Thursday Things: Fourth Issue
5 September 2019. Vol 1 No 4. By Dan McGirt. #4
Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash
Welcome to Thursday Things!
If you enjoy this edition of Thursday Things, please forward the email to a friend or colleague who might enjoy it too!
I use Twitter the way any sensible person should: I follow interesting accounts, read much, and post little. One account I follow is @TheStoicEmperor which offers “Modern meditations. Wisdom for the world of today.” I have no idea who the author is. I’m reasonably certain he or she is not an actual emperor. But that doesn’t matter! The Stoic Emperor has many thought-provoking posts. Here is a sample:
Most valuable information is widely accessible. Great books of centuries past are free online. Thinkers of today argue publicly on Twitter. YouTube is a lecture hall that seats millions. Podcasts are private tutors for the masses. A golden age for the self-motivated learner.
This is true! And it makes me regret all the time I’ve spent watching cat videos online. By now I could speak twelve languages and have degrees in philosophy, nuclear physics, economics, and aerospace engineering. Still, I’ve seen a lot of hilarious cats do hilarious things. So my time wasn’t totally wasted.
A Japanese woman has become the first person in the world to have her cornea repaired using reprogrammed stem cells. She has a disease in which the natural stem cells that repair the cornea are lost, causing blurry vision and possible blindness. Her vision has already improved after the experimental treatment. I see what they did there.
Maybe your vision is fine and you don’t care about that story. (Someday you will, though. Trust me.) But do you have dental cavities? Then I have more good news! Tooth enamel can now be made to repair itself by applying a special gel. This technique could prevent the development cavities that require dental fillings. The new material is being tested in mice now. (How do you do dentistry on a mouse? Does the mouse sit in a tiny dentist chair? I have no idea.) But if it checks out, it could make your future dental checkups – and your teeth – that much smoother.
You will be relieved to know that the much-hyped fires in the Amazon rain forest will not deprive the planet of life-giving oxygen. Despite the breathless tweets of uninformed reporters, high strung celebrities, and scientifically illiterate French presidents, it turns out that the Amazon jungle is not “the Earth’s lungs” and doesn’t produce 20% of the planet’s oxygen. It’s more like 6%. Most importantly, the Amazon forest consumes most of the oxygen that it gives off. As most ecosystems do. Because science. This is not to say that we shouldn’t be concerned about conservation in the Amazon region. But the fires there aren’t going to suffocate us all. So take a deep breath – and enjoy it! Because there’s plenty more where that came from.
Thing I learned today (or, more likely, once knew and relearned): Control Z exists. (Command Z for you Mac people). Hitting Ctrl-Z will undo your last action on your computer (with, I’m sure, many exceptions). I use Ctrl-A (select all), Ctrl-C (copy) and Ctrl-V (paste) all the time. But I had forgotten Ctrl-Z (undo). Today I was reminded that it exists (for reasons that will become clear below).
I thought I’d link to a helpful technical article explaining the uses Ctrl-Z, but instead I found this article by a rabbi: Ctrl C, Ctrl V or Ctrl Z? What your computer's buttons can teach you about yourself. which begins:
According to Chassidic teachings, there is no such thing as coincidence, and everything one sees or hears is a lesson that can be applied to one's life and behavior.
This is true even to the extent that in every technological innovation one can find lessons that help one understand life better – how it works, and how to better take advantage of it.
He goes on to cite Ctrl-Z as a metaphor for repentance:
The true idea of repentance does not imply change as much as it implies return. To return to what one really is. It is not just "Copy and Paste." Rather, it is "Control Z" – undoing mistakes, and returning to an original state of being.
That just blew my mind, and I would not have read it but for the Thursday Things disaster I will now relate. I was poised to include in this final item some thoughts and observations that may have been of such transcending brilliance and penetrating insight that it would have utterly changed your life and perhaps altered the course of human history. Then I accidentally deleted the entire text of this issue except for a lone letter t. Because the Substack interface currently lacks an undo button – and because I had forgotten about Ctrl-Z – I had to rewrite the whole thing. (And will henceforth not compose directly online. Lesson learned!) By the time I got back to this final bullet point, I had forgotten whatever life-transforming point I was almost certainly about to make. Perhaps the world wasn’t ready...
Again, if you enjoyed this issue of Thursday Things, please forward to a friend. Thank you for reading – and I’ll see you next Thursday!