Because we don’t always have internet on a flight (though that is changing), I spend a lot of time perusing the Instapaper archives on my phone and reading/re-reading anything interesting. Over the years that I have had that account, I have read a whole bunch of things. In this article, I want to share the few that have really stood out to me that most people don’t already know about. Don’t we all have the urge to share what we have with others?

I don’t really have a criteria for choosing what goes in here - there is going to be a lot of variation - other than some vague, ineffable feeling that reading this has made me feel more connected to human society.

What Did Jesus Do?

I am not a religious person, but I used to be. While the fervor of God has left me, what has not vanished is the yearning to be closer to Jesus. This time though, as a person and a historical figure. Who was he? What did he do? What was he like?

This article does a better job than any other I have ever read at rendering the man. The Jesus that comes through in these words feels human but still ever so tantalizingly far away. It is remarkable the techniques, research, and insight brought to bear on better understanding the brief life of a man who died nearly 2,000 years ago. This is not an article JUST for atheists. Anyone of faith should read this too.

Passage of Choice: “While accepting a historical Jesus, the scholarship also tends to suggest that the search for him is a little like the search for the historical Sherlock Holmes: there were intellectual-minded detectives around, and Conan Doyle had one in mind in the eighteen-eighties, but the really interesting bits—Watson, Irene Adler, Moriarty, and the Reichenbach Falls—were, even if they all had remote real-life sources, shaped by the needs of storytelling, not by traces of truth.”

The Unfinished

David Foster Wallace seems to be like one of those artists whose art becomes super popular after he dies. It seems like everyone has passed around the little college graduation speech “This is Water” on Facebook some time or another. I never read “Infinite Jest” (though I tried to read “The Pale King” and found it rather dry) but you do not need to in order to really enjoy this article.

What is so amazing about it is that it is more than just a biography of DFW, but also an in-depth analysis of his work and what he stood for. It is the Cliff’s Notes for what he writes about and when you read it you can suddenly sound super-smart (or like an angsty emo teenager) for repeating it at brunches. I sound mean but it comes from a loving place in my heart - it really is some eye opening stuff.

Passage of Choice: “His goal had been to show readers how to live a fulfilled, meaningful life. ‘Fiction’s about what it is to be a fucking human being,’ he once said. Good writing should help readers to ‘become less alone inside.’ Wallace’s desire to write ‘morally passionate, passionately moral fiction,’“

A Brevard Woman Disappeared, But Never Left Home

Let’s get dark a bit, shall we? This story has never left me from the very moment that I first laid eyes on it. It is the real life chronicle of a now-forgotten human being. Had it not been for this web article, I would have never heard of this woman and she would be forever lost in the sands of time. Kathryn Norris lived a sad life tormented by mental illness. This article brings you into her existence as it slowly spirals towards its heart-breaking end.

My greatest fear in life is to lose awareness of my own self. I am especially afraid of dementia and mental illness. I have always prided myself in my own clear thinking. It might be random and scatterbrained, but it knows where it is. Kathryn’s brain stopped working right, her unwitting body marched right to its malfunctioning signals, and society failed to stop both of them. I don’t ever want this to happen to me.

Passage of Choice: “‘I have learned I attach myself to one person,’ she said, ‘and they become my safety person.’ And if there’s no safety person? ‘I stay within my home.’“

The Hunt For El Chapo

Now that Mr. Chapo is free again, this article rings a little hollow but don’t let the present get you down. This is probably the most exciting piece of writing that I have read in years. More thrilling than any cyber-crime or Dan Brown piece of fiction out there. It is clipped, brusque, peppered with the right quotes and the right moments. Narrow escapes, brutal gunfights, and a mysterious, elusive rabbit. You want to read this.

They are making a movie out of this article, and I am going to tell you that they made a great choice in picking the source material.

Passage of Choice: “There is a saying in the Mexican drug trade that it is better to live one good year than ten bad ones.”

And Then Steve Said, ‘Let There Be an iPhone’

Our society can be cut into two time periods - before the iPhone and after. I believe that when it is all said and done the iPhone will be the most impactful consumer device ever created in the century. When you watch the 2007 keynote, it is amazing to think about just how similar the original iPhone was to the iPhones of today. The old one does feel a bit dated, but the intention and capability do not.

