Hello everyone. Thank you all for spreading the word, there are so many new people who subscribed and I am very glad. For everyone new, welcome. :) The weekly drill is a list of ten things to read along with some commentary from me - here goes.

1. The Rise of the Like Economy - For something that has been used trillions of times, the Facebook like button is rather inconspicuous. This is a nice history of its development, and an examination of it from a design perspective. And as is customary nowadays, it delves into the problem that Facebook has been facing with fake news but concludes that the psychologically-addictive like button isn’t going anywhere.
   
2. Faultlines, Black Holes And Glaciers: Mapping Uncharted Territories - A beautiful ode to explorers and adventures. In this time when GPS is ubiquitous, there are still some parts of the world that are uncharted and unmapped. How do we complete that knowledge, and why? Not just for exploration, but also for science.
   
3. The Useful Village - I loved reading this. It’s about a German town of only 300 people that was asked to prepare to host a thousand refugees. Already ailing due to a lack of jobs, they weren’t happy with this but they still went ahead and did it. Now the refugees have all packed up and left, leaving the town as is but with some infrastructure they didn’t need.
   
4. Loans ‘Designed to Fail’: States Say Navient Preyed Preyed on Students - Student loans in the US are no laughing matter, and a large number of them default. A new case filed by attorneys on behalf of some students reveals that Navient, the loan-granting company, doled out loans despite knowing that they would never receive that money back. This happened because these private loans are a bargaining chip for lucrative and secure federally funded loans. It’s complicated, and students bear the brunt.
   
5. To Ease The Student Debt Crisis, Hold Colleges Responsible - FiveThirtyEight does a good job of studying student loans and proposes that if colleges had some stake in the loans its students took, the world would be a better place.
   
   
6. Writing a Memoir Is a Strange Psychological Trip Through Your Past - Writing a memoir makes one physically tired, which is a weird thing? Or maybe it isn’t.
   
   “I’ve heard that from other writers, too,” she told me. Compared to writing fiction, revisiting your own past just beats you up, she said. And a newfound urge to sleep is only one side effect of drafting a memoir: People who are long dead can slowly come alive in your mind; you can hear and smell them almost as vividly as if you were having a full-blown hallucination. Your memories will change, as truths you long held about your life begin to unravel. Ultimately, you may end up a different person altogether. “In some ways, writing a memoir is knocking yourself out with your own fist, if it’s done right.”
   
7. A Surprisingly Good Place to Die - Mongolia has great palliative and hospice care given its status in the economic ladder of the world. Why, and how? Great reporting as usual from Mosaic.
   
8. The Patriarchy Hates the Moon - This is extremely fun to read. The best part is how the Moon became a proxy battlefield during the Cold War. Were people thinking straight?
   
   In each case the idea was to transport an atomic weapon to the moon’s terminator, the twilight-line along its surface where lunar day meets night, and detonate it just after sunset on Earth. First a flash would spread across the dark lunar surface, briefly lighting up the contours of its craters; then an immense cloud of atomic fire and lunar dust would rise. In the absence of an atmosphere, there would be no mushroom cloud. Instead the explosion would have formed a slowly expanding sphere, catching the light of the sun as it grew, and providing an entertaining spectacle and a dire warning clearly visible to friends and enemies on Earth.
   
9. Never Mind The Russians, Meet The Bot King Who Helps Trump Win Twitter - Yes, exactly this. “It’s All Us, Not Russians. And We’re Not Going To Stop”.
   
10. The Data or the Hunch - John Hammond was a legend, known for finding wonderful musicians before they became famous. He had expertise, but he played it by the ear; trusting his gut and backing himself. Is that the way to go, or should one go the Billy Beane way, using data and only data? Now that many decisions are being fuelled by data-fed algorithms, is there a place for human intuition?

That’s it for this week. Reply to this email if you have any feedback, or if there’s anything you want to tell me. Have a great week ahead.