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I was struck by this excerpt from the most recent edition of Range Widely by David Epstein. Here he is interviewing Brad Stulberg, author of the book The Practice of Groundedness:

DE: Ah. Fair enough. Seems like good advice. And on the advice note, you’ve actually reminded me of an unrelated piece of advice you espoused that I took to heart: to get involved with some real live Homo sapiens in my community. I acted on that one by joining the board of a phenomenal early childhood education center focused on poor families in my area. I’ve definitely found it challenging; it has led me to do some event logistics — not my strong suit. But I’ve also found it uniquely rewarding, often even more so than volunteering I’ve done with much more prominent national nonprofits. Please explain.

BS: I’m so glad you said this! Here’s the deal: at the risk of sounding woo-woo (though decades of psychology research and clinical practice support this) we are looking for love in all the wrong places. When we are intimately involved with other human beings in the real world, working on meaningful projects, having meaningful conversations, and striving toward meaningful goals, we don’t feel the need to go on the internet to look for status, validation, and love there.

I’ve been reading Bowling Alone which in many ways anticipates these themes. As a society, we have retreated from in person, coordinated action, towards activities that can be done individually and in aggregate, we’ve gotten less happy.

I wonder if we should be thinking about in person participation the same way we think about exercise — something that’s required for us to have healthy and fulfilling lives?

Queen Elizabeth has reigned for an incredible 30% of US history. That is from Matt Glassman.

This is chart via Max Roser. You can argue that decarbonization isn’t happening fast enough, but it’s definitely happening.

Via Ethan Mollick, who is an excellent twitter follow,

It is our tendency to fixate on the 1st solution we come up with, preventing us from finding better ones

I’ve definitely felt the pull that comes from my first idea on how to solve a problem and how difficult it is to set it aside. Sadly the abstract doesn’t give any strategies for neutralizing the effect.

is closer in time than you think it is. From Scientific American:

In 2004 mathematical modeling and computer simulations by a group of statisticians led by Douglas Rohde, then at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, indicated that our most recent common ancestor probably lived no earlier than 1400 B.C. and possibly as recently as A.D. 55. In the time of Egypt’s Queen Nefertiti, someone from whom we are all descended was likely alive somewhere in the world.

The mechanism here, which is intuitive as soon as you understand it is that the number of branches in your family tree grows exponentially as it goes backwards. But that’s not all:

“Branches of your family tree don’t consistently diverge,” Rutherford says. Instead “they begin to loop back into each other.” As a result, many of your ancestors occupy multiple slots in your family tree. For example, “your great-great-great-great-great-grandmother might have also been your great-great-great-great-aunt,” he explains.

Some other surprising estimates from this article:

• It is estimated that everyone alive today in South America has at least some European ancestry

• It is estimated that “nearly everyone of Jewish ancestry has ancestors who were expelled from Spain beginning in 1492”

Via Max Roser