You should waste more time.
Plus: An wake-up call. (#575)
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.
Before we dive into this week's recommendations – final call for this year's book club: What's a book that moved you to action? (I mean, do you really want to be the type of person who wasn't moved to action by this final call?)
1. On the Difference Between Rest and Idleness
The case for more idleness, published by the aptly called Idleness Gazette.
Some time should be wasted. That is the claim. Not all of it, not most of it, but some, deliberately, as a matter of principle. Because a life in which every hour serves work, including the hours of rest that serve work by restoring you for more work, is a life that belongs entirely to work, even in its leisure, even in its sleep. [...] The idle hour is the one hour that does not belong to the project of your own improvement. It is, in the most literal sense, free time.
2. Body Language
What happens when we eliminate the body from the act of communicating? When we are no longer physically engaged in crafting a message? This essay, beautifully designed as well, traces how human expression moved from the throat down the arm, first to the hand for writing, the fingers for typing, then the pinkie for balancing a smartphone. And how that we've run out of body? «We are building a world where every message will be bodily to receive and bodiless to send.»
Terry Godier
3. Why Smart People Keep Getting AI Wrong
«This is the left's version of climate denial.» That's the hook of historian Rutger Bregman's video essay, designed as a wake-up call for people who underestimate or dismiss the transformative force of artificial intelligence that could dissolve the foundations that built every democracy. While I think the comparison is flawed in many ways, it's still a helpful mental model. More people should ask themselves: Am I taking this seriously enough and do I base my beliefs in the best available information?
4. Why Social Democracies Win World Cups
A slightly different take on the World Cup. With Simon Kuper, author of the fantastic book «Soccernomics» and the newly released «World Cup Fever».
Simon Kuper
5. Could Switzerland Become the First Country to Cap Its Population?
The outside view on what's at stake in my home country this Sunday. We've seen Brexit play out over the last 10 years, and are really this close to voting «Hold my beer.» Favourite part of the New Yorker article:
«Our citizens,» [the pioneer of the population cap] announced, «have finally had enough.» In a country as prosperous as Switzerland, one could be forgiven for asking, Enough of what?»
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.
- Peru is electing its next president. And, shall we say, it's a cloooooooooose race.
- This week, everyone is talking about one particular basketball court in NYC, but all of these are beautiful.
- Ask an astronaut.
- Apparently, you can be allergic to exercise.
- I actually would have thought there'd be less blue in this map.
- An evil genius (who knows a bit about game theory) must have set this up.
- When you realise that the second-highest paid CEO whose bar in the bar chart is barely visible next to the one above, pocketed a cool 848 million last year...
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.
What do you make of your time once you realise you have only about 4000 weeks in total? I‘d say investing a couple of hours in this will provide a good return on investment. Buy it here.
A gem from the archive
David Bauer
The Weekly Filet archive offers more than 2900 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