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reading
this is a list of articles i have read online. i read using the instapaper app so that i can track my highlights, which can be seen below each article header. the list updates once per day and has been tracking since october of 2021.
Society Needs A Doctor’s Prescription For Nature | NOEMA
read on March 10, 2026 at 01:04PM
1 highlights
- Closeness to the natural world can also help address yawning inequalities that exist among us. Having just 10 more decent-sized trees on a city block, on average, correlated to a 1% increase in how healthy residents reported they felt — a boost equivalent to making them about $10,000 wealthier or seven years younger, noted researchers in 2015. Add, on average, a single extra tree on top of this and participants actually were healthier than those with fewer trees — with a small average drop in a cluster of conditions including stroke, diabetes, hypertension and heart disease.
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I tried a Claude Code alternative that's local, open source, and completely free - how it works
read on February 24, 2026 at 01:35PM
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A lot of population numbers are fake
read on February 13, 2026 at 08:18AM
2 highlights
- Papua New Guinea, with about 0.1 percent of the world’s population, hosts more than 10 percent of the world’s languages.
- Late in 2022, word leaked of a report that the UN had commissioned. The report found that PNG’s population was not 9.4 million people, as the government maintained, but closer to 17 million people—roughly double the official number.
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Why Keeping Score Isn’t Fun Anymore
read on January 14, 2026 at 09:25AM
2 highlights
- Nguyen, whose day job is as a philosophy professor at the University of Utah, contrasts the delightful thrill of playing games like basketball, The Legend of Zelda and Dungeons & Dragons with the demoralizing pursuit of university rankings, page views and social media likes: “Why is it that mechanical scoring systems are, in games, the site of so much joy and fluidity and play? And why, in the realm of public measures and institutional metrics, do they drain the life out of everything?”
- “All of my hobbies involve basically micro-dosing epiphanies,” Nguyen said at one point.
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Viscerality - by Simon Sarris - The Map is Mostly Water
read on January 13, 2026 at 09:14AM
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Make Something Heavy
read on January 13, 2026 at 09:13AM
3 highlights
- The modern makers’ machine does not want you to create heavy things. It runs on the internet—powered by social media, fueled by mass appeal, and addicted to speed. It thrives on spikes, scrolls, and screenshots. It resists weight and avoids friction. It does not care for patience, deliberation, or anything but production.
- Creation isn’t just about output. It’s a process of becoming. The best work shapes the maker as much as the audience. A founder builds a startup to prove they can. A writer wrestles an idea into clarity. You don’t just create heavy things. You become someone who can.
- Light mode is fast and iterative, producing work that’s quick to make but just as quick to fade. It’s the mode of rapid experiments, side quests, and prolific posting. Heavy mode is slower, deliberate, and intentional (often hermit mode). It’s the mode of deep work that builds over time and carries lasting weight.
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