Values, Vivid Images, Videos

More Every Week is a collection of thought-provoking ideas, articles, and videos sent out on Sundays.

If you missed the previous issues, you can find the backlog here.

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More People in the Criminal Class

You probably already know that America has a mass incarceration problem. But, if you're like me, you probably don't truly understand the scale.

A report from Sarah Shannon estimated that in 2010, there were 20 million current and former felons. Assuming a conservative growth rate, that means in 2020 America has ~25 million convicted felons. We have to estimate here, since the government doesn't collect precise official data about felons.

25 million! That's roughly the population of Australia, or 2.5x the population of Greece. Since about 85% of felons are male, that means there are ~21 million male felons. That would mean roughly 1 in every 8 adult men in America has a felony conviction on their resume.

America needs criminal justice reform urgently - this article from the Atlantic on changing sentencing guidelines would be a good start.

More Words to Describe Feelings You Didn't Know You Had

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is one of my favorite Youtube channels. Sadly they don't produce much new content, but I return to their old videos time and again because I find them moving.

Each video creates a word to describe a feeling and uses a combination of beautiful editing and even more beautiful writing to leave you speechless.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Zenosyne: The Sense That Time Keeps Going Faster [Watch Time: 3:13]

Vemodalen: The Fear that Everything has Already Been Done [Watch Time: 2:55]

Sonder: The Realization that Everyone has a Story [Watch Time: 2:38]

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“The world is full of magic things patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” - W. B. Yeats

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More Clarity on Your Values

I love personality tests. Not because I think they are objectively true, but because they serve as useful ways to see what I think about myself.

This free test from Clearer Thinking is a new favorite. It focuses on identifying what you find to be "intrinsically valuable", or core values that you cherish for their own sake.

The test takes about 7 minutes to complete. As with all personality tests, it is most fun when done with others so you can compare results and talk about the differences.

My top five value categories were Learning, Beauty, Happiness, Protection, and Legacy. It turns out my values are most like the people of Bulgaria. Respond to this email and let me know what yours are!

More Beautiful Photos from 2020

It has not been a beautiful year. But that doesn't mean there was no beauty to be found.

Below are a number of links to the "Best Photos of the Year". Spend 5-10 minutes scrolling through them (ideally on a laptop) for a vivid reminder of the key stories of 2020.

• In Focus at The Atlantic: 2020 in Photos (part 2, part 3), Top 25 News Photos of 2020, Hopeful Images From 2020.
• CNN: 2020: The Year in Pictures.
• Time: Top 100 Photos of 2020.
• Reuters: Pictures of the Year 2020.
• NY Times: 2020: The Year in Pictures.
• The New Yorker: Photography in a Year of Crisis.
• Associated Press: In 2020, AP Photographers Captured a World in Distress.

Five luxury cruise ships are seen while being broken down for scrap metal at the Aliaga ship recycling port in Izmir, Turkey, on Oct. 2.

A monument that was installed at a Minneapolis memorial site for George Floyd is seen during a storm on Aug. 14.

Olivia Grant, right, hugs her grandmother, Mary Grace Sileo, through a plastic drop cloth hung up on a clothesline in a backyard in Wantagh, N.Y.

Dr. Lucia Ledesma, a clinical neuropsychologist, gazes into the eyes of Harley, a therapy dog who provides emotional support for health-care worker in Mexico.

Swarms of desert locusts fly into Kenya. In the worst outbreak in a quarter-century, hundreds of millions of the insects have destroyed farmland and threatened an already vulnerable region.

A protester in an Elmo mask dances as a street fire burns on May 30, 2020, during a protest in Philadelphia over the death of George Floyd, a Black man who was killed while in police custody in Minneapolis.

Construction teams worked around the clock on a field hospital in Wuhan that was mostly built in 10 days to help cope with the outbreak of the novel coronavirus.