Angkorwatification Applied to a blog, angkorwatification is a sort of textual equivalent of rewilding. You have a base layer of traditional blog posts that is essentially complete in the sense of having created, over time, an idea space with a clear identity, and a more or less deliberately conceived architecture to it. And you have a secondary organic growth layer that is patiently but relentlessly rewilding the first, inorganic one. That second layer also emerges from the mind of the blogger of course, but does so via surrender to brain entropy rather than via writerly intentions disciplining the flow of words. Venkatesh Rao, Ribbonfarm www.ribbonfarm.com writingentropydecay
Reality is Very Weird and You Need to be Prepared for That An Essay slimemoldtimemold.com We might be closer than we think to cures for depression, hypertension, and yes, even obesity. The answer to scurvy was just one thing, plus a few wrinkles — mostly “not all citrus has the antiscorbutic property” and “most animals can’t get scurvy”. This was only difficult because people weren’t prepared to deal with basic wrinkles, but we can do better by learning from their mistakes. This means don’t give up easily. It suggests that there is lots of low-hanging fruit, because even simple explanations are easily missed. Lots of theories have been tried, and lots of them have been given up because of something that looks like contradictory evidence. But the evidence might not actually be a contradiction — the real explanation might just be slightly more complicated than people realized. Go back and revisit scientific near-misses, maybe there’s a wrinkle they didn’t know how to iron out. Scott and Scurvy sciencerealityhealth