Kickoff For May 9, 2022
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.
Let’s get this Monday started with these links:
Technology
Beware the FOMO Bullies of Technology, wherein Charlie Warzel cautions us to be wary of Web3, by expressing their ambivalence towards it, regardless of what the so-called visionaries and shills are saying.
Can Computers Learn Common Sense?, wherein we learn about the attempts by artificial intelligence researchers to solve a problem that’s been befuddling them for decades: how to effectively impart common sense to machines.
Under digital surveillance: how American schools spy on millions of kids, wherein we learn how schools in the US monitor students via their devices, and how that scrutiny continues outside of school hours.
History
The Writing’s on The Wall: Reading Roman Graffiti, wherein Jerry Toner gives us a peek at the forms that graffiti in ancient Rome took and what we can learn from it.
The world’s oldest pants are a 3,000-year-old engineering marvel, wherein we learn that an item of clothing that we take for granted is, or at least can be, something a bit more complex than it appears to be.
Abraham Lincoln, True Crime Writer, wherein we get to read a short story, written by 16th president of the United States when he was a lawyer, based on a case that he defended.
Business and Economics
How to lose $1B in 10 seconds, wherein we learn how Gerald Ratner transformed his family’s jewelry chain, how thanks to the backlash from an ill-advised speech, helped destroy that chain, and how Ratner’s mistake is being repeated today.
‘Worthy of a Bond villain’: the bizarre history of libertarian attempts to create independent cities, wherein we get a quick tour of proposed libertarian paradises, all of which either never got off the ground or quickly fizzled out.
Online shopping in the middle of the ocean, wherein we learn how locals, using ingenuity and hard work and a home-grown courier service, brought ecommerce to remote islands in French Polynesia.
And that’s it for this Monday. Come back in seven days for another set of links to start off your week.