Category: ideas

Our internal clocks and external cues have fallen out of sync, explains Anthony M. Tobia, associate professor of the Division of Consultation Psychiatry at the Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. The external cues we’d process without really thinking about it pre-pandemic “just don’t exist anymore, so we’re not automatically doing the things we usually do,” he says. “Therefore, there’s a loss of time perception.” – Mic

So why is the computer good at certain tasks whereas the brain is better at others? Comparing the computer and the brain has been instructive to both computer engineers and neuroscientists. – Nautilus

A couple of architects are 3D printing using organic materials – a project to support coral reef restoration via protective clay ‘coral seeding units’, and a prototype cabin built from ceramic and sawdust tiles to help solve California’s affordable housing crisis. – Aeon

Creativity can seem like a tool for solving problems: We need a new word for the ocean! But creativity doesn’t just solve problems; it also makes or discovers new problems to solve. Hundreds of years ago, nobody knew the old words for ocean weren’t cutting it, until someone said “whale-road.” And everyone was like, “Wow! It is a whale-road!” Creativity always hides itself — it makes itself disappear. – The New York Times

Of late Matthew Flinders has been exploring the notion of “crisis fatigue,” or the idea that after years of constant bad news, perhaps we’ve grown numb to warnings from politicians of yet more bad news. As the crisis drags on, might that fatigue set in across societies? And now that scientists have been thrust into the spotlight during the pandemic, might the distrust spread toward their leadership as well? – Wired

Protesting. Even during a global pandemic. Think about that for a second. How furious do people have to be to gather in the streets at a time when a highly infectious disease is killing thousands daily, especially black and brown people, who are dying at disproportionately high rate? – Los Angeles Times

Social media essentially gives a megaphone to the extremes, so it’s very hard to know what most people really think. “And when you look at the people who are loudest on Twitter and elsewhere, it’s quite clear that this pandemic is turning into just another culture-war issue, where people on the left see what they want to see and people on the right see what they want to see.” – The Atlantic

“They describe a society that is clear-eyed about the disparities that have made this pandemic so much worse for some communities than for others. They call on us to sustain each other through mutual aid, understanding that our lives are all woven together in ways that may not always have been visible until now. They outline the necessity of protecting democracy, resisting authoritarianism, and paying attention to one another, filling in the spaces left by loss.” – LitHub

Much of the history of Western philosophy can be narrated as a series of attempts to construct systems. Conversely, much of the history of aphorisms can be narrated as an animadversion, a turning away from such grand systems through the construction of literary fragments. The philosopher creates and critiques continuous lines of argument; the aphorist, on the other hand, composes scattered lines of intuition. One moves in a chain of logic; the other by leaps and bounds. – Aeon

Hey, parents, when your kids are using video games to deal with the pandemic, you may think they’re not doing schoolwork. True, but games like Assassin’s Creed, Minecraft, and Roblox have a lot to teach. – NPR