Welcome, Test

To begin, please enter the time machine with me. As promised last week, I've gone through the archive of 2000 recommended links since 2011 to find some timeless favourites. It was fun to re-discover so many great links, and super difficult to decide on just a few to highlight. Here are ten all-time favourites. Ok, back to the present day.

1. Climate report makes the case for a radically changed world

Once again, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres didn't mince his words: «It is a file of shame, cataloguing the empty pledges that put us firmly on track toward an unlivable world.» His speech on the latest IPCC report is worth watching in full (5 mins). Since this report is specifically about what we humans can do to mitigate climate change — if you read only one thing about the report, I recommend this one from Ireland. It's plainspoken, forward-looking, with traces of optimism. The author describes the latest report as a classic Hollywood moment, where everything looks bleak, but the hero is like: «This is going to sound crazy, but hear me out because it might just work.»

Climate report makes case for a radically changed world

The third IPCC report, published on Monday, is a classic Hollywood narrative moment that will become a yardstick of ambition in this critical decade, writes Philip Boucher-Hayes,

RTÉ•Philip Boucher-Hayes

2. The atrocities in Bucha show that remembrance without resolve is empty

Once you move from speechlessness to reflection on what happened in Bucha, this is what's so devastating: «Never again is our instinctive reaction to this nightmare [...] Yet the grim pattern is that this refrain’s every incantation marks the start of a countdown to the next such mass atrocity.»

The atrocities in Bucha show that remembrance without resolve is empty

“Every year politicians repeat ‘never again’,” Volodymyr Zelensky chided the Bundestag. “And now, we see that these words simply mean nothing.”

New Statesman•Jeremy Cliffe

3. Ghosts

This is a truly remarkable piece, on many levels. The author struggled to write about her sister's death, so she let artificial intelligence help her. In the first attempt, she writes nothing but the first sentence, and lets AI take it from there. With every attempt, she writes more before letting AI take over.

Ghosts - Believer Magazine

7. My sister was diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma when I was in my freshman year of high school and she was in her junior year. I didn’t understand then how serious a disease it was. But it was—serious. She died four years later. I thought I would die, too, of grief, but I did not. […]

Believer Magazine•Vauhini Vara

Thanks for reading. If you'd like to give feedback or just say hi, as always, you can simply hit reply. See you next Friday!

— David 👋

💬 Know someone who might enjoy this newsletter, too? Tell them about it.‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌
🙅 If you no longer want to receive the newsletter, unsubscribing is easy.