My weekly collection of the provocative, intriguing, or curious, in a world where the house is falling down. The contextual, the cultural, and other things that catch my eye.

Image from #thegreatindoors, by the Young Studio.

I detect a desire to read pieces about the pandemic that are more reflective–or more helpful. Here’s a selection.

Virus as ‘Great Disruptor’. It is the pin that has burst the ‘everything bubble’ says French blogger Paul Arbair, in an extended post.

Are we ‘us’ or ‘I’? In crises, it matters if we go into ‘fight or flight’, or ‘tend and befriend’

Visualising the history of pandemics. The perspective slightly skews the data, but the Black Death was truly terrifying.

Perfect timing. The Scouts have just produced a guide to indoor activities. The guide itself is here. Not sure about the catapults.

The best book to read in quarantine. A short post, and maybe a little tongue in cheek.

Among the rest of my feed.

Turns out that investing in poorer communities isn’t risky. That’s another Wall Street prejudice shot to hell. But local knowledge matters. Slightly technical.

We need to understand ‘AI’ as a belief system. It tries to obliterate the role that humans play in such ‘intelligent’ systems. Long but worthwhile essay by Jaron Lanier and Glen Weyl.

“The whole world’s at sixes and sevens, and why the house hasn’t fallen down about our ears long ago is a miracle to me.” (Thornton Wilder)