome to this week’s edition of the Monday Kickoff, a collection of what I’ve found interesting, informative, and insightful on the web over the last seven days.
I stumbled across this quote recently, and it really sums up what I’m once again trying to do with my online presence:
RSS isn’t dead. Social media works great for link notifications, not so much for complete thoughts or even not-fully-baked considerations. The fields are on fire and being sprayed with liquid shit. Dig your own garden, build your own structures, make your own space.
If you have the skills and the knowledge (and it doesn’t take much of either, trust me!), then I encourage you to make your own space in the digital world.
Let’s get this Monday started with these links:
Science
Why Are New Antibiotics So Hard to Find?, wherein we’re taught how antiboitics fight bacteria, how bacteria fight back, and the difficult problem of resistance to some of our most important drugs.
Solid or Liquid? Physicists Redefine States of Matter, wherein we discover the very subtle differences between the two, and what those differences involve.
The tools humanity will need for living in the year 1 trillion, wherein we learn about what intelligent civilizations will do for resources in a far-flung future where so-called dark energy becomes the dominant form of energy in the universe.
Crime
The First Family of Counterfeit Hunting, wherein we meet Rob and Jason Holmes, and hear the story of how they became effective (and hated) online counterfeit investigators.
How one man went from hunting meteorites to being hunted by the law, wherein we watch how a dispute between members of the small community of meteorite dealers took a potentially deadly turn, and landed one of the people involved in jail.
The Biggest Digital Heist in History Isn’t Over Yet, wherein we learn some of the details of a legendary cyber crime that robbed over 100 banks in 40 countries of $1.2 billion (USD), all through rigged ATMs.
Business
The New Startup South, wherein we learn about the city of Greenville, South Carolina, a seemingly unlikely place for a technology hub, and how it’s become a boom town for startups.
Clocking Out, wherein Livia Gershon argues that Americans (and many of the rest of us, I’m sure) need to change our attitudes towards the hours that we work for our own physical and mental good.
How the Disposable Straw Explains Modern Capitalism, wherein we discover that the development of the humble straw, now a target of environmentalists, was intertwined with the development of modern America’s economy and its culture.
And that’s it for this Monday. Come back in seven days for another set of links to start off your week.