This story is elegantly written, a compelling chronicle of how history was made. It gives a great sense of just how hard hard things are. So many things had to go right for the iPhone to exist. So much can go wrong that it really shouldn’t exist. Yet here it is. While there is a sort of “Steve Jobs is gone, uh oh” attitude in the whole thing which I do not totally appreciate, what you can really enjoy is just the sprint of effort taken towards making this incredible product.

Passage of Choice: “When you look back at how the iPhone came to be, it’s clear that it had everything to do with the unreasonable demands — and unusual power — of an inimitable man.”

Life in the Dark

I want to always be reading writing that expands your mind and broadens our own limitations. I think too many times, people take that to mean spiritually or emotionally. They find their values tested, their own expectations taken to the limits. That is fine and a form of growth too. However sometimes we need to have our own scientific imagination tested too. This article was able to do that for me in a more elegant, clear way than any other that I have read.

It is really hard to convey a complex idea to a person who is not familiar with it. Great leaps and realizations do not come about alone. They are built towards and quietly grown before abruptly exploding into revelatory prominence. This article does a great job of forwarding an insane idea - an idea that removes the one thing that we will always have in our lives - the very sun itself. Can life live without a sun? Can we even comprehend such a thing? This article seeks to do this, and take you along for the ride.

Passage of Choice: “Instead of having one ‘photosynthetic’ tree growing 1,000 apples, it would need 1,000 ‘chemoautotrophic’ trees growing one apple each.”

Envy

This one is rather old, about 12 years now. It has no names, but I think it is not that hard to guess (and if you want to, you can do a quick Google search). It is an essay about a woman who despite having so much, who seems to be so obviously talented, still feels incredibly unfulfilled as compared to her partner, a now-famous novelist.

It is really naturally easy for me to get jealous. It is true. I am a jealous person. I resent other’s people success and I revel in their failures. Sometimes I try to give a reason for this - that I am a person who is himself beset with failure - and so that it is just projection. But then there are the days where I realize the truth: That I am just envious, and I am a terrible person for feeling it. I’ve never came across another piece of writing that so clearly, coherently puts down how I feel into words.

Passage of Choice: “No, this was a genuinely excellent piece of work by a man who had dedicated his life to doing such work and was now being rewarded for it: proof that the system was not essentially corrupt and misguided, incapable of recognising true merit, after all. Where was the comfort in that?”

From idea to AppStore in 2 weeks

It is kinda weird that in between of all of these inspirational, knowledge-filled articles that we have something like this. It is just a normal blog post right? In one way you are right. It is indeed just another blog post - like the type you will find frequently on HackerNews.

This one is different for me though. Reading this blog post changed something in me. Before, I think I had just dabbled in programming. I played around with it. It was interesting, but I figured that I did not major in it during school so I had no chance or hope of being a career programmer. After reading, I knew that I could do it. It was possible. They say in How I Met Your Moment the “breaking glass” moment. It is that moment when you realize something. Reading this blog post was the breaking glass moment for me. I realized I didn’t need to get permission from a past.

Passage of Choice: “But you will do it, and you’ll have the weakened fingers and strained bloodshot eyes to prove it.”

Breaking Bad News

I saved the most powerful for last. I have never read this the whole way through and not broken down crying and sobbing. This article is everything that I have ever believed reading should be. Reading should be informative, enlightening, life-expanding, and connective. This is a piece about death, but not the person who dies, but the ones who death leaves behind. This is about delivering grief from the perspective of a person who is intimately involved, but unable to truly empathize. How would you do that?

Death is something we all have to eventually experience - and I got a good reminder of that yesterday. Yesterday afternoon I was glancing down at my phone at the intersection, waiting for the light to turn green. I glanced up through my sunglasses, saw the countdown at 13 already, and stepped abruptly without looking at my surroundings. A large truck goes in to make a right but sees me there and hits the brakes hard. The truck hits me, not badly but enough to jerk. I look up and see the driver, a nice family man in there, with two little girls. I’m okay. It’s my fault. I nod to him, trying to tell him that I am okay and hurriedly scramble off.

While safely on the other side, I look back at the truck and think, “What just happened?” Had the driver been not so aware, if he had been spacing as much as I had been, then I would have been killed. One second of daze and then that’s it. And then someone would have to tell people.

Back at home, I took out this article and re-read it again. I thought about my family, my friends, and my loved ones. And then of course I am crying again.

Passage of Choice: The last line.