Assorted Links & Commentary #2
Borgen, the world's greatest polyglot, Charles Mann, Outliers, and more
I'm David Gasca and this is Mystical Silicon, a weekly newsletter on mindfulness, how to make the world more alive, and anything else I find interesting.
Hello friends - In my last post I reflected on the one year milestone of this newsletter where I mentioned I was going to pause for a bit as I regrouped on some bigger ideas. While I still plan to do so, over the past two weeks I realized I really miss the practice of writing and sharing with you all.
So I’m back in a lighter form for now: here are some links with what I’m reading, watching and thinking about. If any of these spark thoughts or suggestions for me, please let me know!
1_ Borgen: I’ve been watching this show after a few friends recommended it. It’s a Danish drama on Netflix about a woman that becomes Prime Minister and learns how to be a master politician. I am half-way through Season 3 and plan to write more about it once I finish. I think it’s fantastic… (Sidenote: I watch it dubbed since it helps me not have to pay 100% attention. Also be sure to start with Season 1 since Netflix is promoting Season 4.)
2_ Podcast with one of the world’s greatest polyglots - Tyler Cowen interviews Vaughn Smith and it’s a real treat of a podcast. Vaughn speaks ~36 languages to some degree. It’s truly amazing. Vaughn is half-Mexican and spends time each year in Veracruz so he is fluent in Nahuatl, in addition to Russian, Slovak, etc., etc. Tyler is clearly having a lot of fun which makes it a great listen.
3_ 90” of Charles Mann - Dwarkesh Patel interviews Charles Mann, one of my favorite authors, as they discuss a very wide range of historical counterfactuals and occurrences (he’s the author of: 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, The Wizard and The Prophet). If you are familiar with the books, you’ll love the podcast. If you are less familiar with the books, this might be an interesting introduction!
4_Malcolm Gladwell follows up on Outliers: Chances are you’ve read the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. 14 years after publishing that book, Malcolm explores the impact of his book and in particular the chapter about how people born in certain months end up having more advantages later in life. Gladwell makes great podcasts and it’s interesting to reflect on what privileges people are and aren’t prepared to recognize… worth a listen.
5_ Photograph of Mulberry Street, NY in 1900. I happened upon this picture while learning that jaywalking wasn’t always a thing (it didn’t become a term until cars needed to keep people out of the streets to not kill them). I keep looking at this picture and finding new amazing parts of it. As I write these words in my suburban home in 2022, I can’t help but stare in awe at how different these people’s lives were... Each person here interacted with more people in an hour than I probably will see all month… (This is a living system!)
6_ Volunteering in America: Not unrelated to Mulberry Street, I’m thinking a lot more about the importance of volunteering – how volunteering impacts our communities, our social cohesion and how it’s been hurt by the pandemic (e.g., lockdowns, social distancing). The replies to this tweet suggest I read “Bowling Alone” which made the case this was already a worrying trend in the 1990s… I want to dig into this more…
7_ Midjourney: I’m still enthralled by Midjourney (one of the new generation of text to image AI models). I play with it on Discord and it’s just so much fun. Here is an Elvis Raccoon I “made”. It’s free to try so the main barrier is learning Discord; here is the link to join and poke around.
8_ Drinking “Hoppy Water”: It’s been almost a year of not drinking alcohol (I wrote a post on this here). I’ve mostly been drinking water, kombucha and sparkling water but a friend put me onto non-alcoholic IPAs and they are great:
And that’s it for this week! I hope you have a wonderful weekend and if you’re also thinking about any of the topics above, let me know :)
Delightful, informative and generous!
Thank you for sharing your sophisticated mind!