Category Archives: Links

• I have been spending time on crosswords and the Spelling Bee on NYT.
  I was reading The Puzzler (which I really enjoyed but it opened with crosswords, which sent me down a rabbit hole, ending with my subscribing to NYT Games).





• As might be apparent from a previous post, I am the sort who would enjoy a video titled 15 reasons why I still buy CDs.





• I stumbled upon this vast and deeply lived resource on thinking called Less Wrong.
  
  
  It is amazing and I don’t know how I’ve never seen it before. It is “an online forum and community dedicated to improving human reasoning and decision-making. We seek to hold true beliefs and to be effective at accomplishing our goals. Each day, we aim to be less wrong about the world than the day before.”





• This article that mentioned that employees who are motivated to be kind and helpful tend to have higher well-being at work piqued my interest.
  
  Workplaces are generally competitive place; an abstract idea of teamwork is generally acceptable as a positive trait in a year-end appraisal, but kindness, helpfulness and compassion are not. I don’t know whether such traits / behaviour make a difference to your renumeration, but I fall on the side of believing in the benefits of being helpful because the time spent at work is long, and even if you are incompetent, I hope you are not unhappily incompetent.





• This is a really good video showing a slice of life in Singapore: Where Have Singapore’s Karung Gunis Gone?

  
  Karung gunis are in essence scrap dealers. They used to be prominent in society, roving round blocks, soliciting your trash. But the worldwide reduction in demand for the scrap they collect means lower earnings, and there seem to be fewer of them around these days. If you are interested in this topic, you can read Junkyard Planet by Adam Minter.





• There is a tool for you to figure out the proper distance your TV ought to be placed at.

• 8world: Tuesday Report – Trails Across Time: Thomson
  This is a video made by Mediacorp Singapore and it traces the developments in the Thomson area from the 1930s onwards, where there were once villages and plantations. The green spaces and reservoirs we know of now were once places where people lived, cultivated food, washed their clothes… The video includes a segment where an old gentleman draws a map of his village (he could still remember where each household was!). There is also a rendering of how a village looks like; I can still drag up a fuzzy image of my grandmother’s kampung house but it is such a distant memory.





• Love, Happiness, and Time
  Is love/ happiness a thing/ a place? Or is it an event? This is worth a few minutes of your time.





• The Apple Watch Ultra finally convinced me to leave Garmin behind
  Quite an unexpected title, but I guess this “good enough” and being part of the Apple ecosystem explains why there are people who would take the Apple Watch over a Garmin (or any other real sports watch).





• What’s the Most Harmful Airport Book?
  What a good question, and what an interesting read. The #1 is a little unexpected, but the view expressed is quite valid. 🤔

• A little slice of Malaya in Spooner Road.
  I only knew of the area in 2021, when I was going for a run at the Green Corridor. After my runs, I walked around the old housing blocks, said hello to the many stray cats, and wondered why the road was so weird. This article details the road’s history, and the old maps are especially pleasing to look at.





• Being cheerful on the outside can help you – and others – feel it on the inside
  Cheerfulness is not happiness, not optimism, not hopefulness… It is a tool, a resource, a decision. And maybe with it, you can carry on better in this crazy world.





• Hospital-acquired pneumonia is killing patients. There’s a simple way to stop it.
  Apparently, the solution is brushing the patient’s teeth!





• How thinking hard makes the brain tired.
  In case anyone thinks you are malingering.

  “… cognitive work results in chemical changes in the brain, which present behaviourally as fatigue. This, therefore, is a signal to stop working in order to restore balance to the brain.”





• I was looking for badminton shoes, and this article reminds me how it seems like some shoe brands have a habit of discontinuing/ changing well-loved shoes, in order to drive sales. Sigh.





• I sometimes find gems on Twitter. So here’s a link to Mary Oliver’s Summer Day. For the record, I have no grand plans for my one wild and precious life. 😀

• Can You Actually Fix Your Tech By Smacking It?
  Years after I began admonishing my parents for hitting gadgets in an attempt to fix them, I learn about percussive maintenance.





• It is always nice to have labels.
  
  





• I love useless details. This article on Economist cites a survey and tells you things like how correcting typos takes up an average of 20 minutes in every white-collar worker’s day, which adds up to 180 days, over a 45-year career. Apparently, deleting emails takes up about six weeks of your life.





• A brief history and investigation into Wancher. I stopped buying fountain pens and inks in 2019 (my consumption frenzy renews itself every 10 years or so), and this sprawling, fascinating investigative piece was fun to read. We all do our own swaps on pen parts but mixing up parts, calling them limited edition and creating demand for them is a masterful move.





• I never knew about the federalist society. But the idea of religious groups infiltrating government and taking over thought leadership in politics/ culture/ society is not new. I am not looking forward to how bad things can become, if we continue on this insidious intolerance.

• What an honest leaving-do speech would sound like. I love this. Nobody is indispensable.





• Meno. Sometimes, it is good to remind yourself to read some Plato, just so you can give your brain a little jog. (“A man cannot enquire either about that which he knows, or about that which he does not know; for if he knows, he has no need to enquire; and if not, he cannot; for he does not know the very subject about which he is to enquire.”)





• The New Homophobia. Apparently, you can be not gay enough. The world is too complex, sometimes.





