Start your week with nine curated reads, served fresh each Monday

Kickoff For August 22, 2022

Welcome to this week's edition of the Monday Kickoff, a collection of what I've found interesting, informative, and insightful on the web over the last seven days.

Let's get this Monday started with these links:

Science

The legacy of Liverpool’s forgotten synchrocyclotron, wherein we learn about the (very large) device that helped the city's university shape and advance experimental physics and why those contributions have faded from memory.

Physicists Rewrite the Fundamental Law That Leads to Disorder, wherein we learn a bit about the Second Law of Thermodynamics and how some researchers are now recasting that law so it better meshes with quantum theory.

How to use food to help your mood, wherein Kimberley Wilson explores food’s potential to affect how people feel, both in positive and negative ways.

Arts and Literature

The Birth of the Egghead Paperback, wherein we discover how Jason Epstein helped take the paperback from being a delivery mechanism for cheap, mass-market books to being a source of higher-brow fiction and non fiction.

The big idea: could the greatest works of literature be undiscovered?, wherein Laura Spinney looks at the amount of literature that's been lost over the centuries, and delves into what we might be missing.

Why comic books became a more of a writer's and less of an artist's medium, wherein Jim McLauchlin explores the changes over the last few decades to the way in which comics are created, and why that medium now seems to be driven by words first rather than visuals first.

Odds and Ends

How to Put Life on Easy Mode, wherein Leo Babauta explains how to reach a state of effortless and relaxation even if you're supremely busy.

The Sit-Up Is Over, wherein we learn how the venerable abdominal exercise became a staple of physical development programs and why it's fallen out of favour.

The Colorful History of Haribo Goldbears, the World’s First Gummy Bears, wherein we learn the origins of those little chewy confections and about the German company that brought them to a mass audience.

And that's it for this Monday. Come back in seven days for another set of links to start off your week.

Scott Nesbitt