The formula for living the best life you could possibly live
+ Pandemic mistakes, Satellites, ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜🖤🤍🤎 (#337)
1. The Multidisciplinary Approach to Thinking
It’s usually a good idea to start running when someone wants to tell you about a formula for living the best life you could possibly live. It’s worth making an exception for this one, though. 1. Because it’s well argued. 2. Because combining mirrored reciprocation with compound interest is not your usual carpe diem type of bullshittery. 3. Because what’s not to love about an ode to generalism and multidisciplinary thinking. Read or listen to it now.
2. What Every Heart Emoji Really Means
A detailed analysis of meanings and usage patterns of all the various heart emojis, from ❤️♥️ and 💙💚💜❤️🧡, to 💖💕 and 💔. Warning: You’ll learn a lot, but using heart emojis will become more complex with all this knowledge at the back of your mind. Read it now.
3. All the satellites, visualised 🛰
Quick, without thinking too much: How many satellites are orbiting the earth? Ok, now have a look at this jaw-dropping (almost) real-time visualisation. Not sufficiently impressed yet? Activate the debris filter. Check it out.
4. 5 Pandemic Mistakes We Keep Repeating
Unless you are lucky enough to live in one of those few places that managed the pandemic well (hi, dear readers in Vietnam and New Zealand!), much of this excellent analysis will feel all too familiar. I love, though, how Zeynep Tufekci puts the finger on all those infuriating failures of the past 15 months, while at the same time reminding us to be hopeful. Read it now.
5. NFTs, explained
I started this week with a mission: I wanted an answer to WTF it is with NFT that are suddenly everywhere? For when a cat gif sells for $580000, something interesting and/or crazy is happening. A cat gif, notably, that anyone can copy and own for free, just not that exact one. I still haven’t quite wrapped my head around all of it, but this piece from The Verge serves as a good (and entertaining) primer. Read it.
What else?
«Give us 15 minutes and we will take you someplace incredible.» — Atlas Obscura is launching a podcast and I’m pretty sure it’s going to be great.
So — surprise, suprise! — having a pandemic every now and then is not going to fix our climate problems.
4 trillion dollars. That’s the estimated cost to the global economy for leaving large regions of the world without Covid vaccines for now. Oh, and it’s the better-case estimate.
A set of beautiful, Japan-inspired pictograms.
Ezra Klein nails one thing that the pandemic revealed about our climate future. It ain’t pretty.
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