Thursdays are all about longform links on Abnormal Returns. You can check out last week’s linkfest including a look at how loneliness changes the brain.
Quote of the Day
"Chatbots that we easily confuse with humans are not just cute or unnerving. They sit on a bright line. Obscuring that line and blurring — bullshitting — what’s human and what’s not has the power to unravel society."
(Elizabeth Weil)
Books
- A Q&A with Emily Hund author of "The Influencer Industry: The Quest for Authenticity on Social Media." (vox.com)
- An excerpt from “The People’s Tongue: Americans and the English Language” by Ilan Stavans. (wsj.com)
- A Q&A with Emre Soyer, co-author of "The Myth of Experience: Why We Learn the Wrong Lessons and Ways to Correct Them." (davidepstein.substack.com)
Behavior
- Smartphones are to blame for the rise in unhappiness, until further notice. (noahpinion.substack.com)
- Why we should kick Myers-Briggs to the curb. (adamgrant.substack.com)
- If plants are smarter than we think, what does that say about human cognition? (nautil.us)
Health
- How EVT is revolutionizing stroke treatments. (nytimes.com)
- Why measuring the effects of masking is so complicated. (arstechnica.com)
Longreads
- On the challenges of managing a (public) partnership. (neckar.substack.com)
- Why the lowly browser is the future of computing. (notboring.co)
- How Bring a Trailer transformed from a blog into a thriving business. (wsj.com)
- How parking lots shape our cities. (scopeofwork.net)
- Induction stoves are the future, but don't tell Americans they can't have something. (bloomberg.com)
- It's hard to come up with another sport undergoing as many rule changes than MLB in 2023. (esquire.com)
- Cheating is now rampant on college campuses. (thefp.com)
