On this day, August 31
Interesting stuff that happened on this day, between 1941 and 2023.
(to know what this is, who does it and why, read the last paragraph)
1941
1997
2006
2008
2009
2010
2011
2014
2016
2017
- House flippers triggered the US housing market crash, not poor subprime borrowers, a new study shows
- Predictably, Salon publishes a new Dawkins hit piece, and it’s as dreadful as you’d expect - Why Evolution Is True
- The Last Stimulus
2018
- Brands are paying influencers $75K+ to trash their competitors
- Free Speech Is Not the Same As Free Reach
- Is Blue Light Really What’s Keeping You Awake?
- Solar panel tech: robots, floating power plants, and 2-sided panels are coming
- Ten years after the financial crash, the timid left should be full of regrets
- The Magical Thinking of Ecomodernism - Jason Hickel
- The moral egregiousness of poverty is worse than ever before in history - Jason Hickel
- ALREADY in 2018!!! Why tourism is killing Barcelona: a photo essay
- Women’s Pockets are Inferior
- materialflows.net
2019
- ==> Address, or you will not be addressed
- Amazon’s Next-Day Delivery System Has Brought Chaos And Carnage To America’s Streets
- Don’t lower the voting age, says this neurosurgeon
- The Empty Radicalism of the Climate Apocalypse
- The Insanity of Previous Investment
- The Problem With Believing What We’re Told
2020
- ==> Hooray for nuclear batteries…
- How an “Act of God” Pandemic is Destroying the West
- I Was a Useful Idiot for Capitalism
- Note-taking by hand: A powerful tool to support memory
- Poor Predictors: Job Interviews Are Useless and Unfair
- The Hardware Lottery
- To criticise Deep Adaptation, start here
2021
- Amazon’s Fastest, Freest Shipping Plan: Department Stores?
- Sitting Ducks: Are Aircraft Carriers Too Easy To Sink?
- ==> The madness of strategic desk ornaments
- We need a personal digital advocate
- What’s going on with the “Great Resignation” ?
2022
- 4 Billion People by 2100:World’s Population Could Be Cut in Half by the End of the Century
- Bitcoin Miners Could Save the Texas Grid - or Sink It
- How fateful?
- When worlds collide: The cyberpsychology of our online lives
2023
- Cognitive Warfare and the Governance of Subversion in the 21st Century
- Did our ancestors nearly die out?
- How Hinge’s Algorithm Picks Your Dates
- How to boil water?
- If we deleted 90% of the data…
- Introverts and Thru-Hiking: A Loner’s Guide to the Appalachian Trail
- Mastodon is Rewinding the Clock on Social Media, in a Good Way
- Merchant: What Stephen King gets wrong about the Luddites and AI
- Population collapse almost wiped out human ancestors, say scientists
- Rooftop renewables risk making the rich richer, as latecomers will struggle to access the grid
- Some Tech Workers Who Moved to Austin Are Having Regrets
- Sowing Seeds of Security: How Basic Income Is Taking Root in the U.S. through Local Pilots and Programs
- The Protecting Kids On Social Media Act Is A Terrible Alternative To KOSA
What’s this, and who does it?
I am Marco, tech writer and aspiring polymath, researcher and popularizer of “Digital-Human Studies in many ways, including my newsletter.
Over the years, I have bookmarked thousands of articles and news of all sorts related to those studies, or to my personal interests. This post is a selection of the bookmarks that were published on this day, in several years (1).
I share them as a public service, because memory of what happened and serendipity MATTER. A lot. We are all too distracted and stressed by stuff that has no other merit than being “new”, or limited to our work, instead of being important (if you find broken links, please let me know).
You may follow this Almanac and my work via Mastodon, BlueSky, LinkedIn or X/Twitter, not to mention RSS, which remains the most efficient, less distracting, more private and more future-proof way to follow news online. If you don’t know why, read here. Last but not least, thanks for supporting my work in any way you can.
- This is in the spirit of the “Almanac of the next day”, an italian TV program aired from 1974 to 1994 that presented the most important historical facts happened on each day. This is a snapshot of its opening titles:
Who writes this, why, and how to help
I am Marco Fioretti, tech writer and aspiring polymath doing human-digital research and popularization.
I do it because YOUR civil rights and the quality of YOUR life depend every year more on how software is used AROUND you.
To this end, I have already shared more than a million words on this blog, without any paywall or user tracking, and am sharing the next million through a newsletter, also without any paywall.
The more direct support I get, the more I can continue to inform for free parents, teachers, decision makers, and everybody else who should know more stuff like this. You can support me with paid subscriptions to my newsletter, donations via PayPal (mfioretti@nexaima.net) or LiberaPay, or in any of the other ways listed here.THANKS for your support!