- “Breithaupt is alarmed at the apparent new virus of selective empathy and how it’s deepening divisions. If we embrace it, he says, then ‘basically you give up on civil society at that point. You give up on democracy. Because if you feed into this division more and you let it happen, it will become so strong that it becomes dangerous.'” → The End Of Empathy
- Each load of the the LOC Serendipity page provides a new random list of links to openly available books and other publications from the Library of Congress. Makes for a fun meander. ※ Even more fun, if you have a short attention span like mine, is the companion LOC Visual Media Serendipity site.
- “What are human murmurations, I wondered?” Another insightful essay by Rebecca Solnit. → When the Hero is the Problem [Thanks, Reader B.!]
- The San Diego Zoo and the University of California San Diego are crowdfunding a cervix-navigating robot to fight against the impending extinction of multiple species of African Rhino. ※ Watch ► the project’s video
- The nutrition study the \$30B supplement industry doesn’t want you to see
- If your interests run to technology, social media, attention, unplugging, etc., then Venkatesh Rao’s thoughts on “Waldenponding” (I suggest starting with Part 2, grokkable even if Harry Potter isn’t your thing, then Part 1 if you’re interested) are an intriguing read.
- Lenka Clayton Typewriter Drawings (“made with a portable 1957 Smith-Corona Skyriter typewriter” — but how?) ※ Clayton has a [lot of interesting projects of all kinds](), but I am naturally drawn to the wordy ones, such as Corrected Love Letters, Today I was interviewed by the New York Times, Unanswered Letter and a project I shared here in 2015, the Mysterious Letters Project.
- Ummm…hmmm. → Woman with two wombs gives birth twice, nearly a month apart
- 5fathom is just a person sharing “things rich and strange,” and it’s a cornucopia of little delights.
- Today is Easter, aka Pascha, aka Resurrection Sunday, a Christian holiday commemorating the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Easter Sunday is the first day of Eastertide, the Easter Season, which lasts seven weeks, ending on day 50, Pentecost Sunday. The dying of Easter eggs originates in the early Christian community of Mesopotamia, who dyed eggs—an ancient symbol of birth and rebirth—red in memory of the blood of Christ. In addition to being an ancient fertility symbol, the hare was widely believed to be hermaphroditic and so able to reproduce without losing its virginity, which led to its being associated with the Virgin Mary and to the German Lutherans casting of the hare in the part of a judge—similar to Santa Claus—who determined if children had been naughty or nice at the start of Eastertide. In Western Christianity, which follows the Gregorian calendar, Easter is a “moveable feast” that can fall anywhere between March 22 and April 25; in Eastern Orthodox Christianity, which follows the Julian calendar, it falls on a Sunday between April 4 and May 8.