Geopolitics:
- Eating for peace: how cuisine bridges cultures.
- How Political Science became irrelevant.
- Facebook is becoming an «independent nation».
- China is overtaking the US in scientific research.
- A new cold war has begun. | Official mock from China.
- Three spacecraft headed to Mars last summer.
- Oil’s collapse is a geopolitical reset in disguise.
- Eurosclerosis. +
Democracy:
- Lottocracy: choosing representatives by lottery.
- The most intolerant wins: the dictatorship of the small minority.
- Yellow vests knock out 60% of all speed cameras in France. | The electoral lessons of the working class.
- 50% millennials would give up their right to vote to get student loans erased.
- Obese patients and smokers banned from routine surgery.
- «Data is not the new oil – it’s the new plutonium».
- Internet censorship spreads in the world’s democracies and authoritarian nations. | The war on disinformation is a war on dissent. +
- America’s new corporate tyranny. + | The rise of the «Liberaltarian».
- China CCP to nationalize Alibaba.
- Norwegian oil fund for future generations.
Free speech:
- China is blocking all language editions of Wikipedia. | Censorship in China allows government criticism but silences collective expression.
- Zoom closed account of US-based Chinese activist «to comply with local law».
- TikTok told moderators to suppress posts by poor or «ugly» people.
- Australian universities are accused of trading free speech for cash.
- Cancel culture. + | How objectivity in journalism became a matter of opinion.
- Poland announces online freedom of speech bill.
- Russians paint opposition name on snow to get snow removed.
- Hotel guest in Thailand arrested and jailed for defamation after posting bad reviews.
- Almost 2000 journalists killed between 1992 and 2021.
Economy:
- Surveillance Capitalism. | Universal basic income is Capitalism 2.0.
- Almost 40% of foreign investment is aimed at tax dodging. | A fifth of china’s homes are empty.
- On eve of bankruptcy, U.S. firms shower execs with bonuses.
- The Not-Com bubble is popping.
- Two worlds. +
- Living in a van in Google’s backyard.
- Geoarbitrage: the power of money depends on where you live.
- Demonetized cost of living. | Independently poor.
Inequality:
- How «places that don’t matter» fueled populism: a geographer’s new theory puts regional inequality ahead of personal inequity as a cause of revolt.
- In the last decade, private land in the US has become increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few.
- Decline in unionization has fed the rise in incomes at the top. | Google workers announce plans to unionize.
- Poor kids need summer jobs. Rich kids get them. | Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not.
- Americans are more worried about their sons than their daughters.
- A prenup is the latest must-have for tech startup founders in love.
- For black CEOs in Silicon Valley, humiliation is a part of doing business.
Demography:
Work:
- $1 billion business where all 700 employees work remotely.
- When you’re a «digital nomad» the world is your office. | Asynchronous communication is the real reason remote workers are more productive.
- The unintended consequences of working from home.
- Four-day week means «I don’t waste holidays on chores». | When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling.
- Gig economy is western people discovering servants. | Big cities no longer deliver for low-skill workers.
- College-educated workers are taking over the American factory floor.
- Over 7 million Americans’ jobs, including 3.5 million driving jobs, are at risk as self-driving trucks become viable.
- Most people would rather lose their job to a robot than another human.
- Cafe opens in Tokyo staffed by robots controlled by paralyzed people.
- A company hired anyone who applied.
- Resumes are starting to look like Instagram - and sometimes even Tinder.
Skills:
- Focus has become more valuable than intelligence.
- Half of Chinese born after 1995 chose «influencer» as their most desired occupation.
- High-paying trade jobs sit empty, while high school grads line up for university.
- Hand skills: doctors of sewing needed.
- A CEO who can write.
- Elephant in the room: web design work is drying up.
Education:
- American students head to Germany for free college.
- University of Chicago graduate students vote to unionize.
- The results are in for remote learning: it didn’t work.
- On average, skipping college and investing tuition costs nets a higher return. | Monetizing your knowledge will be the next gig economy.
- Hyperinflation in America: the end of grades?
- New classes: mindfulness and how not to be duped by the news.
- Finland’s plan to train its population in AI.
- Poland puts computer game on school reading list.
Parenting:
- Children spend less time outside than prison inmates.
- How children lost the right to roam in just 4 generations.
- Making playgrounds a little more dangerous.
- Youtube camps that teach kids how to be famous.
