Ohai!
The danger of complacency
Last issue, I linked to an article on the dangers of complacency. But it's not just personal complacency, it can creep into other areas as well. For example, one of this issues' stories is about how the social graph doesn't really work, and the problem here was that no one ever thought to keep thinking about this problem of human relationships, and wether a graph was the right solution for it.
Be vigilant, and try something new this week.
~Markus
Spaaaaaaaaaace
How the sun abducted dwarf planets from an alien solar system
Certain celestial bodies in our solar system were not from here originally. (Requires a (free) account, but in return, you get a highly detailed PDF of the alien interlopers in our solar system)
newscientist.com
Humans
The Social Graph is Neither
Facebook and any other social network tries to put human relationships into a mathematical graph, so it can look at that graph and do things with it. Problem is: No one seemingly ever stopped to ask themselves wether human relationships could actually be mapped to a mathematical graph. Maciej Ceglowski lays out all the problems that follow.
pinboard.in
Why rewards can backfire
Why rewards don't work the way you think they do. See also: Punished by Rewards by Alfie Kohn, and Drive by Daniel Pink
theguardian.com
The Paradox of Behavior Change
Learning new behaviours means you have to fight against your ingrained habits.
jamesclear.com
Braess' paradox - Wikipedia
Why adding an additional lane to a congested road might make the congestion even worse, and why the solution to lessen the congestion might be to remove a lane (via kottke.org)
wikipedia.org
I Just Love This Juicero Story So Much
Everything that's wrong with Silicon Valley wrapped into one startup story.
deadspin.com
Productivity
The key to productivity
It's always so tempting to go look for the productivity silver bullet, that one trick or tactic that will make everything magically productive. However, the old "tricks" are still the best, as outlined in this post, and in the end, it's still you who has to do the work. No trick can do that for you.
superyesmore.com
Programmer, Interrupted
Interrupting someone costs way more than the five minutes you interrupted them for.
gamasutra.com