I've been a little sporadic with these posts this year. Maybe next year I can be more consistent...or maybe not.

Reading

Blood and Soil in Narendra Modi's India

I was aware of Modi's political history, but not quite to the extent that this article lays out. It's quite terrifying to me that this has become a somewhat normal political situation around the globe in recent years (I'm thinking of the mass imprisonment of Uighurs and other minorities in China, the extra-judicial killings that occur in the Philippines, and police brutality and state sponsored violence occurring in numerous countries at the moment, among other issues).

52 things I learned in 2019

I know Tom Whitwell through the Eurorack world for his work as the behind Music Thing Modular,but I've also grown to love his yearly round up of weird things he learnt in the previous year.

A few favourites:

The goal of walking 10,000 steps per day may have originated when a Japanese pedometer manufacturer noticed that the 万 symbol (which means 10,000) looks a little like someone walking. The actual health merits of that number ‘have never been validated by research.’

mobile phones became mainstream in the US in the early 1990s, the murder rate fell sharply. Street drug dealing became less popular, so gang-related turf wars were less common.

Drunk shopping could be a $45bn /year industry, and only 6% of people regret their drunk purchases.