Reading log · 2026

Things worth
thinking about.

A selective record of articles and ideas that changed how I think about products, people, and the systems around them.

2 in the archive
Page 1

The index

Newest & selected
01
dynomight.substack.com

A sprawling, funny essay argues nearly every "design flaw" in the human body is evolution deliberately avoiding cancer, not sloppy engineering

Fragile kidneys, no limb regrowth, shortening telomeres, menopause: the piece argues each is evolution paying a "fragility tax" to avoid a worse "cancer tax," using the liver's unusual regenerative power — and the small intestine's even cleverer trick of constantly shedding its surface cells before they can mutate into something dangerous — as the exceptions that prove the rule.

Original
02
notnottalmud.substack.com

why I can't stop thinking about Papua New Guinea and what I think everyone should know about it

New Guinea's highlands were home to roughly a million people entirely unknown to the outside world until an Australian gold prospector stumbled onto them in 1930 despite 10,000 years of continuous agriculture (independently invented) and zero genetic or linguistic mixing with coastal populations a few hundred kilometers away. The essay traces how trade goods (shells, sweet potatoes) crept in over centuries while ideas and language never did, because plants can pass between hostile, non-communicating neighbors in a way that knowledge can't.

Original