Small change, big impact
Plus: the horse farm turned global vaccine supplier. (#539)
This is David, your decidedly human web crawler, and you're reading the Weekly Filet, the calmest place to enjoy the best of the web. 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.
Last week, I asked you to tell us something interesting about the place you call home. You delivered. So, in the coming weeks, you'll find little notes from fellow readers mixed into the Weekly Filet. Like this one:
A small part of my sense of home is hidden away in a tiny café in Isfahan, in the Armenian quarter of Jolfa. Here, I have always felt the love, warmth, and comfort of the people, and their courage: café culture in Iran is under severe pressure. A few years ago, the city government of Isfahan decided to simply sell half of the café and turn it into a pizzeria (Iranian pizzas are not great, by the way), even though the space in question had just been lovingly opened and designed. The regime fears cafes and the people who gather in them—they might talk about rebellion. Legendary at Cafe Ani are the chaie limu, a herbal black tea, and their cookies—completely underrated. I miss the cafe with all my heart, but I will only return to a liberated Iran. Women, Life, Freedom.
1. A new poverty line. What changed, and why?
In June 2025, the number of people living in extreme poverty jumped up by 125 million. Nobody got poorer all of a sudden, but the World Bank changed the definition of extreme poverty. This is an excellent deep dive into what the poverty line actually is, how it gets calculated and why it got updated (it's not just inflation).
By: Joe Hasell, Bertha Rohenkohl, and Pablo Arriagada
2. Autocracy in America
Autocracy in America is back with season two – I wish I were recommending a Netflix series here. But this is for real. The podcast by The Atlantic once again puts the spotlight on authoritarian tactics that are already at work in the United States. This new season is hosted by Garry Kasparov, chess grandmaster and exiled Russian dissident. (Disclaimer: This recommendation is based on the first five episodes. I haven't yet listened to the one with Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner.)
Garry Kasparov, Anne Applebaum
3. What My Daughter Told ChatGPT Before She Took Her Life
A disturbing and deeply sad story, and more nuanced than you might expect from the title alone. This isn't a sensationalist «AI is driving people into suicide!» take. Rather a personal window into a phenomenon we're only starting to grapple with: recent surveys have shown that among young users, the number one use case for AI is using chatbots as companions and «therapists».
4. How do we live with each other?
A new publication that I'm quite curious about. The Argument aims to «make a positive, combative case for liberalism». This is founder Jerusalem Demsas' launch essay. Liberalism, she writes, won't be saved by historical analogies and endless lectures. «It will be won if we can convince people that the issues they care about are best addressed through liberalism.» (Great bycatch of reading the article is this definition of conservatism I didn't know: It «stands athwart history, yelling Stop.»)
Jerusalem Demsas
5. How to Vaccinate the World
The story of how a struggling horse farm in Western India became the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer. This goes right into the collection of my favourite nerdy subgenre: the in-depth profile of stuff our modern world runs on.
More from the collection: Lithium, copper, sand, cardboard, robots.txt, ...
What else?
Instant-gratification links that make you go wow! or aha! the moment you click.
- Rainy Days and the Fragile Nature of Peace – love this series of artworks by Sho Shibuya.
- Mesmerising to watch: This guy is solving a 5x5 Rubik's cube, in 2 minutes, blindfolded.
- This week I learned: 5-10% of people simply don't like music, of any kind. It's called «music anhedonia».
- Paris has transformed its bleak city hall square into an urban forest.
- New from Radiohead: Hail to the Thief (Live Recordings 2003-2009)
- The Colors of the World, seen from the International Space Station
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.
Worse, but more descriptive title: Stuff you didn't think would be interesting, but actually is when researched and told by curious minds. Buy it here.
A gem from the archive
Anil Dash
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
🌍 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.