Mind your shower thoughts

Plus: The gap humanity needs to close, fast. (#591)

Can I ask you a favour? Please complete this sentence for me: «I like reading the Weekly Filet, because...» Just hit reply and send me whatever comes to mind.

This is David, your decidedly human web crawler, and you're reading the Weekly Filet, the newsletter for curious minds who love it when something makes them go «Huh, I never thought of it this way!» It's great to have you.

Btw, if you speak German and have kids, this little side project of mine might be interesting to you: kelana.games

1. The Top Idea in Your Mind

«It's hard to do a really good job on anything you don't think about in the shower.» That's the core thesis of this short essay that really struck a chord with me. The argument goes like this:

You can't crack hard problems by only ever working hard on them and giving them your full attention.
Some of the best ideas and unexpected breakthroughs occur when you're not actively working on the problem, but your thoughts happen to drift freely towards it. Like, for example, in the shower.
The problem: When relaxed, your thoughts tend to drift towards whatever occupies your mind the most. And so whatever this is will benefit from that type of ambient thinking. Everything else won't. «Which means it's a disaster to let the wrong idea become the top one in your mind.»

How do you know you have the right thing top of your mind? Observe what you're thinking about in the shower. (Ironically, the next time you're in a shower, you'll think of this. So you'll have to wait for the one after that.)

2. Emissions Gap Report 2026

We have officially reached the point where staying within 1.5°C of global warming is no longer possible. This year's «Emissions Gap Report» by the UN is the first to stop calculating what's needed to keep the slim chance alive. The new best-case scenario is «limited overshoot». And as it stands, we're not even close to reaching that.

3. We’re Learning to Live with Waymos. It’s Going Weird

A deep d(r)ive to the future we're headed to with autonomous cars. The focus here isn't on the technology, but on the social implications. After all, these cars are not just autonomous, but also driverless. And the latter has larger implications once you start thinking about it. As the author writes: «A driverless car is a new quasi-private space, with uses (and connotations) not yet established. Like an opera box or an elevator, it might furnish comfort, freedom, danger, or some combination thereof.» And, as so very often: The experience differs for men and women.

4. Will the New ‘Grand Theft Auto’ Be a Weapon in the Culture Wars?

After more than a decade of waiting, the biggest video game series will finally release its newest game. 4000 people worked on it, it cost billions and will make many more billions. And even if you're not into video games, it's too important to ignore. This conversation does a good job of explaining what makes this game unlike any other and why its cultural impact is hard to overstate.

5. How old are leaders across the world?

This is an astonishing juxtaposition: Around 10% of people globally are older than 65. Yet around 75% live under a leader who is. And it doesn't stop there: Nine of the leaders of the G20 nations are older than 70. Interesting (not to say depressing) look at the age of leaders worldwide.

Dataguessr of the week

Update your knowledge of the world. One quiz at a time. This week:

What else?

Instant-gratification links that make you go wow! or aha! the moment you click.

Fun little challenge: Can you trick a machine into believing that you're picking numbers at random?
Explore a galaxy of more than 30'000 colours, each with their own name.
No-as-a-Service (NaaS) is a simple API that returns a random rejection reason.
How much money is a trillion dollars? One way to better grasp it: Spend Elon Musk’s Money.
Do I already have enough unused notebooks for a lifetime? Probably. Did I just buy 3 of those? Hell yes! (Which got me thinking: Is there an equivalent of Tsundoku for when you keep buying more notebooks because the mere anticipation of some day filling them is too hard to resist?)

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.

Don’t make the same mistake I made for years – to assume this is cheap productivity porn not worth your time. It’s anything but. I wish I had read it earlier. Buy it here.