1. Coral reefs are struggling to survive global warming. The video on this page shows them in their colourful glory and in their bleached fallen state https://global-tipping-points.org/case-studies/#coral I’d not come across Global Tipping Points before: here’s their home page https://global-tipping-points.org/

2. Staying on the environmental theme, here’s an NYT gift about solar power in Tibet: Why China Built 162 Square Miles of Solar Panels on the World’s Highest Plateau https://tinyurl.com/mr2dvcpy Good illustrations!

3. I’m not sure what to make of – how seriously to take – this Gallup report on the State of the World’s Emotional Health 2025 https://www.gallup.com/analytics/349280/state-of-worlds-emotional-health.aspx

The world is on an emotional edge. Gallup World Poll data show that in 2024, 39% of adults worldwide reported worrying for much of the previous day, and more than a third said they felt stressed. Compared with a decade ago, hundreds of millions more people now experience these emotions.

Country data here https://news.gallup.com/interactives/248240/global-emotions.aspx, showing, for example, that Vietnam is the least angry country and Chad the angriest, Kosovo the least sad and Chad the saddest, Kyrgyzstan the least stressed and Rwanda the most stressed. Scroll down the page for an interactive map of the world for your own country’s results.

4. The magazine Monocle annoys me and delights me in equal measure: annoyance because of its focus on £300 T-shirts and £200 pairs of socks; delight because of the often unusual focus of its news items, like this piece on air cargo, Cathay Pacific’s cargo hub at Hong Kong International Airport is a telling insight into the state of the global economy https://monocle.com/business/aviation/cathay-pacifics-cargo-hub-at-hong-kong-international-airport/

5. And, finally, I’m a bit of a Thomas Pynchon freak. He’s just published his latest novel, Shadow Ticket, at the age of 88. Here’s the NYT review https://tinyurl.com/4haj48z7 and here’s a selection of other fun Pynchon sites and pages:

A Literary Hub piece by Devin Thomas O’Shea, Thomas Pynchon Has Been Warning Us About American Fascism the Whole Time https://lithub.com/thomas-pynchon-has-been-warning-us-about-american-fascism-the-whole-time/

The NYT’s Essential Thomas Pynchon https://tinyurl.com/y5mtjw3t

A video of Amy Hungerford lecturing at Yale on The Crying of Lot 49 https://youtu.be/3dtqt0bXb4Y?si=cGlyaA3-m-o39lf-

The Guardian ranking of all Pynchon’s books https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/aug/18/from-v-to-vineland-and-inherent-vice-thomas-pynchons-books-ranked