How Humanity Gave Itself an Extra Life
+ End of the pandemic, Exploding lovesong, Drop a drop (#350)
1. How Humanity Gave Itself an Extra Life
Over the past 100 years, the average human life span has doubled. The NYT Magazine has a fascinating deep dive into how this became possible (among the reasons: safer milk, vaccinations, statistics). One of the most interesting aspects: How in some phases increases in life expectancy were egalitarian while in others only privileged people benefited. Read it now.
2. We Need To Get Real About How the Pandemic Will End
Last week, I recommended a piece on how the pandemic will end. This one pairs well with it, as it takes a different perspective and strikes a more dramatic tone. Zeynep Tufekci tries to wrap her mind «around what increasingly looks like a catastrophic possibility for the rest of the pandemic: […] It is increasingly likely that most of the deaths from this pandemic will happen even after we got the vaccines.» The post-pandemic future is near, it's just not very evenly distributed. Read it now.
3. Song Exploder: Imagine Dragons — Follow you
A great exhibit for why I love the Song Exploder podcast: It manages to turn an ordinary earworm for the masses into something special, by revealing how it came to be. Bit by bit, you listen as the song takes shape — a song about love and loyalty, triggered by an appointment with the divorce lawyer. Listen to it now.
4. Don’t ask forgiveness, radiate intent
You’ve likely heard it, you’ve probably said it yourself: «It’s better to beg forgiveness than ask permission.» I’ve used it countless times to allow myself (and people in my teams) to shake things up. And yet, I can’t help but agree with this take, making the case for a third option. Read it now.
5. Help a Computer Win the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest
Each week, The New Yorker challenges its readers to come up with a caption for one of their cartoons. The creative geniuses at The Pudding have started an experiment: Can artificial intelligence create humour, good enough to win the contest? Each week, it will produce three captions, and you can help train the model by telling it how good they are. Check it out. (Bonus: did you know that there are three universal captions that work with every cartoon?)
What else?
Tired of working from home? Consider this guy.
Fun visualisation: Drop a raindrop anywhere in the United States and watch where it ends up (try starting as close to the Great Lakes as you can while still ending up in the Gulf of Mexico).
Unassumingly futuristic: A statue that serves as a portal between Vilnius/Lithuania and Lublin/Poland.
Looking forward to this podcast: Be Antiracist with Ibram X. Kendi.
«Weaponized uncertainty» is such an apt term.
Milky Way photographs never get old.
Thanks for reading. Have a nice weekend. If you’d like, you can get the next issue of the Weekly Filet directly in your inbox. That would be nice, wouldn’t it?
— David 👋