He’s an Indian, and Brazilian officials have concluded that he’s the last survivor of an uncontacted tribe. They first became aware of his existence nearly 15 years ago and for a decade launched numerous expeditions to track him, to ensure his safety, and to try to establish peaceful contact with him.
Peaceful contact proved elusive, but those encounters helped the agents stitch together a profile of a man with a calamitous past. In one jungle clearing they found the bulldozed ruins of several huts, each featuring the exact same kind of hole—14 in all—that the lone Indian customarily dug inside his dwellings. They concluded that it had been the site of his village, and that it had been destroyed by land-hungry settlers in early 1996.
The most isolated man on the planet, the last remaining member of his tribe, lives alone in a 31 square mile ‘reservation’ in Brazil and has done for the best part of a decade and a half.
Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice. Gifts are easy — they’re given after all. Choices can be hard.
When you are 80 years old, and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made.
Sunny days make people happier and more helpful. In a taste test, you’re likely to have a strong preference for the first sample you taste—even if all of the samples are identical. The more often you see a person or an object, the more you’ll like it. Mating decisions are based partly on smell. Our cognitive failings are legion: we take a few anecdotes and make incorrect generalizations, we misinterpret information to support our preconceptions, and we’re easily distracted or swayed by irrelevant details. And what we think of as memories are merely stories we tell ourselves anew each time we recall an event.
If the population of the US were to all live in one state at the population density of Brooklyn they would fit into New Hampshire, the fifth smallest state (and home of Jed Bartlet).
Also to give a bit of context, at the same sort of density the population of England would fit in Suffolk, the Scots would fit on one of the inner Hebrides, the Welsh wouldn’t be far off squeezing into Newport and everyone living on the island of Ireland could move to the Isle of Man and they’d still have room for a park or two.
