Monday Cup Of Links #23 - Zombie Prehistoric Worms, MS Paint Mona Lisa, WFH Research
Stay The Fuck Home!
Happy Monday!
I’m not sure how happy it is for you, given a less-than-adequate response to Coronavirus in most parts of the world, but I wish your week goes better than expected.
A persistent throat-tickle has me self-quarantining. I thought I had stocked up enough on groceries to last a month, but evidently staying at home all the time means eating at home all the time, and means more trips to the grocery store.
I’ve been driving myself nuts reading up on coronavirus news, and needless to say, it’s not the best for my mental health, especially since I’ve made no progress at all on India House, my novel. You’re probably aware of all the virus news, and are likely inundated with it, so I’ll studiously avoid those in this week’s links.
Onto our links!
Russian scientists brought back to life some 42,000 year old worms! They took soil samples from Siberian permafrost, and some of them had these frozen worms. The madlads thawed them in a lab, and to everyone’s shock, they came alive, wriggling and crawling, as worms are wont to do. Maybe that’s what Walt Disney was hoping would happen to him one day?
I came across this long piece that asserts that “The Nuclear Family Was A Mistake”. As someone who grew up in a household of eleven people, I can definitely say the not-nuclear lifestyle is not for everyone. I have my issues with the article, and I also don’t quite understand American motivations quite as well as I’d like to. But it’s definitely a thought provoking read that makes us wonder about the purpose of life and the meaning of family.
ICYMI: On Thursday, I summarized some research on Working From Home. Now that a lot of cities are effectively shut down, we’re all working from home a lot more, blurring boundaries between work and home. How do we deal with the annoyances of working from home, and use it to increase productivity and job satisfaction?
Most of the Indian items in the British Museum in London came from the personal collection of one man. “Hindoo” Stuart was an Irishman who was a soldier in India, adopted the culture as his own, and had an enormous collection of deities, at least some of which were possibly stolen. The question hangs over all of us from former British colonies - When will we get our historic and religious items back to be treated as living history instead of a detached piece in a museum?
GIF Of The Week: Mona Lisa in MS Paint, using only overlapping ellipses.