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

Kickoff For December 19, 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:

What the Vai Script Reveals About the Evolution of Writing, wherein we learn about how, in the 1830s, a group of people developed a written script for their language, and learn a bit about how writing systems can develop.

Are All Brains Good at Math?, wherein Elizabeth Landau examines our inherent ability to understand math, even at a basic level, and why so many people (mainly in the West) consider themselves bad at math. Yes, I'm one of those people ...

Highway to Hell, wherein Julian Moss looks at why the car-dominated model of urban transport is unsustainable, and looks at some alternatives.

What It Means to Wander, wherein we're introduced to different ways of walking and exploring our environments, ones removed from typical literary and essayistic chronicles.

Fight Inflation With Surplus, Not Scarcity, wherein Nina Eichacker and Jason Oakes offer a model that they insist can make the economy more resilient, now and in the future.

The super-rich ‘preppers’ planning to save themselves from the apocalypse, wherein Douglas Rushkoff looks at how a small group of men (and it's mostly men) with too much wealth and power are searching for a means of escape from the apocalypse of their own making.

Dystopia for Realists, wherein Lizzie O'Shea looks at how automated decision-making systems already influence millions of people’s lives every day and discusses how we can push back against those systems.

What Canada’s Largest Art Heist Reveals about the Art World’s Shady Side, wherein we learn about the robbery of a Montreal museum in the early 1970s, how it was forgotten, and partly because of a lack of both a good narrative around the theft and of public outrage.

How Secure Is Our Data, Really?, wherein Michael Kende looks at why online security failures occur, and at the three potential market failures behind them which require third-party solutions to sort out.

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

Scott Nesbitt