Kickoff For October 29, 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.
It’s good to be back at Mission Control in Auckland. My time away last week was nice (as it always is), but home truly is where I want to be.
Let’s get this Monday started with these links:
Ideas
Ending the paper trail, wherein we’re exposed to the document digitisation plan of Finland’s National Archive — which scans and destroys paper documents — and learn about the true purpose of archiving.
How Coolness Defined the World Wide Web of the 1990s, wherein we learn that the Cool Site of the Day/Week lists that sprang up on the early web gave people guideposts to sites that were broadly in tune with the ethos of the web.
Would a longer lifespan make us happier? A philosopher’s take, wherein we ponder the effects, both good and bad, of increased longevity on ourselves and on our societies.
Technology
What is the dark web? The good and bad of the Internet’s most private corner, wherein we get a look at what some people believe to be the scary depths of the internet, an article that avoids being sensational or mongering our fears.
Three ways making a smartphone can harm the environment, wherein Patrick Byrne examines some of the key metals in smartphones, what they do, and the environmental cost of pulling them out of the ground.
How Duterte Used Facebook To Fuel the Philippine Drug War, wherein we learn just what can happen if Facebook is the way in which most people in a country access the internet, and the effects that can have on public opinion. It’s not pretty.
Crime
The big squeeze, wherein we discover that the rise of the mafia in Sicily happened, in part, to the boom in the citrus fruit trade and that mixing valuable resources and weak institutions produces a volatile cocktail.
How a Brutal Mafia Enforcer Became a Deadly Serious Marathoner, wherein we hear the story of Rahul Jadhav, a former guman for a mobster in Dombivli, India who turned to running to help vent his anger and as a way of reintegrating with a society that didn’t seem to want him.
The Disappeared, wherein we hear the tragic story of how the police in a town in Long Island, New York utterly failed the Latino community there.
And that’s it for this Monday. Come back in seven days for another set of links to start off your week.