• I enjoy reading life lessons posts. There is always something to learn.





• This profile on Elisabeth Moss is quite a fascinating read, especially the bits about her being a Scientologist. Dark lady, indeed.





• I recently learnt that Japanese kombu tea is nothing like the popular kombucha. Kombu tea is salty, aye.





• I always don’t understand how we humans purport to know anything about the inner lives of cats, but apparently they kinda recognise their names?

• Map of the Middle Earth
  This is a useful reference when reading the books, especially for aging eyes. You can also choose to see paths taken by various parties.





• Why You Should Stop ‘Gamifying’ Your Health and Fitness
  The part about streaks resonated with me. I hate it when apps insist you do something every single day. I am fine with trying to do something 5 days a week, but the unnecessary weight of 7 days a week just makes things too tiresome. That is why the Streaks app is good – you can set goals that make sense to you, e.g. 4 times a week, 8 times a month. Unfortunately, my streak with Duolingo has started and ended too many times.





• Escher’s Rubik’s Cube.





• Apparently it is a thing for you to watch the Fantastic Beasts and wonder what its target audience is.





• I was wondering where the flu virus went, and some lineages may have become extinct.





• In true Singaporean fashion, here is why Singaporeans need to understand war rhetoric. I have been loading the websites of Reuters and Guardian excessively, and also watching Deustche Welle on Youtube. I cannot believe that a full-scale invasion was embarked upon, and I could not believe that we are supposed to let sanctions take care of matters, while we all watched and hoped for a internal uprising. It is 2022, and we cannot do better, no.

Links from the past week

• What the Forest Remembers, by Jennifer Egan
  A short fiction piece that bundles from the past to the present, and then into the future. The story moves along, and suddenly brings you elsewhere – I like the little surprise. An ode to the power of fiction.





• What Really Happens When Workers Are Given a Flexible Hybrid Schedule?
  Interesting to read about different experiences / preferences. Reams (observations? predictions?) were written but I had thought it was too early to generalise, and by now, the consensus is flexibility because there are just too many different preferences/ needs/ seasons in life to cater for. I believe that a policy which recommends (and not mandate) 2 days in the office makes sense for now. I don’t believe that a fully remote workplace does well where the work requires some form of apprenticeship but insisting on too much face-time seems wrong too. Maybe when management of the workplace is fully under the province of millennials will we truly create a different order.





• China’s Reform Generation Adapts to Life in the Middle Class
  Peter Hessler catches up with his former students. 20 years, and a few stories about those who had grown up in China’s countryside and entered teaching college in the 90s.





• The Economist touches on why Apple is in the media game:
  “None of the markets is a big prize for the world’s most valuable firm. The entire global recorded music industry had sales of $22bn in 2020, less than Apple made just from selling iPads. In about a month Apple generates as much revenue as Netflix makes in a year.
  
  Apple’s renewed interest in media is best explained by the transformation in the company’s scale, which radically changes the calculation of which side-projects are worthwhile. … In 2021 Apple tv+’s estimated content budget represented 0.6% of company revenues.
  
  … Streaming subscriptions may not lock people in as strongly as iTunes purchases did, but Apple’s various services still sink “meat hooks” into customers, making them spend more time with their devices and making it a bit more inconvenient to leave Apple’s ecosystem.”





• Here’s a very neat image showing the mean risk of infection in different mask-wearing combinations, where ‘inf’ or ‘i’ refers to what the infectious is wearing, and ‘sus’ or ‘s’ refers to what the counter-party/ susceptible person is wearing.
  
  
  
  The research article can be found here. The FFP2 masks this study mentions ought to be similar in standards to a N95 or KN95. (3M has a table comparing the various mask standards.)
  [h/t Derek Powazek]

• An economic history of restaurants
  “Nor were they destinations predominantly for the well-heeled. Before the use of coal became widespread in England in the 17th century, preparing food at home involved spending a lot on wood or peat. Professional kitchens, by contrast, benefited from economies of scale in energy consumption and so could provide meals at a lower cost than people could themselves. Today dining out is seen as an indulgence, but it was the cheapest way to eat for most of human history.”
  
  An interesting titbit (no, I don’t spell it as tidbit) and a reminder that things change and change.



• Singapore and its history of adjusting its clock is captured in this piece titled “Why is Singapore in the “Wrong” Time Zone?”
  
  I wondered about whether it would be better or worse if 7 pm were 7.30 pm instead. Does it matter to me/ my brain/ my body if I see more light than I see now when the clock says 7 pm? Don’t we just adapt?



• In the works for years, a suicide machine will soon be tested in Switzerland
  If you had asked me, when I was a young(er), more idealistic 20-year-old, whether assisted suicide will be legalised in 20 years, I may not have been able to imagine that this is still something to fight for.



• I’ve Accidentally Become A Strava Stalker
  Strava stalking is a thing.



• The Beatles: Get Back and the Arrogant, Tragic Genius of Paul McCartney’s Leadership
  Who knows what really went on, but I imagine that fame and fortune is a great distorter of reality. Is Paul the only one who comes out looking good? We sang along, and made playlists on Spotify.



• Because of Loh Kean Yew, Singapore is very interested in badminton these days. I have not been keeping track and so had to go find out more about the ranking system and the World Tour concept. I loved looking at the BWF statutes.