Welcome to this week’s Via Waverly, where I expose 5 diverse and unexpected finds that were served to me by Waverly.
Flourishing Out of the Pandemic
This piece just made me feel good about the perspective of celebrating and being mindful of the little things once we get out of the pandemic.
Savoring is about appreciating an event or activity in the moment, sharing tiny victories and noticing the good things around you.
A 2012 study of college students found that taking part in a savoring activity called “mindful photography” resulted in overall improvements in mood and a significantly greater sense of appreciation for college life. The students were instructed to take at least five photos of their everyday lives — friends, their favorite view on campus, books they enjoyed — twice a week for two weeks. Reflecting on the photos, and the small moments that brought them joy, helped the students focus on the good in their lives.
Right after reading this I wrote three new waves: The Good Deeds, Growth Mindset and Socially Acceptable Mental Illness… They are all returning pretty good content already.
Wave: 🤗 Happiness at Work (Contributed by Seb Paquet)
Less Antibiotics in Our Meat
A short piece through which I learned about the Farm to Fork Strategy from the European Commission, which sets an ambitious target to reduce the sales of antimicrobials for farmed animals by 50% by 2030. (There’s a video recording of the conference, but I did not watch it.)
Wave: 🦠 AI against Antimicrobial Resistance (Contributed by Yoshua Bengio)
Restoring Mangas
This one scratches a couple of my itches: my old love for computer graphics, my dilettante interest in mangas, and a real Python implementation of an ML algorithm!
Wave: ⚙️ Exploded View
Why We Still Love Newspapers
I’m spending a lot of time these days thinking about what makes a great discovery environment. I was happy to see this piece in my Waverly this week:
“Many people still love print newspapers, and to an extent, we also see that they like the digital replicas of print newspapers as much as they do the physical version,” said Damon Kiesow, a professor of journalism professions and co-author on the study.
“We feel newspapers are fulfilling some sort of need in a person’s daily life that is not currently being effectively fulfilled with the digital experience. The contextual clues that help tell readers what stories are important, why they should care about what stories they are reading and where to locate the news that is most important to them, are being weakened by structures missing in digital news.”
Wave: 📊 Understanding Information
Maze or Sudoku?
Why not both! My puzzle find of the week is this brilliant variation on an old classic. In Path Sudoku you place maze tiles on a grid to connect the exit nodes. The twist? You must follow the rules of the classic game: the same time can’t appear twice in the same row, column or region.
You’ll have to print this one on good old paper, but it’s great to get away from our screen every now and then, no?
Wave:♟️ Puzzles
Phil Beaudoin 