🧠 Curiosity
With vaccination slowly opening to the general public and lockdown end within arm’s reach here in Vienna, I have the the feeling that we finally start moving back to ‘normal’. However, that doesn’t mean that we will have to re-introduce all our old routines into post-COVID everyday life.
Every new beginning is a chance to question old behavior patterns. Although, I certainly rather would not have gone through this whole social distancing thing, now that we had it, we might as well view it as an experiment and draw some learnings from it.
There are definitely many things I am genuinely looking forward to do in the next weeks (just sitting in a café, reading and drinking a really good cup of coffee is one of them). However, after taking a moment to reflect, I also found quite some habits that I developed over the past year, which I would like to keep as a part of my ‘new normal’. Here is my list:
Spending more of my time with friends outdoors/in nature
Regularly call friends who live far away
Spend more quality time with quality people
Spending lunchbreaks & calls outdoors
Standing up at least once every hour
Leaving events when I don't enjoy being there anymore
Doing regular online workouts (just so much easier and hassle-free on a busy day)
Not feeling bad about spending an evening home alone
Starting things (such e.g. this newsletter) where the prospect of having to talk about it to other people in person scares me
How does your list look like?
🤖 Curses & Cures
This AI farming roboter kills 10,000 weeds per hour using a laser
Why it matters: Weed control is important to farmers as weeds make it easier for pests to arise and they take away resources from the crops. Currently, big farms mostly use herbicides to prevent weeds from growing on their fields. Whether or not these may cause harm to humans who eat the crops is still controversial. Study results are very much contradictory in this area, therefore until we have sufficient evidence that herbicides are not negatively affecting our health, it might be wise to evade using this kind of salad dressing. This robot seems like a big step towards feasible alternatives.
📉 Curves
Suicide Rate in Austria and many other countries worldwide actually declined during the pandemic.
Why this is interesting: At the same time the number of people suffering from depression has quintoupled during the pandemic and current estimates state that as much as every 4th person in Austria is suffering from depressive conditions. In a recent survey, 16% of teenagers stated to have suicidal thoughts at least once per day(!). Experts have been pointing out that with regards to the financial crisis 2008, it’s effect on suicide rates has only been observed with some time lag - indicating that we arent over the worst yet and that mental health support measures should be an ongoing focus of governments for the next years.
📚 Curation
Super interesting analysis of the potential up- and downsides of the Próspera, a charter city being entirely built from scratch in Honduras.
“It's about a private tech city and a prosperity vision and all that. But it's also about - - - well, people talk a lot these days about “systemic change”. But usually that means something like fiddling with tax rates or ending the filibuster. What if you could actually change the system? Say "this system we have, the one that's letting all these people starve and suffer violence and die of preventable diseases - I don't care for it. Let's try something else"? Yes, this is about startup governments and investment opportunities and blah blah blah, but it's also about trying to fight global poverty by radically changing the rules of the game that makes it possible.”
The Pandemic Has Erased Entire Categories of Friendship
Relatable and thoughtful story on the impact of COVID on our relationships
“American culture does not have many words to describe different levels or types of friendship, but for our purposes, sociology does provide a useful concept: weak ties. The term was coined in 1973 by the Stanford sociologist Mark Granovetter, and it comprises acquaintances, people you see infrequently, and near strangers with whom you share some familiarity. They’re the people on the periphery of your life—the guy who’s always at the gym at the same time as you, the barista who starts making your usual order while you’re still at the back of the line, the co-worker from another department with whom you make small talk on the elevator. (…) During the past year, it’s often felt like the pandemic has come for all but the closest of my close ties. There are people on the outer periphery of my life for whom the concept of “keeping up” makes little sense, but there are also lots of friends and acquaintances—people I could theoretically hang out with outdoors or see on videochat, but with whom those tools just don’t feel right.”
The New American Dream [Podcast with written Summary]
Inspiring interview with Lambda School founder Austen Allred on his vision for the future of education (on a not so happy note the company had to dismiss 65 people last week)
”The true definition of the American dream that I would select, and I’m sure it varies based on which dictionary you’re looking at or which set of people you’re speaking to is self-determination. You can call that freedom if you would like, but for me, it’s one’s ability to carve one’s own path and do what you would prefer to do. For most of our students, frankly, that is constrained by money. It is a grueling existence just to put food on the table and it’s hard to escape that reality. If you’re making minimum wage, it’s really hard to go to something higher. But we believe and we see that it’s possible, and we watch it a dozen times a day.”
✨ Curios
The first 3D printed house from natural material - take a look, it's intriguingly different from what we expect houses to look like
An analysis of which books are most often referred to as ‘classics’ by the Goodreads community (scroll down a bit to see the plot)