Hello friends,

this is the first edition of powernotes in the new weekly format. Until now, you have received a shorter version of the newsletter, every weekday. Starting this week, you will receive a new version, every Monday.

We promise that we will try to deliver a great newsletter, with lots of interesting content.

Starting with the weekly version, the newsletter has a new look and feel. Also a new topic: Civilization. We really hope you like it.

So let’s start our new and improved weekly powernotes :

Every monday, we have technology, culture and philosophy notes for you.

TECH 👨‍💻

1. What are your thoughts about tech and medical clothing? A New York company, Nanowear, created an undergarment, that you can wear, and that is able to read your heart’s vital signs, and also can identify up to 85 different health problems. Read more about Simple Sense.

2. A kaleidoscopic new vision of the future, where physical and virtual realities have merged, and the city is saturated in media. Would you like to live in such a world? Check it out - Hyper-reality.

3. The future of dating is changing. Dating apps are turning to video and audio to link people up.

4. Google is finally adding an official dark mode to search on desktops. Read about it here.

5. A place to learn about and create Design Principles.

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CULTURE 🧬

1. Antrepreneur Ray Dalio, the author of best-seller Principles, assisted by two psychologists, launched a free personality test that measures to what extent you possess the qualities to be succesful. Or at least, this is what they say. You can take the assessment HERE. Just a fair warning, it takes around 40 minutes to fully complete it.

2. Trouble sleeping? There’s a Dream Powder, that promises you will have your best sleep, ever. No calories, no added sugar. Check it out.

3. Why Are Kids With Summer Birthdays More Likely to Get the Flu? If you are just a little bit interested, you can listen to the Freakonomics podcast episode here.

4. Write a letter to your future self. HERE.

5. Here is a video of the human body. At microscope.

PHILOSOPHY 📜

1. A highly recommended philosophy podcast : History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps

2. A short philosophical nugget about punishment : we are punishing people not as retribution for what they have done but for their own good, to deter them from doing again whatever they did. Punishment, in other words, should be “an expression not of anger but of caution.” (source: A guide to the good life: the ancient art of stoic joy)

3. A short video about The Nature of Perception.

4. In Letters from a Stoic, Seneca writes about the terrors of death and provides reasons why we shouldn’t fear death. Watch the video. From Philosophy Toons Youtube channel.

5. What is the basic material of the cosmos? It must be…something from which everything can be formed. Something essential to life. Something capable of motion. Something capable of change. According to Thales of Miletius, everything is made of water. Read more.

Each week, we have two books for you to discover. In bite-sized fashion. A very short own opinion about the books, and also five notes from each book. We have two great books this week. Here we go:

The first book is a true classic, one of the most popular books of all time : 1984 by George Orwell.

Here are five notes from the book:

1. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.

2. Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

3. If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.

4. Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.

5. Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

The second book is: Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke.

Here are five notes from the book:

1. A bet is a decision about an uncertain future.

2. Two things determine how your life turns out: the quality of your decisions, and luck. Recognize the difference between the two.

3. You are wired to protect your beliefs even when your goal is to truthseek.

4. Experience can be an effective teacher, but only some students listen to their teachers.

5. Life is not like chess. Chess contains no hidden information and very little luck. Life is more like poker. You could make the smartest, most careful decision and still have it blow up in your face.

Each week, we present three quotes from great thinkers, great minds, and great people that live or have lived in this world. We all have something to learn from each other.

Longevity researcher Dan Buettner on the health benefits of friendship:

I argue that the most powerful thing you can do to add healthy years is to curate your immediate social network. In general, you want friends with whom you can have a meaningful conversation. You can call them on a bad day and they will care. Your group of friends are better than any drug or anti-aging supplement, and will do more for you than just about anything.

Philosopher Luis de Miranda on philosophical health:

Philosophical health, contrary to some forms of psychotherapy, does not establish borders, labels and distinctions between minds or human types: it presupposes that we are all, on planet Earth, of the same cosmological flesh and therefore we are bound to comprehend each other, if only we listen to alterity before we respond.

Novelist and art theorist André Malraux on courage:

Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not one's better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on one's ideas, to take a calculated risk - and to act.

Each week, we have two portraits of nature for you. Great images from our beautiful world. Because we all need a fresh breath of nature in our lives.

We read a lot of stuff from all over the web. Every week, we have three captivating articles and stories for you. Here are this week’s reads :

🟪 How AI can help forecast how much Arctic sea ice will shrink. IceNet can predict the future of Arctic sea ice months in advance with 95 percent accuracy.

🟩 Is precision medicine ignoring people dying of cancer? While death itself may always represent the Great Unknown, the biological processes that contribute to making life no longer viable should be amenable to exploration, yet we know very little about them.

🟨 What Is Life? An astrobiologist finds the heart of his work in a new novel by Richard Powers.

Each week, we have three interesting finds for you, from all over the web. Just interesting stuff we stumble upon and that we love to share with you.

🟣 The world's most advanced 3D anatomy platform. You can literally see inside the human body, everything. Check out Complete Anatomy.

🟢 Here is a very interesting visualization of our solar system, created by Josh Worth. It shows how far apart everything is in our solar system. You have to scroll in order to fully understand this accurate scale model. Check it out here: If the Moon were only 1 Pixel.

🟡 Here are 100 Tips for a Better Life. All kinds of tips. From success to joy to cooking.

Wish you all a nice week ahead. Check your inbox next monday for a new edition. And, our biggest request to all of you : please share it if you like it 🙏 Thank you.

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