“I've always rejected being understood. To be understood is to prostitute oneself. I prefer to be taken seriously for what I'm not, remaining humanly unknown, with naturalness and all due respect” ― Fernando Pessoa
Princeton Scientists Develop Passive Mechanism To Cool Buildings in the Summer and Warm Them in the Winter SciTech Daily
The Greatest Social Media Site Is Craigslist (Yes, Craigslist) Slate
Helen Dale on personality and politics
Why You Have To Walk So Much Inside New Airport Terminals View from the Wing
Hayek, the Accidental Freudian Corey Robin, The New Yorker. Well worth a read
An American scientist says the perfect cup of tea involves salt and lemon NB
The Case for Bad Coffee Serious Eats
Marlene Engelhorn inherited millions from her family and decided to give much of it away (€25 million). She formed an independent council called Guter Rat für Rückverteilung (“good council for redistribution”) made up of 50 randomly selected Austrians chosen to reflect the makeup of Austria’s population, and they decided where to direct the money. Engelhorn’s mission statement is worth a read:
Democracy is about cultivating relationships: a society works on doing well. And a society is doing well when the people in that society are doing well. At the moment, this does not apply to everyone: wealth, assets and property are distributed unequally and unfairly. And so is the power in our society.
In Austria, the richest one percent of the population hoards up to 50 percent of the net wealth. This means that one hundredth of society owns just under half of the wealth. And 99 percent of people have to make do with the other half. Almost four million households struggle to get by every day. And the one percent? Most of them have simply inherited.
We are talking about dynasties that amass wealth and power over generations. They then withdraw from our society as if it were none of their business. I also come from such a dynasty. My wealth was accumulated before I was even born. It was accumulated because other people did the work, but my family was able to inherit the ownership of an enterprise and thus all claims to the fruits of its labour.
Wealth is never an individual achievement. Wealth is always created by society. A few people get rich because they buy other people’s time and profit from it. Because they have a patent on a product that others urgently need. Because they buy a piece of land that increases in value and because society builds infrastructure around it. In the process, they destroy the environment to harvest the resources.
Fascinating idea. (via ny times)
The End of Libraries as We Know Them? with Brewster Kahle and Kyle Courtney Why Is This Happening? The Chris Hayes Podcast– Could the future of libraries as we’ve known them be completely different? Our guests this week say so. Megapublishers are suing the Internet Archive, perhaps best known for its Wayback Machine, to redefine e-books as legally different from paper books.
A difference in how they are classified would mean sweeping changes for the way libraries operate. Brewster Kahle is a digital librarian at the Internet Archive.
Kyle Courtney is a lawyer, librarian, director of copyright and information policy for Harvard Library. He’s the co-founder of Library Futures, which aims to empower the digital future for America’s libraries.
They join to discuss what’s animating the lawsuit, information as a public good and the consequences should the publishers ultimately prevail.