Any system simple enough to be understandable will not be compli- cated enough to behave intelligently, while any system complicated enough to behave intelligently will be too complicated to understand.

Possible Minds / John Brockman | George Dyson: The Third Law

DNA replication is imperfect, and we have plenty of spellcheckers in our cells. But mutations arise, mostly single changes, occasionally chunkier sections of DNA. Withouit them, no evolution would occur, for there would be no variation on which selection could act. From an evolutionary point of view, perfection is boring and impractical, and infidelity is essential, at least when it comes to the code. The process of DNA replication has to be imperfect. You have acquired through nothing other than chance at least 100 mutations that are unique to you. If you have children, you may well pass them on to your children, and they will acquire plenty of their own. As long as humans keep having sex and that sex results in more humans, then we are evolving. We can avoid these evolutionary changes no more easily than we can change the weather.

A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived / Adam Rutherford

Are you really just a pile of genes?

Technically, yes. But embedded within your genome, there are many potential versions of you. The person you see in the mirror is just one of them, fished out by the unique things you've been exposed to since conception. The new science of epigenetics is the study of how chemical changes made to DNA, or proteins that interact with DNA, can affect gene activity. DNA can be modified by environmental factors in ways that can profoundly affect development and behavior. Recently, it's also been shown that the microbes in your body - aka your microbiome - can be a significant environmental factor that affects myriad behaviors, from overeating to depression. In sum, we are our genes - but our genes cannot be evaluated outside the context of our environment. Genes are the piano keys, but the environment plays the song.

Bill Sullivan / National Geographic 09.2019

The terror of sickness and old age is not merely the terror of the losses one is forced to endure but also the terror of the isolation. As people become aware of the finitude of their life, they do not ask for much. They do not seek more riches. They do not seek more power. They ask only to be permitted, insofar as possible, to keep shaping the story of their life in the world - to make choices and sustain connections to others according to their own priorities.

Being Mortal / Atul Gawande

      If we shift as we age toward appreciating everyday pleasures and relationships rather than toward achieving, having, and getting, and if we find this more fulfilling, then why do we take so long to do it? Why do we wait until we're old? The common view was that these lessons are hard to learn. Living is a kind of skill. The calm and wisdom of old age are achieved over time.
      [...]What if the change in needs and desires has nothing to do with age per se? Suppose it merely has to do with perspective - your personal sense of how finite your time in this world is.

Being Mortal / Atul Gawande

Corporations like Google, Facebook, Amazon, all of these large companies, are making tens or hundreds of billions of dollars off of monetising people's data. I've been telling companies and governments for years that data is probably your most valuable asset. Individuals should be able to monetise their data - that's their own human value - not to be exploited

Brittany Kaiser / The Guardian

Chaos is a ladder. Many who try to climb it fail and never get to try again. The fall breaks them. And some are given a chance to climb, but they refuse. They cling to the realm or the Gods or love. Illusions. Only the ladder is real. The climb is all there is.

Game of Thrones S3E6 / Littlefinger

Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.

Fisrt Law of Technology / Melvin Kranzberg

Three Useless Phrases

Visitors to Iceland in the 1990s reported that the official tourist guide handed out at Reykjavik airport had, like all other such guides, a 'useful phrases' section. Unlike them, I was told, the Icelandic guide also had a 'useless phrases' section. Apparently it contained three phrases, which were, in English: 'Where is the railway station?', 'It's a nice day today', and 'Is there anything cheaper?'

23 Things They Don't Tell You about Capitalism / Ha-Joon Chang

Utopia is on the horizon. I move two steps closer;
it moves two steps further away. I walk another ten
steps and the horizon runs ten steps further away.
As much as I may walk, I'll never reach it. So
what's the point of utopia? The point is this: to
keep walking.

Eduardo Galeano / Rutger Bregman 'Utopia for Realists'

      How does a zipper work? Rate your understanding on a scale from 0 (no clue) to 10 (easy-peasy). Write the number down. Now sketch out on a piece of paper how a zipper actually works. Add a brief description, as though you were trying to explain it very precisely to someone who'd never seen a zipper before. Give yourself a couple of minutes. Finished? Now reassess your understanding of zippers on the same scale.

     Leonid Rozenblit and Frank Keil, researchers at Yale University, confronted hundreds of people with equally simple questions. How does a toilet work? How does a battery work? The results were always the same: we think we understand these things reasonably well until we're forced to explain them. Only then do we appreciate how many gaps there are in our knowledge. You're probably similar. You were convinced you understood more than you actually did. That's the knowledge illusion.
[...]
     In sum: think independently, don't be too faithful to the party line, and above all give dogmas a wide berth. The quicker you understand that you don't understand the world, the better you'll understand the world

The Art of the Good Life / Rolf Dobelli

On Optimal Human Diet

     What we can do is implement some principles that get us close to the optimal human diet. We can begin with the key observation that humans in the wild would have eaten small amounts of as many different foods as they could harvest, collect, pluck, dig out, net, scavenge, hunt, steal and sometimes store. Further, despite the Tarzan fantasies of some - particularly the paleo diet enthusiasts and the meat industry - most of the energy among both present-day gatherer-hunters and our ancestors is and was derived from plant foods, not animal foods.
     How does that translate into action in the present day? Well, like this:

• walk the aisles of your farmers' market, grocery store or supermarket and choose a wide variety of fresh plant foods - vegetables, fruit, grains, nuts, legumes and seeds;
• don't think of a meal as 'meat and three vegetables', at least not every day;
• rather think of our ancestors having a little of this and a little of that - and sometimes going without altogether;
• think of the rich variety of a stir-fry or an adventurous vegetable stew;
• don't overcook;
• don't use lots of added fat;
• use herbs and spices for flavour and because they add important micronutrients and phytochemicals;
• eat slowly with awareness, don't wolf down food, learn or relearn the feeling of being full;
• at least once a week, try new foods - a bean or another legume you have not previously eaten, a grain you have not tried;
• consult cookbooks, friends, experts and the internet (our substitute for the shaman and the wise woman who had all the tribe's knowledge of plants and foods) about how to prepare these new dishes or foods or new variants on old recipes by using, say, chickpeas, quinoa or spelt.

     Super Foods and Magic Foods: there aren't any.

Thought for Food. Why What We Eat Matters / John D. Potter