Watch the poison work

Plus: our ethical duty to grasp large numbers. (#579)

This is David, your em-dash friendly yet very 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!».

Before we begin: I'm off in the Swiss Alps for two weeks, so the next newsletter will be in your inbox August 7th. If you need some extra reading while I'm gone, have a look at this year's book club recommendations: 26 books that moved curious minds to action.

1. The Corruption of Lindsey Graham

This really isn't about Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator who died last week. This multipart series is a case study in the rise of authoritarianism. As the author writes in his introduction: «I’m not interested in what’s distinctive about Graham. I’m interested in what isn’t.» It's the story of a slow poisoning, step by step, from one rationalisation to the next. A chilling read.

2. I’m 38 and I Can’t Support Myself Anymore

Our obsession with productivity, examined from the perspective of a disabled person. «Maybe this is part of why disability makes people uncomfortable. We interrupt the fantasy capitalism sells us: that worth can be earned and optimized through enough effort.»

3. Understanding large values: It's our ethical duty

With my background in data journalism, I've always loved the challenge of finding good ways of communicating numbers. How they compare, how small or how large something is. I'm intrigued by Amanda's take here: We cannot afford to be bad at grasping large numbers. «Our world is increasingly moving towards extreme values: Damages from climate change, deaths due to genocide, wealth that knows no bounds. And we can't tackle them if we can't wrap our heads around the numbers.»

4. Stop AI-Shaming Our Precious, Kindly Em Dashes—Please

The rant the much-maligned Em dash deserved: «I stand before you today with violence in my heart. I do not come in peace. [...] In this fallen world of ours, there exist certain ideas that must be annihilated before goodness can flourish. I am here to rain holy fire upon one of those ideas, and I am here to do so in the name of a punctuation mark.»

5. Our Plastic-Surgery Nightmare

How Instagram and AI continue to shape and converge beauty standards. «It would be ideal, maximally profitable, for the tech and beauty industries if the gaze that emerges from the face learns to seek nothing but its own reflection, and if the gaze that looks at the face learns to stop seeking anything strictly human at all.»

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.

Our 5-year-old son got completely obsessed with flags during the World Cup, so I built this little app for him to practice: Flag Buddy (German version here)
The ideal shelf for all of us who buy too many books.
Rare for an album to work equally well as ambient background music and for listening with intent. This one does.
Stunning shots from the 2026 Aerial Photographer of the Year contest.
Fredkin's paradox: If you're having a hard time deciding between two things, it probably means it doesn't matter all that much which you choose.
I'm hopeless at this, but if you like movies, you might enjoy this game.
Wikipedia articles, turned into a 3D cityscape.

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 wonderful book about a (not so) simple quest: Danish journalist Lea Korsgaard decided she wanted to see all 64 butterfly species in Denmark in one season. Buy it here.