Geopolitics:

• Cuisine bridges cultures. | How Political Science became irrelevant.
• Tech companies are becoming «independent nations». +
• A new cold war has begun. | China mocked US officially and is overtaking US in scientific research.
• The new space race: Three spacecraft headed to Mars last summer. | China lands a rover on Mars. +
• The new military branch: The rise of hacking armies. +
• Oil’s collapse is a geopolitical reset in disguise.
• Eurosclerosis. +

Democracy:

• Globalization may be merging democracy and autocracy: Democracy under siege: 15 years of decline. +
• America’s new corporate tyranny. + | The rise of the «Liberaltarian».
• Censorship and mass surveillance spreads in the world’s authoritarian nations and democracies. | «Data is not the new oil – it’s the new plutonium». | The war on disinformation is a war on dissent. + | EU message and chat control. + | Resistance: Germany’s new government plans «right to encryption» and ban on biometric mass surveillance. +
• The dictatorship of the small minority: The most intolerant wins. | The electoral lessons of the working class. | Yellow vests knock out 60% of all speed cameras in France. | Obese patients and smokers banned from routine surgery.
• Alternative paths: Lottocracy. | 50% millennials would give up their right to vote to get student loans erased. | Norwegian oil fund for future generations. | China CCP to nationalize Alibaba.
• Futurology: Algocracy. + | Vaccine passport on a microchip implant. +

Free speech:

• Almost 2000 journalists killed between 1992 and 2021.
• In the West: Cancel culture. + | It’s not funny anymore. + | How objectivity in journalism became a matter of opinion. Resistance: Poland announces online freedom of speech bill.
• In China: Wikipedia is blocked. | China allows some government criticism but silences collective expression. | Zoom closed account of US-based Chinese activist «to comply with local law».
• Russians paint opposition name on snow to get snow removed.
• Hotel guest in Thailand arrested and jailed for defamation after posting bad reviews.
• Trading free speech for cash: On universities. | TikTok told moderators to suppress posts by poor or «ugly» people.

Economy:

• Surveillance Capitalism. | Universal basic income is Capitalism 2.0.
• Economic rationality: 40% of foreign investment is aimed at tax dodging. | 20% 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. +
• Geoarbitrage: Living in a van in Google’s backyard. | The power of money depends on where you live. | Demonetized cost of living. | Independently poor.
• Shrinkflation. +

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.
• 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. | Tech workers and university graduate students plan 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:

• On life expectancy growth: The corporatization of nursing homes. | Japan’s prisons are a haven for elderly women.
• Aging Japan wants automation not immigration. | The Great Replacement.
• New visa allows 70% of Hong Kong residents to migrate to UK. +

Society:

• Why no one answers their phone anymore.
• A skewed spectrum: Teens who refuse to use social media. vs. Teens so addicted to cellphones they’re going to detox centers.
• Social media is a role-playing game: Parasocial relationships. + | «Influencer» is the most desired occupation among youngsters. | Chinese Instagram village. | Flattery-driven open-source. +
• No one fails anymore: everybody «pivots». | How the self-esteem craze took over America. | Addiction to outrage. +
• Male shaming: How social perfectionism kills. | Hikikomori: Japan’s modern hermits. | Incel. | Russia bans Pornhub and YouPorn. | UK to open its first sex doll brothel. | AI girlfriend seducing China’s lonely men. Collateral damage: Social exclusion fuels extremism in young men. | Boyfriend role-play.

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. | The most precious resource is agency. +
• Youtube camps that teach kids how to be famous. | We are sending more foster kids to prison than college. +
• Parents of daughters are more likely to divorce than those with sons. +
• Kids can be surprisingly mean to robots.

Education & skills:

• Focus has become more valuable than intelligence. | Monetizing your knowledge will be the next gig economy.
• On college: Elite over-production. + | Investing tuition costs nets a higher return. | American students head to Germany for free college.
• New classes: mindfulness and how not to be duped by the news. | Finland’s plan to train its population in AI.
• On didactics: Hyperinflation means the end of grades. | Remote learning didn’t work. | Computer game on school reading list.
• Trendy skills: Elephant in the room: web design work is drying up.
• Unpopular skills: 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.

