Geopolitics:

• Cuisine bridges cultures. | How Political Science became irrelevant.
• Facebook is becoming an «independent nation».
• A new cold war has begun. | Official mock from China. | China is overtaking the US in scientific research.
• The new space race: Three spacecraft headed to Mars last summer.
• The rise of hacking armies. +
• Oil’s collapse is a geopolitical reset in disguise.
• Eurosclerosis. +

Democracy:

• 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.
• 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.
• 50% millennials would give up their right to vote to get student loans erased.
• Lottocracy: choosing representatives by lottery.
• 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:

• Aging Japan wants automation not immigration. | The Great Replacement.
• New visa allows 70% of Hong Kong residents to migrate to UK. +

Social:

• Why no one answers their phone anymore.
• Logged off: teens who refuse to use social media.
• The teenagers so addicted to cellphones they’re going to detox centers.
• Social media is a role-playing game: Chinese Instagram village. | Flattery-driven open-source. +
• Male suicides: how social perfectionism kills. | Hikikomori: Japan’s modern hermits. | Social exclusion fuels extremism in young men. | Incel.
• Russia bans Pornhub and YouPorn: «meet someone in real life».
• UK to open its first sex doll brothel. | Boyfriend role-play. | AI girlfriend seducing China’s lonely men.
• Scientists are teaching robots to avoid children because kids can be surprisingly mean.
• The corporatization of nursing homes. | Japan’s prisons are a haven for elderly women.

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. | Promising vaccines for HIV + and malaria. +
• 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:

• Iceland to build first temple to Norse gods since Viking age.
• The vegetarians who turned into butchers.
• «Communism is a faith».
• 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:

• 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. +
• 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? +
• The promise and perils of insect farming. +
• 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:

• Canadian cities take wooden skyscrapers to new heights.
• Cement produces more pollution than all the trucks in the world.
• 3D Printing: a $10K tiny house in 24 hours. | an entire two-story house.
• How Jakartans built an entire village on top of a mall.

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 and wins contract to develop spacecraft to land astronauts on the moon. +

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». | Excel never dies. +
• 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:

• Elephant in the room: 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.
• NFTs are the new conceptual art. + | Reward points are actually a good use case for blockchains.