Kickoff For October 16, 2023
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:
The Demise of the Garage Inventor, wherein Joseph Joyce laments the death of the fantasy of the lone genius creating something amazing, and the lack of true innovation in technology today.
Mending at the Margins, wherein Diamond Abdulrahim visits various garment repair shops in London to try to understand the motivation of the people who run those businesses and why they continue to do so in what’s an era of disposable goods.
Martian Colonists Will Use Lax Regulations to Become Genetically Enhanced Cyborgs, wherein Brian Gallagher looks at a near(ish) future in which human colonists on Mars will be mainly bands of adventurers who will use technology to enhance themselves into genetically modified cyborgs.
School Is Not Enough, wherein Simon Sarris argues that schooling alone isn’t sufficient to prepare young people for life, and that they need agency and a change to grow without their parents’ life scripts.
Is the decline of oil in sight?, wherein Jocelyn Timperley explores the idea of peak oil, what it really means, when we could reach that point, and what’s stopping use from abandoning petroleum.
What AI Teaches Us About Good Writing, wherein Laura Hartenberger ponders writing and tools like ChatGPT, and that while generative AI can produce readable prose, an indefinable human element is lacking in the output.
How the Kentucky Cave Wars Reshaped the State’s Tourism Industry, wherein we learn about the surprising high-stakes battles to monopolize tourism in a chunk of the state, and how all of that pushed the people of cave country to actively explore the region for nearly a century.
The Secret Life of the 500+ Cables That Run the Internet, wherein we learn a little about the history of communication by subsea cable, and about why we’re getting a lot of our internet via this age-old method.
The town where people live underground, wherein we get a tour of a remote Australian town called Coober Pedy (and a few other towns like it) in which residents escape oppressive heat by building homes and even businesses below the surface.
And that’s it for this Monday. Come back in seven days for another set of links to start off your week.