A breath of fresh air
Plus: World maps, screen time, organ donations. (#550)
This is David, your decidedly human web crawler, and you're reading the Weekly Filet, the newsletter for curious minds who love when something makes them go «Huh, I never thought of it this way!». As every Friday, I'm here to help you make sense of what’s happening, and imagine what could be. It's great to have you.
1. Zohran Mamdani's victory speech
«In this moment of political darkness, New York will be the light.» Take the time to watch this extraordinary speech in full. A breath of fresh air.
If you prefer to read a transcript, you can find one here.
2. Almost one billion children have died globally since 1950
Last year, 5 million children under the age of five died. That's a terrible number, but at the same time the result of decades of progress. 75 years ago, four times as many children died. In the time since, an unfathomable total of 1 billion. As Max Roser once put it so succinctly: «The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much better.»
Max Roser
3. Making organ donation easier
How a unicorn with a Zebra leg and a machine that tricks livers into thinking they are inside a body are saving more people's lives.
4. How Does A Blind Model See The Earth?
Large language models can't see the world. Technically, they don't even know the world exists. But given everything they've been trained on, what do they think the world looks like? This is a fascinating experiment: Give many different large language models coordinates of the world, one by one, and ask a simple question: Is there land or water? Assemble and get maps of the world. Of sorts.
henry
5. You’re Getting ‘Screen Time’ Wrong
«The fact is, you cannot participate fully in contemporary life without devoting a substantial amount of time to the screen. [...] Screen time is a systemic issue, so an individual response—your screen-time monitoring, your screen-time mitigation—will likely be of little use.»
Ian Bogost
What else?
Instant-gratification links that make you go wow! or aha! the moment you click.
- Super helpful tool: the Holiday Optimiser tells you when to take your days off to get the most out of them.
- How impressive is that! A feather for (nearly) every species of bird, visualised.
- With our son about to turn 5, this hit hard: «By the time your child is 5, you will have spent 40% of the lifetime hours you have with them.»
- 🎧 In my ears all week: Forever Home (Mono live in Tokyo with Orchestra Pitreza)
- This new gym costs $2,000 a month. And you have to write an essay to join.
- Are you lonely? Hold a meeting!
Books for curious minds
Some new ones as I read them, some older ones that continue to inform how I look at the world and myself.
A treasure trove of a book, filled with great case studies and advice you can use when building a community of any kind. Buy it here.
A gem from the archive
The Weekly Filet archive offers more than 2500 hand-picked links since 2011, like this one. You can search by interests, explore collections or shuffle for a gem.
That's it for this week. Thanks for reading. I wish you a nice weekend and hope to see you again next Friday!
— David
More ways to learn and take inspiration from
Check my 📚 digital bookshelf, with sections of 🌡️ books that help you make sense of the climate crisis, ⛵ books that make you a better product manager, 🪄 books that help you make sense of AI, and 🧒 books that help you as a parent. And from collecting the best links on the web for close to 15 years, my thematic collections: The Art of Thinking (Differently), The Stuff Our Modern World Runs On, Bingeworthy Podcasts, and more.
Little useful apps from me, for you
📊 Dataguessr, a playful way to update your knowledge of the world. 🌍 You Don't Know Africa, a simple game that has already humbled millions of people. 💯 Choose Impact, an online tool to compare job opportunities. 🧭 Priority Compass, a tool for individuals, teams and organisations to focus your energy on what really matters. 🪄 How I Use AI, a collection of use cases, ready to use and adapt. 💬 Climate Questions, a playful conversation starter. And ⏱️ One Minute Challenge, a little meaningful distraction to refocus.