Weekly Filet #250: The (outdated?) right to bear arms. And more.
So, here we are. Issue #250. Some of you have been around from the very beginning, some have joined along the way. I'm grateful for each of you for making this exercise in self discipline worthwhile. If you enjoy this weekly newsletter of mine and wouldn't mind another 250 issues of it, I'd appreciate if you recommended it to people who you think might like it, too. You can point them to weeklyfilet.com, where they'll find the complete archive of all links I've ever recommended and where they can subscribe. Thanks for your help. -- David
1. The 2nd Amendment is 145 characters. How would you rewrite it? (Los Angeles Times)
Sadly, massacres like the one in Las Vegas this week, are always followed by the exact same cascade of reactions and non-actions. If you followed the news, you have – once again – learned how unique the USA is in terms of gun violence, you've heard the calls for action and the pushbacks referencing the 2nd amendment. It's almost numbingly predictable. Here's where I think the LA Times had a good, novel idea: The 2nd amendment is 226 years old – and deemed outdated by some (because arms looked a little different back then...). So the Times asked their readers: How should it be rewritten?
2. Does Even Mark Zuckerberg Know What Facebook Is? (New York Magazine)
The best text on Facebook and its role in, well, the world, that I've read in a long while. It excels in that it addresses the difficulty of grasping Facebook as a company, as a community, as a phenomenon. It doesn't try to reduce complexity, but embraces it instead. Key quote: «Facebook has grown so big, and become so totalizing, that we can’t really grasp it all at once. Like a four-dimensional object, we catch slices of it when it passes through the three-dimensional world we recognize.»
3. The Uber Game (Financial Times)
Become a Uber driver for a week and make all the right decisions so that you are – unlike me – able to pay your mortgage. A great news game.
4. 🔊 Clear Language by Balmorhea (Bandcamp)
Minimalist soundscapes, maximum listening pleasure. Balmorhea from Austin, Texas have released their latest record and it's gooooood.
5. Physicists find we’re not living in a computer simulation (Cosmos)
«We regret to inform you that reality is real.» is only one of the many great reactions on Twitter to this story. I cannot tell you exactly how the proof worked, but apparently, no computer in the universe could ever be powerful enough to simulate the world we live in.
And with the new-found certitude that everything is real,
onwards to Weekly Filet #500!