The Top 5: Going inside of the 'Metaverse'
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Welcome to your weekly 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 speaks to big ideas, trends, future looks, and incredible human stories. We hope you enjoy our list, and do always let us know if you have a suggestion or a recommendation! Please also consider becoming a paid subscriber if this is one of those newsletters you open up all the time or look forward to each week.
The Top 5 articles for your week:
“How Stewart Made Tucker” (The New Atlantis)
Because this is a compelling argument, “As he tore down the pillars of the phony old consensus reality, he was laying the foundation for authentically fanatic alternate realities. In our bizarro world, Jon Stewart’s fantasyland is real, and its king is none other than Tucker Carlson”
“This Is Life in the Metaverse” (NYT)
Because with thousands of users, it’s time to start paying attention to Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse.
“‘Allowing users to shed the distractions of the physical world, Horizon offers a meeting of the minds, Ms. Ferrer said, and conversations get deep quickly. ‘It’s extremely refreshing to be talked to and to be seen for who I am versus how I look,’ she said. ‘I’m mentally cautious about not making my whole life about it. I still go out to bars or whatever and meet people, but I always have this to come back to.’ Horizon Worlds reminded me of the AOL chat rooms from my earliest days on the internet, in the 1990s — except here I was making eye contact with the people I’d met, seeing their movements and hearing their voices.”
“The Housing Revolution is Coming” (The Atlantic)
Because Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) have the potential to revolutionize the suburbs and the housing market.
“He escaped North Korea, then risked everything to go back for his mom” (WaPo)
Because “In their first interview with a news outlet, Kim and his mother recalled their terrifying and winding journey to be together again, the determination that fueled them during four years of separation and failed attempts to reunite, and their new life in Seoul filled with trauma and hope.”
“Inside one of the world’s first human composting facilities” (The Verge)
Because “it’s clear a deathcare revolution is underway. New methods of body processing, from NOR to alkaline hydrolysis, are on the rise. So is the home funeral movement, which seeks to return the care of the dead to their families. New companies aim to be cost-competitive; at Return Home, NOR costs about $5,500 with a laying-in ceremony. That’s about twice as much as the average cremation but about half the cost of a traditional funeral and vault burial. But even as new options proliferate, after so many generations of viewing the corpse at a distance, few of us know what we really want to happen when we die — or how to ask for it.”