Further Reading
A time to fast. Why the laws of physics are inevitable. Emotion semantics show both cultural variation and universal structure. Scale-free networks well done. What’s next for social priming? Roberto Saviano. Liu Cixin. Prehistoric art. Best of 2019. And more.
The Best Books of 2019
The best books I read this year in various categories, from best aesthetics and philosophy of art to best science fiction, best poetry and most disappointing.
Further Reading
Martin Scorsese on why Marvel movies aren’t cinema. Deep sleep. An interview with Nabokov. Who needs literature? The world in a song. Aesthetic judgment is autocorrelated. Insect decline. Religion and global psychological variation. AI. Generating new ideas. Moles. Dogs. Fairies. And more.
Further Reading
Cormac McCarthy’s tips on how to write a great scientific paper. Photos of mathematicians’ blackboards. Category Theory. Footnotes to Plato. Curation as creation. Language, AI and the brain. Natural Selection. An octopus changing colour while sleeping. The tragedy of Kashmir. And more.
Exploding Head Syndrome
For as long as I can remember I've heard a loud noise just before falling asleep, not every night, but every few days. The noise is typically accompanied by a dream image.
Further Reading
Bloomberg special issue on the periodic table and the elements. Machine behaviour. A day in the life of a tree. Excerpt from The Understory. The insect apocalypse is driven by a 50x increase in toxic pesticides. If Sapiens were a blog post. J.M Coetzee on Australia’s shame. Mosquitoes. And more.