«A gardener is not someone who grows flowers but one who cultivates the soil.» Reflections on building meaningful products.

If you are not at the table then you are on the menu. If you read only one thing to try and make sense of what’s going on with the Ukraine «peace negotiations» between the USA and Russia, make it this one by Timothy Snyder. He offers ten aspects to pay attention to, and three possible explanations of what’s happening – the best case being that the Americans involved are just stunningly incompetent.

There are myriad ways in which data visualisations can be used deceptively. We’re not talking about made-up numbers here, but charts that are technically correct, but terribly misleading. This is an excellent interactive guide that lets you explore design choices that can tell wrong stories with real data. You’ll come away better equipped to spotting such charts in the wild.

Slate used to have this occasional series «How the U.S. media would cover XYZ if it happened in another country…». The blunt tone and direct language was brilliantly revealing. Now is the time to be blunt and direct about what’s happening in the US – without satire. How about this: regime change. A clarifying piece by Anne Applebaum

From the Financial Times’ Economics Show, a very interesting conversation on a) whether humanity’s capability for innovating is slowing down, b) why that could be and c) how we could reliably measure it. It starts a bit slow in the first minutes, but unlike innovation, it picks up the pace as time goes on.

Fascinating – both for what it is, and how it came to be. An interactive Whodunit that puts you in the role of a detective who needs to solve a crime within ten steps. It’s made by giving a large language model the crime story, plus a 400-word prompt to turn it into an interactive role play. The complete prompt is there for you to copy – and turn any story or historical event into a roleplay.

Uncomfortable to listen to, but insightful nonetheless. A former national security official under Trump – who still supports him, one should add – lays out the plan for bringing peace to Ukraine. It’s not what anyone should wish for (I’m reminded of what Anne Applebaum wrote in 2022: «The war won’t end until Putin loses.»). But it’s what Trump is currently pushing for – and thus worth understanding.

An insightful dissection of team dynamics, and why every organisation needs a keeper of the truth (and clarity about who it is).

«Nobody wants an emergency, but perhaps we should want some of the remarkable things that can happen during them.» Whenever hope is running short, it’s a good idea to read Rebecca Solnit. The American writer and activist has started «Meditations in an Emergency», a new publication to meet the moment (on the same platform that this newsletter is hosted – hello fellow Ghost writer!). Her launch essay is a reminder of what’s possible, and a call to action. «No one knows what happens next. But I do know what happens next can and must be in part what we do next, in a thousand ways.»

Antibiotics are a remarkable discovery that has saved countless lives. We can’t take their help for granted. Five million people annually die because they don’t respond to antibiotics. By 2050, more people will die from antimicrobial resistance than from cancer. A good explainer of what’s happening, and what can be done.