- Parents of daughters are more likely to divorce than those with sons. +
- We are sending more foster kids to prison than college. +
Health:
- Unnecessary medical care is harming patients physically and financially.
- In the era of hygiene, the case for showering less.
- Elevated rates of autism in transgender and gender-diverse individuals.
- Teenager can walk again thanks to 3D printed spinal implant.
- Instead of filling cavities, dentists may soon regenerate teeth. | Why we have so many problems with our teeth.
- Fasting triggers stem cell regeneration of damaged, old immune system.
- Why does inflammation seem to underlie all sickness?
- Scientists have shown that young blood rejuvenates old tissues.
- Death rates rising for all americans.
- Declines in human and dogs sperm quality. | The global fertility rate is falling.
- COVID-19 coronavirus. | Citymapper Mobility Index.
- mRNA COVID-19 vaccines herald a new era for vaccinology.
- Ebola is now curable.
- Mosquitoes kill more than 700,000 people every year.
- Two-hour marathon barrier breaked.
- Governments worldwide consider ditching daylight saving time.
- Patient regains sight following artificial cornea implantation ending a decade of blindness. + | Myopia correcting «smart glasses». +
Media:
- The lonely work of moderating a web community.
- SEO is gentrifying the internet.
- Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor. | The internet of creation disappeared. Now we have the internet of surveillance and control.
- Click farms booming in China. | We’re building a dystopia just to make people click on ads.
- Netflix saves kids from up to 400 hours of commercials a year.
- The great race to rule streaming TV.
- Slow Television or confort TV.
- Media as food. +
- Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986.
- World’s biggest music artists are losing market share in streaming.
- Amazon is winning at publishing.
Culture:
- Aging parents with lots of stuff and children who don’t want it.
- How Normie Minimalism and Farmhouse Chic took over contemporary design.
- How the self-esteem craze took over America. | In our cynical age, no one fails anymore, everybody «pivots».
- Hedonism, sex and fear – why the Weimar republic is in vogue.
- The escape room games industry is booming.
- Addiction to outrage. +
- As crime dries up, Japan’s police hunt for things to do.
- Loot boxes are gambling.
- EU brings in «right to repair» rules for appliances.
- The most used languages on the internet. +
Beliefs & ethics:
Tourism:
- Bookstore allows people to run the shop while renting an apartment upstairs.
- Much of the seaside’s appeal comes from its association with less structure and more freedom.
- «No one likes being a tourist»: the rise of the anti-tour.
- Randomized living. | Crowdfunded wandering. + | Begpacking.
- I dream of canteens.
- Europe’s night trains are on track for a resurgence.
- How airbnb is silently changing himalayan villages.
- Too many people want to travel.
Business:
- All companies are technology companies now. +
- Facebook will make the money now.
- Github is Microsoft’s $7.5b undo button.
- Porsches on demand with a $2,000-a-month subscription. | Citroën introduces a two-seat EV that costs €19.99 a month.
- Bringing back old features. +
- Amazon uses crowdfunding to minimize risk. +
Retail:
- Shopping sucks now.
- Amazon hires 427,000 people in 10 months.
- The fanciest shopping center in America is expanding while the rest face a looming retail apocalypse.
- Are the hyper-specialist shops of Berlin the future of retail?
- Raspberry Pi opens first high street store in Cambridge.
- Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free. +
Reduce, reuse, recycle:
- There is no trash with Lego and there is no trash in a forest.
- Global movement towards the phase-out of lightweight plastic bags. End consumer plastics are starting to being banned also.
- Microplastics found in 93% of bottled water tested in global study.
- 91% of plastic isn’t recycled. | Recycling was a lie to sell more plastic, industry experts say.
- Americans’ plastic recycling is dumped in landfills. | Kenya is recycling waste plastic into strong cheap bricks. +
- Repair is as important as innovation. | 40-year-old tractors now a hot commodity.
- People are recycling too much garbage, and it’s threatening the industry.
- The war on food waste is a waste of time.
- No one wants your used clothes anymore.
Energy:
- Could we reboot a modern civilization without fossil fuels?
- Solar now produces a better return on investment than oil. | Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?
- New generation of environmentalists is learning to love atomic power.
- Rolls-Royce plans 16 mini-nuclear plants for UK. | World’s largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly.
- Brewery burns iron as a clean, recyclable fuel.
- The new «gold rush» for green lithium.
