The Monday Mix (17/10/2022)
Hi friends,
I forgot to send this email out yesterday as I got carried away playing Catan and then watching the penultimate episode of the new Lord of The Rings series. Apologies. As the email is a day late, I’ll get straight into what I want to share with you this week.
Spain’s Magnificent Medieval Waterways
Fascinating article about how the Moors developed a water system more than one thousand years ago that still provides water to the Sierra Nevada, the driest region in Spain, to this day. What this article shows is that as advanced as we think we are, civilisations much older than ours were just as clever in their own way. For these waterways still to be working is a testament to their engineering skill and intelligence. With climate change looming, there are plenty of lessons we can learn here for irrigation that will serve us well in the years ahead.
The Honduran Maradona
This is another insane article from The Guardian Long Read detailing how a prank edit on a Wikipedia article, may or may not have had unintended consequences for a footballer’s future. Reading this article, even if you’re not a football fan, is riveting to the surreal nature of what happened and the lengths the reporter went to get to an interview with the main subject of the article. Sometimes fact is stranger than fiction!
The Tyranny of Time
Thought-provoking article on how time, although useful socially, can be restrictive and oppressive. Think about work. If you’re even a few seconds late, you’re likely to be scolded by your boss, asked to explain why you’re late and reprimanded. The funny thing is, for most of humanity’s existence, we haven’t been able to accurately define time as we can today. Time was a less fixed construct and was based on the sun’s position in the sky. Now, we are ruled by the two hands of the clock that sits on the wall, constantly ticking without end. Is this good? Is it bad? This is what this article discusses and more.
Book I’m reading - The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow
Still making my way through this book. It’s nearly 500 pages long, so it’s taking a while to get through. It’s a fascinating book that really opens your mind to what life for our distant ancestors might have been like. Far from being the primitive life we imagine, Graeber and Wengrow show it might have been more interesting and fulfilling than we might imagine.
Quote I’m pondering: – “Sooner or later in life everyone discovers that perfect happiness is unrealizable, but there are few who stop to consider the antithesis; that perfect unhappiness is equally unattainable.” - Primo Levi
That’s all for this week.
Until next time,
Tom