Not normal

Plus: possibly the best final sentence of an article this year (#576)

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. Reuters Climate Monitor

As I'm writing this, it is 12.5°C/22.5°F hotter than normal this time of year in Zurich, Switzerland. It's the same or worse for almost all of Europe currently. Although, «than normal» doesn't really do the situation justice. That «normal», the average from 1961–1990, is long gone. These current temperatures might be extraordinary even in the new normal that humans created for themselves, but that's exactly what climate change does to us: these days and weeks of extreme heat are becoming more and more common. This new Climate Monitor by Reuters lets you explore and compare temperatures for every place on Earth. It's a scary globe.

2. What’s the Point of Sex, Anyway?

An essay on weird animal sex that really is a reminder not to base your worldview on narrow assumptions of what's normal. «The general trend in animal behavior is that every species that we observe thoroughly is way more complicated than it appears at first blush.» It also comes with possibly the best final sentence of an article I've read this year.

3. The world’s first trillionaire is a killer

How many useless articles were published to mark the absurd event of the first person ever becoming a trillionaire (a million million, that is)? I applaud The Verge for cutting to the chase: They used the occasion to remind everyone that Elon Musk’s actions directly led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people (yes, hundreds of thousands). «This is not a serious person, but his abuse of the world is deadly serious.»

4. The Most Exciting Month of Medical Breakthroughs in Years

With everything that's going on in the world, you might well have missed some quite amazing news in medicine. Good overview.

5. 10 Years After Brexit, the Dismal Verdict Is In

Of all statements in history that aged like milk, this one is up there among the milkiest: «Britain faces a simple and inescapable choice — stability and strong Government with me, or chaos with Ed Miliband.» 11 years, one Brexit and six failed Prime Ministers later, «chaos with Ed Miliband» looks like a winning campaign slogan.