Ecology & climate:
- 75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas. Birds are also vanishing from North America.
- Man who single-handedly converted a washed-out land into a 1,360 acre forest.
- Ethiopia plants 350 million trees in one day to combat drought. | Egypt is planting trees in the desert using wastewater.
- NASA says earth is greener today than 20 years ago mostly because China and India. | Though forests burn, trees retake farmland globally as agroforestry advances.
- Plant life expanding over the Himalayas.
- «Climate change is water change.» | A quarter of humanity faces looming water crises.
- Wall Street begins trading water futures as a commodity.
- CO2 in the atmosphere just exceeded 415ppm for the first time in human history.
- Is carbon capture a viable solution? | Sucking carbon dioxide from air is cheaper than scientists thought.
- France will introduce a tax on airlines flying from its airports to help support the environment. | Electric cars are starting to be taxed.
- The fashion industry emits more carbon than international flights and maritime shipping combined. | The real price of buying cheap clothes.
- Greta Thunberg.
Farming:
- True cost of cheap food is health and climate crises.
- Is organic agriculture better for the environment?
- Eat less meat: UN climate change report calls for change to human diet. | Lab-grown meat to go on sale for first time. | How to lower the price of plant-based meat? +
- Innovative farms: world’s largest urban farm on a Paris rooftop | world’s first floating farm in Rotterdam. | 2-acre vertical farm out-produces 720-acre flat farm.
- California farmers are «planting» solar panels as water supplies dry up.
Urbanism:
- The «smart city».
- The suburb of the future.
- The city of the future is one with way less parking. Nowadays cars are parked 95% of the time.
- The tiny house trend. | A growing problem in real estate: too many too big houses.
- Living on pennies with a million-dollar view: car campers in beach parking lots.
- Dorm living for professionals comes to San Francisco. | In a world of digital nomads, we will all be made homeless.
- The allure of small towns for big city freelancers.
- Fare free public transport.
- E-bikes could be the electric revolution cities need. | In a global health emergency, the bicycle shines.
Construction:
Transports:
- Why the age of electric flight is finally upon us.
- Emirates planes could be going windowless.
- Daimler stops developing internal combustion engines to focus on electric cars. | For the first time in Europe, registrations for EVs overtook diesel.
- Carmakers want to ditch battery packs, use auto bodies for energy storage.
- Amazon orders 100K electric delivery trucks.
- Electric pickup trucks: Tesla cibertruck. | Bollinger b2.
- US Navy will replace touchscreen controls with mechanical ones on its destroyers. Mazda is also purging touchscreens from its vehicles.
- Swedish rail line now scans microchip implants in addition to tickets.
- Longest undersea rail tunnel between Helsinki-Tallinn.
- China laying tracks for 1,000km/h maglev trains.
- BMW made the world’s first electrified wingsuit.
- LightSail 2 spacecraft successfully demonstrates flight by light.
- SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit.
Drones, robotics & AI:
- Delivery becomes a reality in remote pacific islands. | Drones can already haul a 20-pound load for 500 miles and land on a moving target.
- Drones will fly for days with new photovoltaic engine.
- Drones can seed a forest | 100k trees a day | kill weeds and invasive nautical flora. Drones can even be used as sheep dogs.
- Drones can rescue swimmers and search for lost hikers.
- Drones map slums for land titling.
- Boston Dynamics is selling a robot to the public for the first time in its 28-year history.
- A self-driving truck delivered butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days.
- «RoboCop» stores pedestrians’ faces and scans license plates.
- First AI poker bot to beat professionals at multiplayer game.
- Machine learning: the great stagnation. + | Why is AI so useless for business?
Tools:
- Lego is the perfect toy.
- Paper is the real «killer app».
- Computer files are going extinct.
- Privacy tools: encryption against global mass surveillance.
- Using a Raspberry Pi 400 or a iPad Pro as my main computer.
- Your phone vs Supercomputers. +
- How ARM got so successful without the public really noticing. | Apple M1 | Intel’s disruption is now complete.
- Vim clutch: hardware pedal for improved text editing speed.
Blockchain:
- Reward points are actually a good use case for blockchains.
- The Crypto-Chernobyl. + | How I heat my home by mining crypto currencies. +
- Belarus: the first government in the world to offer full blockchain regulation.
- S&P to launch cryptocurrency indexes in 2021.
- Traveling the world on $25m of bitcoin profits.
Social: