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Random Articles - RAW 161216

Welcome to the weekend, Here are some hand-picked articles to enjoy this weekend over your favourite beverage.



A hundred years on from Agatha Christie’s first novel, crime fiction is going cosy again | Books | The Guardian

Forget domestic noir and put down all those books with “Girl” in the title. Crime fiction is turning back the clock to its golden age with a host of books that pay homage to the genre’s grande dame, Agatha Christie, either intentionally or in spirit



John Cleese on the Five Factors to Make Your Life More Creative – Brain Pickings

Much has been said about how creativity works, its secrets, its origins, and what we can do to optimize ourselves for it. In this excerpt from his fantastic 1991 lecture, John Cleese (b. October 27, 1939) offers a recipe for creativity, delivered with his signature blend of cultural insight and comedic genius. Specifically, Cleese outlines the 5 factors that you can arrange to make your lives more creative



How Libraries Save Lives – Brain Pickings

Knowledge sets us free, art sets us free. A great library is freedom, Ursula K. Le Guin wrote in contemplating the sacredness of public libraries. If librarians were honest, they would say, No one spends time here without being changed, Joseph Mills wrote in his ode to libraries. You never know what troubled little girl needs a book, Nikki Giovanni wrote in one of her poems celebrating libraries and librarians.



Google AI invents its own cryptographic algorithm; no one knows how it works | Ars Technica UK

Google Brain has created two artificial intelligences that evolved their own cryptographic algorithm to protect their messages from a third AI, which was trying to evolve its own method to crack the AI-generated crypto. The study was a success: the first two AIs learnt how to communicate securely from scratch.



Proxima b Might Be a Habitable 'Ocean Planet'

The entire surface of Proxima b — the possibly Earth-like planet orbiting the closest star to the sun, Proxima Centauri — may be covered in a liquid ocean, according to a new study



Fermi Paradox | Questions No One Knows the Answers to (Full Version) - YouTube

In the first of a new TED-Ed series designed to catalyze curiosity, TED Curator Chris Anderson shares his boyhood obsession with quirky questions that seem t...





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Verner Vinge and The Fermi Paradox | A Fire Upon The Deep

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Cycling In The Dark - A Technique For Writing Fiction.

I’ve been reading a lot of ‘ how-to ’ books on writing novels recently, the majority of them talk about creating an outline even before writing the first draft. For those of us who have attempted this sort of thing it does make sense. Step 1: Create and outline of your story, know where and when everything will happen. Step 2: Write your first draft, don’t worry about spelling mistakes or typo’s just let your creative voice have free reign so you can get the story out there. As Joanna Penn says ‘ splurge on words and ideas ’ in this first draft. Step 3: Spent time editing. That is using your critical voice, correcting the spelling mistakes and typo’s, rewriting and polishing the story. The problem is that we spend a lot of time on step 1 and never seem to be able to finish.