Hello!

Last week, I had the opportunity to bike through the Pyrenees mountains (or I guess in a few cases OVER the Pyrenees mountains) with friends old and new. I spent more time on a bike than I have ever have previously and generally had a great time. Plus, there was a lot of time to think. Hank and I have been obsessed for the last several years over what's wrong with the Internet and how to fix it—We're Here is one attempt by us to have a more direct relationship with our audience, for example. But of course, the underlying problem is that the social Internet deals out better and better dopamine hits all the time, and it's extraordinarily difficult (for me, anyway) to resist the siren call of Tweeting and Instagramming. But spending all that time on a bike last week, I ended up being mostly forced off the Internet, and I have to tell you it was wonderful. Will I keep it up? Of course not. When I'm home and life is "normal," I don't have anywhere near the willpower to be offline, and plus my job (kinda, arguably) involves being Very Online. Still, I'll treasure the memory of my week where the random rewards were beautiful views and the perceived threats were cars racing by me. I hope you're well wherever you are, and not spending too much time online.

John

You can always email us at [email protected]

This Week in Stuff

• Olympic gymnast and Nerdfighter Stephen Nedoroscik made his Dancing With The Stars debut!

• You can visualize how the modern internet works with TeleGeography’s Submarine Cable Map.

• Hank explained how we almost had mammoths.

• Animagraffs showed us how a 16th-century explorer's sailing ship works with 3D modeling.

• Oops, double worms! We accidentally linked Hank’s worm video twice last week. Here’s the very cute video about Indiana Bones the museum cat you missed.

Please send us stuff you think we should feature to [email protected]

Chile produced 9.4% of its primary energy from solar in 2023 — the highest in any country that year

Esteban Ortiz-Ospina

According to the Energy Institute’s Statistical Review of World Energy, in 2023, Chile produced 9.4% of its primary energy from solar sources, the highest share in any country. When we look at electricity alone, solar produced 20% of the total.

This marks a trend of continued year-on-year growth in a country that, just a decade earlier, generated almost no electricity from solar.

Chile's growth has been faster than that of other solar champions like Spain and Australia, where the adoption of these technologies started earlier.

Much of Chile's solar energy is captured in the Atacama Desert. This region, in Northern Chile, receives the highest level of sunlight exposure in the world and is home to Latin America’s first solar thermal plant.

Our World in Data is a UK-based non-profit organization that publishes research and data to make progress against the world’s largest problems. You can find more of their data insights here.

This Week at Complexly

Art tells the story of humanity across societies and cultures, but keeping that art around for future generations can be a monumental task. In the newest episode of Crash Course Art History, we learn how art historians preserve, restore, and conserve art that tells the story of who we are and who we want to be.

Long-jawed proboscideans were doing pretty well for themselves. That is until they were all rapidly replaced with proboscideans with long, flexible trunks instead: mammoths, mastodons, and our modern elephants. What suddenly made long jaws such a liability? Well, it looks like we can thank a changing climate for the evolution of the elephant’s trunk.

Some Games to Play!

Blob Opera (by Google Arts and Culture)

SpellCheck.xyc (by Answer in Progress.)

Download Gubbins on iOS or Android!

If you post your results on social media, we’d love it if you post a link for folks to subscribe to “We’re Here” (https://werehere.beehiiv.com/subscribe)

Keats & Co

Do you hate tuberculosis and love a hot beverage? Good news! Our friends at Good Store have a new subscription just for you. Enter Keats & Co: top-shelf coffee and tea that's paired with poetry and donates 100% of its profit to fight tuberculosis in some of the world's hardest hit regions. Change the world with every cup. Check it out at good.store.

Your friends who start with M

Last week, we encouraged everyone to text or call a friend whose name starts with an M! Lots of you took our suggestion and shared your results with us. We’ve loved reading your stories!

That’s all, folks!

What’s your most said internet reference? Maybe it’s a quotable Vine (RIP), a meme that has stuck with you, or a classic YouTube moment. Let us know what online thing you find yourself saying!

Email us at [email protected] 

We're Here is the newsletter of Nerdfighteria; the community of people that sprung up around Hank and John Green's YouTube videos. That community has many focuses and has spawned many projects but the overarching theme is that hopelessness is the wrong response to imperfection. What makes the world better is groups of people trying to understand and solve problems, and people can only do that for an extended period if they're having at least a little bit of fun.