Despite the growing reliance on “big data” to game out every decision, it’s clear to anyone with a glimmer of self-awareness that humans are incapable of constantly rational thought. We simply don’t have the time or capacity to calculate the statistical probabilities and potential risks that come with every choice.

I feel I’ve spent 22.3% of my last four years of my life arguing with data-minded engineers about this topic.

“The number of objective facts deserving of that term is extremely low and almost negligible in everyday life,” he says. “The whole idea of using logic to make decisions in the world is to me a fairly peculiar one, given that we live in a world of high uncertainty which is precisely the conditions in which logic is not the appropriate framework for thinking about decision-making.”

Preach it.

(Via Quartz)

(Via Reddit)

What do different colors symbolize in different countries? I’ve been staring at this for twenty minutes straight.

Nokia will re-launch the 3310, perhaps the best-loved and most resilient phone in history.

I had one of these. I think I still do.

It’s still possible to buy the 3310 on Amazon, though only through its marketplace and not directly from the company itself. The Amazon listing describes a range of features, including a clock, calculator, the ability to store up to ten reminders and four games: Snake II, Pairs II, Space Impact, and Bantumi.

Snake II was the bomb.

(Via The Independent)

One month.

The president has angrily canceled a summit meeting with the Mexican president, hung up on Australia’s prime minister, authorized a commando raid that resulted in the death of a Navy SEAL member, repeatedly lied about the existence of millions of fraudulent votes cast in the 2016 election and engaged in Twitter wars with senators, a sports team owner, a Hollywood actor and a major department store chain. His words and actions have generated almost daily protests around the country.

(Via the New York Times)

Lava pouring out of a cliff on the Big Island. Mesmerizing.

Asimov wrote a lot:

To match the number of novels, letters, essays, and other scribblings Asimov produced in his lifetime, you would have to write a full-length novel every two weeks for 25 years.

The six tips:

1. Never stop learning.
2. Don’t fight getting stuck.
3. Beware the resistance.
4. Lower your standards.
5. Make MORE stuff.
6. The secret sauce.¹

(Via Quartz)

“Death in the Gulf Stream,” as he called it, was Hemingway’s salve for 1937—a dark year marked by an economic recession in the US, Joseph Stalin’s wrenching Purge Trials, a new war between China and Japan, and the Spanish Civil War which he covered as a journalist for the North American Newspaper Alliance.

Via Quartz