Join Notes
A batch of the best highlights from what Tristan's read, .
Ever since the Cognitive Revolution, there hasn’t been a single natural way of life for Sapiens. There are only cultural choices, from among a bewildering palette of possibilities.
Sapiens
Yuval Noah Harari
Quadrupedal ventilation is limited to one breath per locomotor cycle. The thoracic bones and muscles must absorb the impact on the front limbs as the dorsoventral binding rhythmically compresses and expands the thorax, but human breath frequency can vary relative to stride frequency: humans can run at a variety of speeds, whereas optimal quadruped speed is structurally determined.
Energy and Civilization
Vaclav Smil
This may not seem to you like a world for scholars, my dear friend, but I think you’ll be proven wrong. It seems to me that now—suffering in the darkness that might just be the end of everything—is when we need knowledge the most.”
Mistborn Trilogy
Brandon Sanderson
...catch up on these, and many more highlights
Readwise