Work:

• Remote work is becoming the norm: $1 billion business where all employees work remotely. | Asynchronous communication is the real reason remote workers are more productive. | When you’re a «digital nomad» the world is your office. | The unintended consequences of working from home.
• Gig economy is western people discovering servants. | Big cities no longer deliver for low-skill workers.
• Over 7 million Americans’ jobs are at risk as self-driving trucks become viable. Fortunately most people would rather lose their job to a robot than another human.
• Skills mismatch: A company hired anyone who applied. | When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling. | Resumes are starting to look like Instagram - and sometimes even Tinder. | College-educated workers are taking over the American factory floor.
• Alternative paths: Four-day week means «I don’t waste holidays on chores». | Cafe opens in Tokyo staffed by robots controlled by paralyzed people.

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.
• Why does inflammation seem to underlie all sickness? | Fasting triggers stem cell regeneration of damaged, old immune system. | Young blood rejuvenates old tissues.
• The global fertility rate is falling. | Declines in human and dogs sperm quality.
• Death rates rising for all americans.
• COVID-19 coronavirus is here forever. + | Mobility Index.
• mRNA COVID-19 vaccines herald a new era for vaccinology.
• Ebola is now curable. | Promising vaccines for HIV + and malaria. +
• Mosquitoes kill more than 700,000 people every year.
• Governments worldwide consider ditching daylight saving time.
• On eyes: Patient regains sight following artificial cornea implantation ending a decade of blindness. + | Myopia correcting «smart glasses». +
• On teeth: Instead of filling cavities, dentists may soon regenerate them. | Why we have so many problems with our teeth.
• On spine: Walking again thanks to 3D printed spinal implant.
• On kidneys: Pig kidney has been successfully transplanted into a human. + | Bioartificial kidney. +

Sports:

• Two-hour marathon barrier breaked.
• Soccer is not a sport anymore. +

Media:

• Media as food. +
• Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor. | The internet of creation disappeared. Now we have the internet of surveillance and control. | SEO is gentrifying the internet.
• 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.
• Superstars are losing market share in streaming. | Vinyl set to outsell CDs for first time since 1986.
• Amazon is winning at publishing.
• The lonely work of moderating a web community.

Culture:

• Hedonism, sex and fear – why the Weimar republic is in vogue.
• As crime dries up, Japan’s police hunt for things to do. | The escape room games industry is booming. | Loot boxes are gambling.
• How Normie Minimalism and Farmhouse Chic took over contemporary design. | Aging parents with lots of stuff and children who don’t want it.
• The most used languages on the internet. +

Beliefs & ethics:

• Human-monkey chimera embryos created in lab for first time. +
• Iceland to build first temple to Norse gods since Viking age. | First statue in honor of bitcoin creator. +
• «Communism is a faith». | Sharing Economy might be also. + | The vegetarians who turned into butchers.
• Personal experiences bridge moral and political divides better than facts. + | Most violence in the world is motivated by moral sentiments.
• Should I block ads?

Tourism:

• Travel democratization: Too many people want to travel. | How airbnb is silently changing himalayan villages.
• «No one likes being a tourist»: The rise of the anti-tour. | Much of the seaside’s appeal comes from its association with less structure and more freedom. | Chernobyl’s «stalker» subculture. +
• Unconventional tourism: Randomized living. | Crowdfunded wandering. + | Voluntourism: do western do-gooders actually do harm? + | Begpacking. | Bookstore allows people to run the shop while renting an apartment upstairs.
• On track for a resurgence? Europe’s night trains. | Canteens.

Business:

• All companies are technology companies now. +
• Github is Microsoft’s $7.5b undo button. | Bringing back old features. +
• Eventually, everything will be a subscription: Porsches on demand with a $2,000-a-month subscription. | Citroën introduces a two-seat EV that costs €19.99 a month.
• Amazon uses crowdfunding to minimize risk. +
• Tesla makes more money trading bitcoin than selling cars. +

Retail:

• Democratising the right to lazyness. + | 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. +
• Shopping sucks now.

