Despair is unproductive
+ Well-behaved bubbles and above-average humans (#419)
Thanks for opening this email (almost) every Friday. It's great to have you! As you might guess, I've spent some time on the internet this week, and here's what I think you should see, too...
1. Climate Change from A to Z
Don't be put off by the title that puts to you sleep before you've even arrived at the zzzzzz. It's a great piece, from one of the best climate writers of our time, with beautiful illustrations to match the words. 26 stories – well, 25 if we drop the despair — that tell of our past, present and future with climate change, from Arrhenius to Zero. Just the right mix of realism and optimism.
![](https://media.newyorker.com/photos/63769406c9fd4c66d7b4b9b8/16:9/w_1280,c_limit/221128_r41410web-social.jpg)
2. Is Russia losing?
«The war was lost long ago. The challenge remains one of getting Putin and his circle to accept this view.» Another highly informative analysis by Lawrence Freedman.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1200,h_600,c_limit,f_jpg,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7219cec2-b806-4446-b63d-da263bde2169_1024x681.jpeg)
3. Than Average
A fun, insightful, sometimes surprising game to play. You answer one question at a time and all you have to do is gauge whether you're above or below average. For example: Do you experience envy more than average? Afterwards you see what side everyone else has picked. Obviously, in a perfectly representative sample of people who assess themselves correctly, it should always be 50:50. So the real challenge in this game comes after each reveal: Why is this skewed?
![](https://i.ibb.co/k1xB9hj/Landscape-Thanaverage.png)