Welcome to a new issue of the Weekly Filet, the newsletter that steals your time by giving you so many great things to read, watch and listen to.
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1. How STRANGE are your study animals?
The first thing I learned in this article: There’s a term to describe the bias experimental studies can have when their participants are not representative of the world population, but are from societies that are: WEIRD – western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic. (So, when you report on such studies, you should never write «A new study has found that humans…», but rather «A new study has found that weird people…» – which in itself is already great). The second thing I learned (and what the article is actually about): The same happens when humans (weird people?) study animals. Those animals are…STRANGE – which can make study results less reliable than one might think. Fascinating read. Read it now.
2. 30 Years Ago, Romania Deprived Thousands of Babies of Human Contact
Can a person unloved in childhood learn to love? In 1990, the world discovered Romania’s network of «child gulags» in which an estimated 170000 infants, children, and teens were being «raised». What became of them? Extraordinary longread. Read it now.
3. Emerging COVID-19 success story: Vietnam’s commitment to containment
A country of nearly 100 million people, zero deaths from COVID-19 – Vietnam is one of the success stories in dealing with the novel coronavirus. This article analyses how Vietnam did it and what other countries can learn. If you have little time, there’s a handy summary at the end (and make sure to have a look at the impressive chart on testing midway through the article). Read it now.
4. We Socialize Bailouts. We Should Socialize Successes, Too.
If the state spends huge amounts of taxpayer money for bailouts or to help businesses get started, it must make sure taxpayers benefit if those investments prove successful, economist Mariana Mazzucato argues. If you’d like to go deeper on this, I highly recommend her books. Read it now.
5. An Animated Guide to Nature's Best Wayfinding Secrets
How to use the moon to find South and what to make of trees’ checkmark shape – after we’ve learnt that humans tend to get lost in the woods in issue #306, a useful and beautifully illustrated antidote. Find your way by following this link.
What else?
Got me thinking: «‹You’ll get more conservative when you’re older› were words spoken by the more privileged of a generation who were actually saying ‹I expect that you, like me, will acquire wealth and property as you age, and therefore stop desiring to challenge that status quo›». (source)
Made me laugh: «Parent: If all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you do it too? – Machine learning model: Yes.» (source)
Forget about sudokus: The NYT has a new type of game, and it’s beautiful.
Trumpian rhapsody: How to Compilation Volume 1
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