The Top 5: Circle of Hope, Motherhood, Global Emotions Report, architecture, Instagram emissions
Welcome to the latest edition of the Top 5 articles we’ve read this week. Each week, we read dozens of articles in the hope we find essays and reporting that speak to big ideas, trends, future looks, and incredible human stories. We hope you enjoy these articles, and do always let us know if you have a suggestion or a recommendation!
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The Top 5 articles for your week:
“The world’s emotional status is actually pretty good, a new global report finds” (Vox)
Because Oshan Jarow explores Gallup’s 2024 “Global Emotions Report” and sees that globally, we are all doing just “fine.”
But it’s still pretty interesting that young people between the ages of 15 and 30 show up as consistently more positive and resilient than any other group. Where is the specter of doomerism we keep hearing about?
“Every Time You Post to Instagram, You’re Turning on a Light Bulb Forever” (The Atlantic)
Because Arthur Holland Michel looks at the emissions of data centers.
Data centers and data-transmission networks now account for as much as 1.5 percent of global electricity consumption, according to the International Energy Agency. In the years ahead, the advent of ubiquitous artificial intelligence could, as Matteo Wong wrote for The Atlantic last year, “push the web’s emissions to a tipping point”: Earlier this week, Google released a report showing that its emissions have grown substantially as a result of the AI boom, a major leap backwards from the net-zero goal it set just a few years ago.
“Motherhood and the Intellectual Life” (Comment Magazine)
Because Laura Fabrycky, one of our favorite writers and thinkers, argues that care is learned. She refers to Sertillanges’ The Intellectual Life, which is a good book to read slowly and consider with a friend or loved one.
“Boring Architecture Is Starving Your Brain” (Wired Magazine)
Because according to architect Thomas Heatherwick:
“We can’t have buildings that are only here for 40 years. We need thousand-year thinking,” he says. “The world of construction teaches you that form follows function, less is more, ornament is a crime. It’s powerful, and when you’re studying, that goes in your brain and brainwashes you.” But Heatherwick reminds us that emotion is a function, and one that should be celebrated in the world of construction.
“Losing a Beloved Community” (New Yorker)
Because in an excerpt from Eliza Griswold’s new book releasing next month, she follows a four-year trajectory of a church in Philadelphia.
I first encountered Circle of Hope during the summer of 2019, on a street corner in Kensington, the Philadelphia neighborhood hardest hit by the opioid crisis. To carry out the Biblical injunction to beat “swords into plowshares,” a group of young believers was melting guns into garden implements. The men wore well-pressed button-down shirts, and the women favored long dirndl skirts and T-shirts with sayings like “There are no good billionaires.” They were punk rock, and well inked with manifestos and math equations, but their fresh faces and starry eyes spoke of devotion to something greater. They were members of a movement at the edge of American faith called the evangelical left.
ICYMI on The Morning Five and CCPL’s new podcast For the Good of the Public:
The Morning Five: July 1, 2024
The Morning Five: July 2, 2024
The Morning Five: July 3, 2024