Six Ideas That Made Us Think

1. The Golden Hour for Introverts

No one describes the bright side to quarantine better than Andrew Ferguson in this ode to social isolation:

It has relieved considerable pressure on the introvert community. The world has caught up with us at last…When newscasters tell Americans that we are entering a “strange new way of life,” a “new normal,” or moving into “unfamiliar territory,” I know they’re not talking to me. I and millions like me have been trying to self-isolate for years. We are the hopeful practitioners of antisocial distancing.

2. From Corona, Innovation

Don’t continuously update forecasts with new information, argues Morgan Housel. Instead, “focus on the few things we know with high confidence,” such as “necessity is the mother of invention,” and “worry will exceed actual harm.” From this vantage point, Housel becomes an unqualified optimist:

The Great Depression brought unimaginable financial pain. It also brought us supermarkets, microwaves, sunscreen, jets, rockets, electron microscopes, magnetic recording, nylon, photocopying, teflon, helicopters, color TV, plexiglass, commercial aviation, most forms of plastic, synthetic rubber, laundromats, and countless other discoveries…World War II began with troops on horseback. It ended by splitting an atom in half…Life-or-death urgency sparks rapid refinement and deployment, in some cases generating the kind of technology advancement you might expect to occur in a generation into literally a few months. The most important innovations are born from panic-induced necessity more than cozy visions.

3. Minecraft as Statecraft

Minecraft, the wildly popular nerd-game of building endless imaginary structures with online blocks, has emerged as a hero of free speech. Working with hundreds of players and developers around the world, Minecraft has built a massive “uncensored” library where anyone can retrieve writing that has been blocked by governments. Fast Company reports:

The library, built in a classical, formal design that’s intended to evoke and subvert the repression of governments that censor information, includes articles from Mada Masr, an Egyptian news site that reports on corruption and has been blocked since 2017 in Egypt, a country where most media is controlled in some way by the state. It also includes stories from grani.ru, a blocked Russian site that reports on protests and activism at a time when Russia is aiming for systematic mass surveillance. 

4. Breathing Easier

Are there any upsides to the coronavirus? G-Feed, a blog that analyzes food, environment, and society, takes a close look at the impact of reduced economic activity, and it finds some positive signs:

Given the huge amount of evidence that breathing dirty air contributes heavily to premature mortality, a natural – if admittedly strange – question is whether the lives saved from this reduction in pollution caused by economic disruption from COVID-19 exceeds the death toll from the virus itself. Even under very conservative assumptions, I think the answer is a clear "yes".

One expat in China offers a similar observation: “The shutdown of a great deal of industry has brought many blue skies. The warming weather is a reminder that Beijing is a splendidly beautiful city in the spring and fall.”

5. Golf: More Revealing than Work

John Steinbreder has written a remarkable tribute to his former golf partner, Jack Welch:

For many years, Jack and I belonged to the same Connecticut club, and we played dozens of rounds together. He fervently believed that golf was better when there was money on the line and in a fair amount of banter before, after, and sometimes even during shots. The better he got to know you, the more ways he found to throw you off your game. But he took as good as he got and actually liked being razzed on the course, largely because no one at work ever gave him that kind of grief. 

6. The World Is Getting Better

With perfect timing, veteran Wikipedia contributor R. Gwern has put together a long post on the many ways that the world has gotten better since the 1990s. His argument about desks is irrefutable:

When I think back, so many hassles have simply disappeared from my life, and nice new things appeared. I remember my desk used to be crowded with things like dictionaries and pencil sharpeners, but between smartphones & computers, most of my desk space is now dedicated to cats. 

His entire list of both social and technological improvements should not be missed.

Websites Worth Reading

Writing Cooperative: Literary icons working from home

Architectural Digest: Enviable home offices

Famous Workspaces: Where MLK, The Boss, Tolstoy and others worked

Feeds We Follow

@DanWang: A view from Beijing, after the worst of it

@balajis: All things corona; good links

@interest_mild: “My potato has an eye like a real eye,” and other photos