I'm starting a series of posts collecting the best articles / books / etc. that I've read each month. Here we go, the coolest things I've read this August!

Two black-swan events that we are completely unprepared for, because our history doesn't stretch back long enough:

• An earthquake in 1700 that would destroy Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver if it were to happen again.

• A volcanic eruption in 1815 that caused a volcanic winter -- blizzards in New York in June, dead crops and famine worldwide.

Other random things:

• How easy it is to fabricate scientific findings, and how little scrutiny there is in the worlds of publishing and journalism.

• The "door to hell" in Turkmenistan is a place I can't believe exists.

• Tim Urban's epic SpaceX post on Wait But Why.

• Don't Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice.

I also finally read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which was way more hilarious than I expected! Fun fact: the book was published in 1979, and one of the computers in the book is called the Googleplex. Google was started in 1998, yet its official naming story does not mention the book. It makes me wonder.