What's a book that moved you to action?
Plus: The Baguette Index and the Ethiopian running secret. (#573)
It's my favourite newsletter issue of the year! I keep being amazed that so many thoughtful, inspiring people from different backgrounds all over the world read it. Yes, like you. Once a year, I leverage this to everyone’s benefit. It's time for the Weekly Filet Book Club again.
It's really simple: You recommend a book, and get dozens of recommendations in return. To spark your imagination and give your selection a bit of direction, every year comes with its own theme. This year, we'll collect books that have touched your heart and/or mind in such a way that doing nothing was impossible. What's a book that moved you to action?
As always, any type of book is welcome. Classics and recently published ones. Novels, non-fiction, plays, poetry, you name it. I look forward to browsing your recommendations and to sharing everything back to you in a couple of weeks.
And with that, this week's recommendations to help you make sense of what's happening, and imagine what could be.
1. The many lives of Taiwan
An hour of listening very well spent: an in-depth look at Taiwan, for once not through the lens of the geopolitical flashpoint and the technological powerhouse that it is today. Instead, it explores the culture and history of Taiwan in its own right, which in turn helps understand how it became what it is today.
Shelley Rigger
2. Le Baguette Index
This is wonderful in so many ways: Two French guys have created an AI agent that calls bakeries all over France to inquire about the price of a baguette. All the data it gathers is then visualised, ready for you to explore. (And if you understand French, good luck finding all the puns they've peppered the site with.)
Le Baguette Index
3. The Ethiopian running secret
It presents itself as an article about running, but it's really much more than that. It explores «what it takes to stretch the limits of human ability, and how expertise is used, assessed, embraced or rejected.» And how the difference between the Western and African approach is itself a very Western way of looking at things.
4. Counterfactuals
«In a world without counterfactuals, there would be no thought worthy of the name.» A short ode to all the realities that could be but aren't.
admin
5. Why Nobody's Having Babies Anymore
Are birth rates falling worldwide because young people are too busy looking at their phones? It's obviously a bit more multifaceted than this. However, it appears those phones deserve a closer, well, look. In this podcast, John Burn-Murdoch, the FT's Chief Data Reporter, discusses his recent analysis that does indeed point at the smartphone as a major factor in declining birth rates.
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.
- Annual reminder, since it might save lives: drowning doesn't look like drowning.
- More Europeans die of summer heat than Americans of guns (or almost as many, depending on how you look at it). Why compare? «a high-mortality situation in one domain that they’d never accept in another.»
- 3 hours of «Unbelievable Moments From Nature», narrated by David Attenborough.
- Up that hill – looks like a fun race in Vietnam.
- Pick a city, see its current weather visualised with a matching Rothko painting.
- In my ears while writing this: In the Last Hour of Light, by Hrishikesh Hirway.
A gem from the archive
David Bauer
The Weekly Filet archive offers more than 2800 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
The process of gifting a Weekly Filet membership has become a lot easier – so just in case there's a birthday coming up and you're still looking for a nice gift that keeps on giving for an entire year...