10/30/20 Recommended Issues: Card Shuffling, Collective Memory, Chocolate

Good day!

Each week we handpick newsletter issues by independent writers you may have missed that provide new or unique perspectives. 

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Here's what's worth reading this week...enjoy!

HOW BIG IS A 68 DIGIT NUMBER ANYWAYS?

The Universe in Your Hand in Empty your Cup by Niklas Göke on 10/30

For a fun mental exercise in visualizing really large numbers, this is the issue for you. It walks you through how many times you would need to shuffle a deck of cards before you’d be guaranteed to get the same card order as the deck you started with (a number that’s 68 digits long) and helps you to wrap your head around the enormity of that number.  It (the issue, not the number), is a quick read and gives some incredible perspective on how stunningly gargantuan a 68 digit long number really is.  (688 words; 2.5 minutes)  Read it…
 

CELEBRATING TRUTH OR MYTH?

Sugary Warm Memories in The Experiment by Jason Stanford on 10/30

This issue is worth reading for the questions it leaves you with: when a community or culture celebrates “an event’ or an “anything” with a collective memory, how true or how real does the memory of the event need to be? And at what point is it just a myth?  And what does it mean to celebrate a myth? The writer drives these questions home via a story from 1960 in Austin, Texas, where a specific Woolworths is celebrated (to this day) as having been the first to desegregate lunch counters on their own. The writer demonstrates how society has clung to and even strengthened (embellished?!) this memory over time, yet, upon digging in historically, he discovers that it actually is *just not true*.... And not even a little “not true”, like REALLY not true. (4139 words; 15 minutes… and if you’re short on time, just skip the intro before the first picture and skip all of the stuff after the main article) Read it…
 

CHOCOLATE EDUCATION

On Chocolate in From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy on 10/26

Chocolate...while most people love it, it’s global pathway to production can be riddled with questionable (or just flat out unethical and damaging) practices. If you’ve never had your eyes opened to the challenges of producing chocolate, it’s worth a read through this issue. Alicia delves broadly into the history, economics, labor issues, environmental concerns, and marketing of chocolate. You’ll also learn more about artisanal chocolate makers and the underlying unique need for educating the chocolate-lover consumer base. (1726 words; ~6minutes) Read it...


A few random facts I learned this week from reading newsletters:

• The term "tree-hugger" actually comes from India's Chipko Movement, a massive nonviolent social protest against deforestation in India in the 1970s. Who knew? (Heated, 10/28)

• Wow...The SEC paid a whistleblower "$114 million for reporting a financial crime, beating the $50m record set earlier this year" ... That is a LOT of $! (The Diff, 10/23)

• Instacart has partnered with ALDI (a grocery store chain) to enable people receiving government food assistance to pay for their food with their EBT cards… seems like a move in the right direction for more equal access to food delivery. (The Diff, 10/23)

• In the US, more children live with a parent who has never married than with a divorced single parent (~15% vs ~10%). Interesting to ponder the implications of that.. (End Times, 10/27)

• Sounds like we still have some work to do in reporting on women’s sports...In research on six major newspapers (like NYT, LA Times, etc), only ~5.2% of all sports articles over Sept 15-Oct 7 (when WNBA playoffs occurred) were for women's sports. Yep, that means almost 95% of sports articles were for men's sports. And, in May (when apparently there were “no sports” playing) only 7% of sports coverage in these papers was women’s. While neither of these data sets covers a long time period, even if they're directionally representative of the norm, they still seem pretty wow-ing from an order-of-magnitude perspective. (Power Plays, 10/22)

• Roblox (an online gaming platform) games are "reportedly played by three-fourths of all 9- to 12-year-old kids in the United States at the moment" -- That's quite a share of the market! (Why is this interesting, 10/29)

• Beware giving peanuts to kids, but especially Australian ones...Australia has the largest percent of preschoolers with food allergies (~10%); the UK has about half of that at ~5%, and the USA ~7%. (Why is this interesting, 10/28)

• The number of unique decks of card combinations is mind-blowingly large at 68 digits: 80658175170943878571660636856403766975289505440883277824000000000000 (Empty Your Cup, 10/22)

• New word of the day: “Africanfuturism". It was coined by Nigerian sci-fi/fantasy author Nnedi Okorafor and it describes science fiction that is rooted in the African world. Now you know too. May be worth a read? (Sentiers, 10/25)

• if these numbers are really true, maybe it gives us hope that changing the behavior of only a few could have massive impact: 1. Just 20 corporations are behind 30% of all human CO₂ emissions.  2. The wealthiest 10% of people account for half of all individual emissions." (Sentiers,  10/25)

• London lost ~1/5 of it's population in 1603, ~1/5 in 1625, and almost 1/4 in 1665 -- all to plagues -- and yet the population of London still grew ~10x between 1550 and 1700! That’s some impressive growth. (Age of Invention 10/20)

• Talk about being ripe for communication problems: There's a community in Nigeria where the men and women speak different languages! (Now I Know, 10/26)

• Happy Halloween: To be a chocolate bar, the FDA only requires a bar to contain 10 percent cacao! (From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, 10/26)

I hope you gained a new fact or perspective! 

And if you're on the hunt for any specific newsletters to read, feel free to reach out to me or to take a gander through narrowSCALE.

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Thanks and all the best,

~Jessica