Hello!

I don't know about you, but this all seems like a bit much. It's been a heavy news week for me, with the UK elections, lots of questions around the upcoming presidential election in the US, and a record early start to the hurricane season.

Wouldn't it be nice, for once, to live in precedented times?? But the joke is right there! No times are ever precedented. Pick a year and the people from that time were also exhausted by the relentlessness with which the years kept coming and they didn't stop coming, if they had time to think about it! And for much of the past, a lot of people didn't have time to think about it! Or, if they did, they didn't have the information to think about things with. It's not like people in North America were worried about the collapse of the civilization on Easter Island. No one knew it was happening.

We have so much information now and so many fast and furious paths that information can travel on. Also, many of us have the time and interest (or feeling of obligation) to consume that information. It's a lot, especially when I don't see exactly how I could have even a tiny chance of affecting the biggest and hardest problems we face. Especially the near-term ones. And big, hard, and immediate are the things that are most likely to be news!

I don't have a solution for you or anything, but if you are feeling a lil overwhelmed by it all right now, I guess all I'll say is, you have permission from me to step back a bit. I'll keep an eye on it for you.

In the meantime, an animal shelter named a cat after me and he is a lovely old man with no teeth who has found a home!!

Hank

You can always email us at [email protected]

This Week in Stuff

• A woman in Washington D.C. discovered that a vase she thrifted was actually an ancient Mayan artifact.

• A very rare white loon was photographed in Canada by photographer Chris Whitty.

• Tom Lum taught us everything we need to know about carbon dating.

• Conservation efforts in the Amazon have saved one of Earth’s biggest freshwater fish from extinction.

• Molly Hodgdon runs an Instagram account dedicated to sharing historic photos and art of cats.

• National Geographic kicked off Shark Week by releasing a 3-and-a-half-hour shark mega episode.

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

Young people are less likely to vote than older people — often considerably so

Bastian Herre

In many countries, there are large differences in voter turnout between young and older people. The chart shows the data for recent national elections in four countries.

In the 2022 French elections, 76% of those aged 18–24 voted, while 92% of people aged 50–59 did — a difference of 16 percentage points.

We see the same pattern in the UK and the US. Only slightly more than half of young people voted in their 2019 and 2020 elections, while around three out of four older people did.

This data comes from post-election surveys by Insee, the British Election Study, the US Census Bureau, and the Federal Returning Officer of Germany.

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

In Episode 6 of Crash Course Pods: The Universe, Dr. Katie Mack and John unpack the full story of dark matter.

We tend to think life fits in two tidy categories: male or female, XX or XY. But it’s so much more diverse and complicated! In the newest episode of Crash Course Biology, we’ll discover sex and sexuality as a continuum across life.

Some Games to Play!

Strands (by NYT)

SpellCheck.xyc (by Answer in Progress.)

Download Gubbins on iOS or Android!

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Our pets are here!

No amount of newsletter space could hold all the amazing pet photos we received. Seriously, it could be a whole book! Thank you to everyone who brightened our inbox.

That’s all, folks!

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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.