Reduce, reuse & recycle:

• There is no trash with Lego and there is no trash in a forest.
• The end of «plastic age»: 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.
• 91% of plastic isn’t recycled. | Recycling was a lie to sell more plastic, industry experts say. | Americans’ plastic recycling is dumped in landfills. Alternative path: Recycling waste plastic into strong cheap bricks. +
• «Right to repair»: EU introduce rules for appliances and Apple announces self service repair. + | 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? | Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?
• The photonic age. + | Solar now produces a better return on investment than oil. | Battery costs have plunged 89% since 2010. +
• 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:

• «Climate change is water change.» | A quarter of humanity faces looming water crises. | Water futures as a commodity.
• Earth is greener today than 20 years ago. | Though forests burn, trees retake farmland globally as agroforestry advances. | Plant life expanding over the Himalayas.
• Desertification combat: Ethiopia plants 350 million trees in one day. | Egypt is planting trees in the desert using wastewater. | Man who single-handedly converted a washed-out land into a 1360 acre forest.
• On biodiversity: insect and bird populations are declining. | Bugs are evolving to eat plastic. +
• CO2 in the atmosphere just exceeded 415ppm for the first time in human history. | The dream of carbon air capture edges toward reality. +
• France will introduce a tax on airlines flying from its airports to help support the environment. Meanwhile 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?
• «War on meat»: UN 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? + | The promise and perils of insect farming. +
• Innovative farms: largest urban farm on a rooftop. | floating farm. | 2-acre vertical farm out-produces 720-acre flat farm.
• California farmers are «planting» solar panels as water supplies dry up.

Urbanism:

• The city of the future is one with way less parking. | Cars are parked 95% of the time. Hints: Fare free public transport. | E-bikes could be the electric revolution cities need. | In a global health emergency, the bicycle shines.
• The suburb of the future. | The tiny house trend. | Too many too big houses. | The allure of small towns for big city freelancers.
• The resurgence of nomadism: In a world of digital nomads, we will all be made homeless. | Dorm living for professionals comes to San Francisco. | Movable housing for scalable cities. + | Living on pennies with a million-dollar view: car campers in beach parking lots.
• Futurology: Crypto cities. +

Construction:

• The smart home still sucks. +
• Is 3d printing the future of construction? $10k tiny house in 24 hours. | 3d printed two-story house.
• Cement produces more pollution than all the trucks in the world.
• Canadian cities take wooden skyscrapers to new heights.
• How Jakartans built an entire village on top of a mall.

Transports:

• The age of car electrification: Registrations for EVs overtook diesel in Europe. | Amazon orders 100K electric delivery trucks. | Electric pickup trucks.
• Eco-friendly long travels: Electric flight is finally upon us. | China laying tracks for 1000km/h maglev trains. | Longest undersea rail tunnel between Helsinki-Tallinn.
• Private space exploration has started: SpaceX successfully launches two humans into orbit and wins contract to develop spacecraft to land astronauts on the moon. +
• Futurology: Auto bodies for energy storage. | Windowless planes. | Electrified wingsuit. | Flight by light. | Microchip implants as tickets. | Klimaticket. +

Drones, robotics & AI:

• Autonomous drone navigates through the forest at 40 km/h. + and may fly for days with new photovoltaic engine.
• 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 can seed a forest | 100k trees a day | kill weeds and invasive nautical flora. They can even be used as sheep dogs.
• Drones can rescue swimmers and search for lost hikers.
• Drones map slums for land titling.
• The dark side: Cartels adopt drones armed with explosives. + | Human and car tracking autonomous drones are now on the market. + | «RoboCop» stores pedestrians’ faces and scans license plates.
• Boston Dynamics is selling a robot to the public for the first time in its 28-year history.
• Self-driving vehicles: truck delivered butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days. | Autonomous boats seem more solvable than autonomous cars. +
• First AI poker bot to beat professionals at multiplayer game.
• Machine learning: the great stagnation. + | Why is AI so useless for business?

Tools:

• Your phone vs Supercomputers. + | How ARM got so successful without the public really noticing. | Apple M1 | Intel’s disruption is now complete. | Using a Raspberry Pi 400 or a iPad Pro as my main computer.
• Analogic resistance in a digital world: Mazda and US Navy will replace touchscreen controls with mechanical ones. | Vim clutch: hardware pedal for improved text editing speed.
• Timeless: Lego is the perfect toy. | Paper is the real «killer app». | Excel never dies. +
• Computer files are going extinct.
• Privacy tools: encryption against global mass surveillance.

Blockchain:

• Elephant in the room: The Crypto-Chernobyl. + | How I heat my home by mining crypto currencies. +
• Crypto compared with fiat currencies. + | S&P to launch cryptocurrency indexes in 2021. | Belarus: the first government in the world to offer full blockchain regulation.
• The quest for use cases: NFTs are the new conceptual art. + | Bitcoin as a hyperobject. +| Reward points are actually a good use case for blockchains.
• Traveling the world on $25m of bitcoin profits. | Crypto leaders are obsessed with life extension. +