Hello again lovely email friends. It’d be all too easy for an email like this to draw upon the many troubling news stories in the mainstream media right now. As I started to assemble some links for this week, an undertone was noticable. So I’ve been particularly alert to stories of good outcomes emerging from bad situations—light from darkness—and they’re mixed in below. Hope you have a good week.
👂 How to Fail: Martine Wright is a survivor of the 7/7 London terrorist bombings. She was travelling on the tube when a suicide bomber sitting three feet away from her set off an explosion that would change her life forever. She lost both legs and was in a coma for ten days, after which she underwent a year of intensive rehab and multiple surgeries. Astonishingly, Martine went on to become a sitting volleyball player and represented Great Britain’s women’s team at the 2012 Paralympics in London. This is her extraordinary story.
😱 What to Do When Your Mind (Always) Dwells on the Worst-Case Scenario: Catastrophising is a common reaction to uncertain situations where we tend to overestimate the likelihood or consequences of our worst fears. To overcome it, avoid dwelling in your past or present. Try to stay right where you are
🛏 The Love Story of John and Yoko, 50 Years Later: It was a love story for the ages, except one of its participants somehow became a global super villain.
🛣 Autogrill Architecture: All this not travelling business has me lusting after travel in the most peculiar ways, so this study of Italian motorway service stations affected me more profoundly than I was expecting. The golden age of motoring is firmly behind us, which is mostly for the good, but I shan’t be dissuaded that a modernist restaurant standing over a motorway is a splendid thing.
🔌 The lost history of the electric car – and what it tells us about the future of transport: To every age dogged with pollution, accidents and congestion, the transport solution for the next generation seems obvious – but the same problems keep coming back.
🛒 Small vehicles of Tokyo: A slim cataloguing of the rich diversity of small vehicles that help shape street life in the world’s largest city.
🧠 Interoception: the hidden sense that shapes wellbeing: There’s growing evidence that signals sent from our internal organs to the brain play a major role in regulating emotions and fending off anxiety and depression [thanks, JL!].
🌍 When Denmark Criminalised Kindness: A fascinating account of offering assistance to Syrian refugees, and then feeling the retaliation of an otherwise moderate state.
🎈 Bring back hydrogen lifting gas: The Hindenburg disaster destroyed hydrogen’s reputation. But even before, there were special interests lining up against hydrogen: the helium lobby. In a demonstration before Congress in 1922, a Bureau representative set fire to two party balloons—one filled with helium, the other hydrogen. The helium balloon gently deflated, but the hydrogen balloon exploded. Members of Congress were startled. How could they ask airmen to fly on airships filled with such an evidently unsafe lifting gas?
💻 He predicted the dark side of the Internet 30 years ago. Why did no one listen?: Philip Agre, a computer scientist turned humanities professor, was prescient about many of the ways technology would impact the world.
🍿 Nestflix: Just in case you haven’t seen it yet, this is a collection of fictional movies and TV shows nested within movies and TV shows.