I have a 2015 book post coming up ahead but I wanted to break this out into its own type of post. I read all the time, but most of my non-fiction reading is not in the form of books but in articles. Much of my most important learning has come from my article reading, so I figured it deserves a post separate from the book reviews.

I chose these five articles because they made an indelible impression on me. Perhaps they conveyed advice that I eventually put to use within that year. Perhaps I relayed what I learned on to other people and they also found it impactful. Perhaps I just kept finding myself going back to this article again and again, reading simply because I found it so enjoyable.

Here we go.

SICK SYSTEMS: HOW TO KEEP SOMEONE WITH YOU FOREVER

The way I first saw this was in a working and career context but I slowly realized that this would be applicable to almost any sort of attachment or relationship in between two people. Read this for yourself and see if you can see any of these behaviors in the relationships in your life. If you find too many of these in any one single relationship, then you might want to re-evaluate whether its worth having.

A RENEGADE TRAWLER, HUNTED FOR 10,000 MILES BY VIGILANTES

As thrilling as any piece of writing can be combined with a 17th century story taking place 400 years too late. The circumstances behind this article shocked me. How can such a thing even take place in our “civilized” world? This felt like something right out of a pirate movie - and you would expect Blackbeard to show up with this treasure and gold pieces. Yet these guys have radios and IDs and motoring boats with gas engines. Reading this gave me a chill, it all feels so surreal.

In my last blog post about articles, I wrote about the capture of El Chapo. I figure then that it makes sense that there should be one thrilling chase article in any compilation that I put together. Here it is.

JAPAN’S 105-HOUR WORKWEEK

People love Japan, but this story I think shed my eyes about their ups and brought me some clarity about their downs. To be frank, everyone works effing hard in Asia, but Japan seems to be taking this to a whole new level. They seem to be fine with it, but is that a sort of life that we can live? If we aren’t working as hard as they are, does that mean that we aren’t as competitive as they are in the global marketplace? My father likes to tell us that there are a thousand Asians in Asia just as smart as I was working ten thousand times harder and they are all trying to come here and take my job from me.

He’s sort of exaggerating a bit (I’ve realized over the span of my career that you can be really smart and work really hard and still be an idiot), but you read something like this and it sort of wipes your smugness down for a moment.

English Is Not Normal

English is the only language that I have ever mastered, so being the self-examining n00b that I am, I found this article about the language and its peculiarities fascinating. Maybe it is just the weirdo part in me that loves trivia, but this article was great as a compilation of our beloved language’s weird quirks and what exactly went wrong to make it so happen that I could type out a sentence just kinda like the one I just crap out here yet people can still grasp the general overall message.

The Believer

Lately I have found myself in danger of assuming that everything has been figured out. That everything has been tucked away into its dusty little cardboard box. That people have discovered everything that there is to be discovered within our world. The vastness of space beyond beckons, and that is the final frontier. Within the world of humanity there is only reality. I have felt this sort of pessimism, a pessimism that feels brought upon by a brooding realization that the “mass” of humanity - billions of human minds smashing away at problems - will invariably outclass any single person. The outcome of having billions of humans is that you have thousands of really smart humans and what they can come up with is always better than what any single human can do, right?

In so many fields, that’s right but not in this one. The Believer is an article about Srinivasa Ramanujan, a 19th century man who was the most remarkable mathematician to have ever lived. He grew up dirt-poor and with no education beyond an outdated math textbook, ascended faster than anyone has ever done before. He was so uneducated and so isolated that half of the things he discovered had already been discovered before, by other people years ago. It was like watching the entire progression of human mathematics unfolding in a single person. His scribblings continue to yield insights today, and this article talks about one of the last.

In a time when there is a huge focus on the group, on the society, and the ability of people to do great things together, I think there is room to recognize that individuals can be capable of things beyond what the rest of us do. I don’t mean that in a sort of Ayn Rand-ian way - but just that sometimes, we have to let incredible things done by incredible people teach us that our world around us still holds many secrets to behold.