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Carefully curated recommendations on what to read, watch and listen to. For nerds and changemakers who love when something makes them go «Huh, I never thought of it this way!».Undecided? Learn more | Peek inside
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Hi, I'm David. A journalist, and a curious generalist.
I've been curating the best of the web for my newsletter since 2011. I'd love to be your diligent curator, too.
Recommendations in the Weekly Filet are things I want my friends to see.
Things that tickle and delight a curious mind.
Articles, books, podcasts, graphics, videos, photographs,...The form is never the limit.
I let these questions guide me:
1. Does it help understand a complex, important issue?
2. Does it foster empathy by making you see the world through others' eyes?
3. Does it inspire self-reflection?
If it's timely, that's good. If it's timeless, that's better.
If in doubt, I prefer nerdy, witty, ambiguous. Solutions-oriented and actionable. Candid.
Don't expect news. Expect new insights.
Expect to be surprised.
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...or shuffle for a surprise
I was surprised at how interesting (and at times: moving) this episode of «The Daily» was. The New York Times’ chief architecture critic on the miracle of restoring Notre-Dame a mere five years after it almost got destroyed forever.
«A lot of things went wrong for a lot of people this year, but for millions of others, life got better – even if their stories didn’t make the headlines.» – It’s always easy to cherry-pick some minor good news in a year that was dominated by bad news. But what «Fix The News» does every year is different. A collection of genuinely good news and developments, highly relevant and impactful on a large scale, but mostly overlooked.
Banias is an 8-year-old kid living in Gaza. And she has a story to tell — many stories, in fact. Such a beautiful piece of audio journalism, raw, human, full of moments of connection.
Two quotes from this essay to keep in mind:
«Germany’s postwar model has reached its breaking point.» Two months before the election, and referring to Angela Merkel’s memoir, a level-headed assessment of where Germany stands and how it got here. «Germany has long outsourced its security to the United States, its energy needs to Russia and its export-led growth to China. Merkel doubled down on all three of these bets. Since she left office, all three have gone belly up.»
Fornication Under Consent of the King, what a year!
A helpful short spotlight: Why keeping Assad in power was so important to Putin, and what the fall of the regime in Syria means for the Russian dictator.
Longtime readers of this newsletter know about my favourite nerdy subgenre: the in-depth profile of stuff our modern world runs on. I just discovered a new one to add to my collection. It’s one of only three elements that have existed since the Big Bang, and without it, neither our constantly connected, mobile lives nor the hope for a carbon-free future would exist. This isn’t merely a profile, it’s an ode. «If lithium were a friend, it would be the sort of friend who is humble and unassuming and yet also seemingly everywhere all at once doing really fabulous and important things.»
The binary distinction between two camps who view artificial intelligence very differently is obviously oversimplifying things, but Casey Newton does make some good observations here, especially his main point: If we want to avoid AI going really, really badly, then skeptics must stop «staring at the floor of AI’s current abilities … and accept that AI is already more capable and more embedded in our systems than they currently admit.»
What the hell is going on and why do the wrong people always win? That’s what this article sets out to explore – and it’s explore, not explain, as the author starts out by admitting he’s still organising his thoughts. He lands on «a shaken sense of certainty about the world» as one of the drivers of what we’re experiencing – a translation that doesn’t quite capture the German original «Erschütterungen der Weltgewissheit». I don’t usually recommend articles in German in this newsletter, so you know this one is really worth your time (Google Translate is your friend).