Geopolitics:
Democracy:
- The most intolerant wins: the dictatorship of the small minority.
- Yellow vests knock out 60% of all speed cameras in France.
- Obese patients and smokers banned from routine surgery.
- 50% millennials would give up their right to vote to get student loans erased.
- The superrich endanger Democracy.
- Lottocracy: choosing representatives by lottery.
- Norwegian oil fund for future generations.
- Authoritarian nations are turning the internet into a weapon.
- «Data is not the new oil – it’s the new plutonium».
- Tech companies are deleting evidence of war crimes.
- Facebook and Instagram delete posts from brazilian president Bolsonaro after he dismissed social distancing.
Free speech:
- China is blocking all language editions of Wikipedia. | Censorship in China allows government criticism but silences collective expression.
- Australian universities are accused of trading free speech for cash.
- TikTok told moderators to suppress posts by poor or «ugly» people.
- Russians paint opposition name on snow to get snow removed.
- More than 1900 journalists killed between 1992 and 2019.
Economy:
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.
- Poor kids need summer jobs. Rich kids get them.
- Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not.
- Male suicides: how social perfectionism kills.
- A prenup is the latest must-have for tech startup founders in love.
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.
- When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling.
- Finland calls for a 6h/4 days work week.
- Résumés are starting to look like Instagram - and sometimes even Tinder.
- A company hired anyone who applied.
- 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.
- Half of Chinese born after 1995 chose «influencer» as their most desired occupation.
Skills:
Education:
- American students head to Germany for free college.
- University of Chicago graduate students vote to unionize.
- On average, skipping college and investing tuition costs nets a higher return.
- Hyperinflation in America: the end of grades?
- Monetizing your knowledge will be the next gig economy.
- Finland’s plan to train its population in AI.
- New classes: mindfulness and how not to be duped by the news.
Parenting:
Health:
- Unnecessary medical care is harming patients physically and financially.
- Teenager can walk again thanks to 3D printed spinal implant.
- Scientists have shown that young blood rejuvenates old tissues.
- Fasting triggers stem cell regeneration of damaged, old immune system.
- Why does inflammation seem to underlie all sickness?
- Instead of filling cavities, dentists may soon regenerate teeth.
- Declines in human and dogs sperm quality.
- Death rates rising for all americans.
- Ebola is now curable.
- COVID-19 coronavirus. | Is COVID-19 a real threat?
- Two-hour marathon barrier breaked.
Media:
- 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.
- The lonely work of moderating a web community.
- Netflix saves kids from up to 400 hours of commercials a year.
- The great race to rule streaming TV.
- Slow Television or confort TV.
- 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.
- 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.
- In the future we will photograph everything and look at nothing.
- Loot boxes are gambling.
- EU brings in «right to repair» rules for appliances.
Religion:
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.
- I dream of canteens.
- Sweden wants to revive Europe’s overnight trains.
- How airbnb is silently changing himalayan villages.
- Too many people want to travel.
- Begpacking.
Business:
Retail:
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.
- Americans' plastic recycling is dumped in landfills.
- The war on food waste is a waste of time.
- People are recycling too much garbage, and it's threatening the industry.
- Repair is as important as innovation. | 40-year-old tractors now a hot commodity.
Energy:
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.
- NASA says earth is greener today than 20 years ago mostly because China and India.
- Plant life expanding over the Himalayas.
- «Climate change is water change.»
- A quarter of humanity faces looming water crises.
- CO2 in the atmosphere just exceeded 415ppm for the first time in human history.
- 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.
- The real price of buying cheap clothes. | The fashion industry emits more carbon than international flights and maritime shipping combined.
- 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.
- Innovative farms: world's largest urban farm on a Paris rooftop | world's largest vertical farm in New Jersey | world's first floating farm in Rotterdam.
- California farmers are «planting» solar panels as water supplies dry up.
Urbanism:
- 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.
- The allure of small towns for big city freelancers.
- Living near trees, not just green space, improves wellbeing.
- 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 «smart city».
- Fare free public transport.
- E-bikes could be the electric revolution cities need. | In a global health emergency, the bicycle shines.
- How Jakartans built an entire village on top of a mall.
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.
- 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.
- LightSail 2 spacecraft successfully demonstrates flight by light.
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.
- 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.
- AI at late 2019.
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 4 or a iPad Pro as my main computer.
- How ARM got so successful without the public really noticing.
- Vim clutch: hardware pedal for improved text editing speed.
- Smart glasses that look normal.
Social: