Mississippi towboats, ant memories, and the Decadent Society.
Super interesting article about emergent ant behavior and superorganism memory. (Ants are fascinating, it’s fun comparing ant colonies to our own brains.)
(Also: Radiolab’s episode about emergence is one of my favorites!)
“The Triumphs and Tribulations of Towboats on the Mississippi River”, Atlas Obscura, Oct. 2019.
Wild article about some insanely badass people hauling barges on the Mississippi.
Review of Ross Douthat’s “The Decadent Society: How we became the Victims of our own Success”, outlining “four aspects of decadence: stagnation (technological and economic mediocrity), sterility (declining birth rates), sclerosis (institutional failure), and repetition (cultural exhaustion).”