Mind you, I'm here

"The mind is an excellent servant, but a terrible master." — David Foster Wallace

Author

Micael Balioni
April 02, 2026

THE MUSTS

World

cute

Is this generation of parents more affectionate?

 It seems that millennial parents are spending more time with their children than parents from previous generations.

  • Millennial parents in their 30s spend about 14% more time with their children than Gen X parents and 300% more than baby boomers.

  • Millennial mothers in their 30s spend about 23% more time than Gen X mothers and 77% more than baby boomers.

Since the pandemic, fathers have also become more involved in household chores.

  • In 2019, mothers spent approximately 1.89 times more time on household chores compared to fathers. By 2024, that gap had narrowed to 1.65 times. For parents with a college education or who are employed, this gap is even smaller, with mothers spending about 40% more time on household chores than fathers.

Personal Opinion: We always hear about how families are having fewer and fewer children, but it’s important to see the upside: Those who decide to have children really want them—and the data shows this. It’s also interesting to see how the gender gap is narrowing… It still exists, but the trend is positive.

What else in on

  • Philippines: The country managed to cut child labour cases by almost 40% in two years. Child labour cases in the Philippines fell from 828,000 in 2022 to 509,000 in 2024, driven by coordinated government action and community programmes. Over 319,000 children were removed from labour, while livelihood support reached 47,000 families to tackle root causes. Shout out to them! (Read)

  • Poland: Another EU country will ban the use of cell phones by students under 16 in schools starting in September. (Read)

  • Russia: The Russian Ministry of Health is recommending that doctors refer women who do not wish to have children to a psychologist to encourage them to change their minds. (Read)

  • Brazil: Pope Leo XIV appoints Brazilian researcher Carlos Nobre as an advisor regarding climate change. (Read)

  • G7: G7 countries agree to protect the Strait of Hormuz once the war between the U.S. and Iran ends. (Read)

     

    *Plus: Climate policies work faster and more effectively than most people think. An analysis of 40 nations finds climate policies do reduce emissions. The strongest effects come from “packages” combining carbon pricing, subsidies and regulations, rather than single measures. (Read)

 

Economy & Business

you want to skip this ad in 3, 2, 1

YouTube has become the Top1 Player

The world’s best-known video company generated $40 billion in ad revenue in 2025. To put that in perspective, the combined ad revenue of Disney, NBC, Paramount, and Warner was $37.8 billion.

This discrepancy in revenue demonstrates a shift in consumer trends in recent years. For a long time, Hollywood studios dominated the industry, and this outcome might have seemed impossible. In fact, in 2024, the combined ad revenue of the four studios was still about $6 billion higher than YouTube’s.

But it has been gaining ground… While entertainment giants struggle with falling viewership and rising production costs, YouTube is growing in both views and total revenue:

Consider that, while TV networks produce their own content, YouTube operates as a platform, simply serving as a “home” for millions of people and companies to post their creations—including the news.

Fun fact: Meta, which operates on a very similar model, had advertising revenue of $196.2 billion in 2025.

What else is on (AI edition):

  • BlackRock: BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said in a letter to investors that AI could worsen income inequality and that people should invest in top AI companies to avoid getting left behind. (Read)

  • Anthropic: The company behind Claude just sued the Trump administration after the company was blacklisted by the Pentagon. (Read)

  • Trend alert: College professors are increasingly opting for oral exams over essays and take-home assignments after noticing that students were turning in perfect work, but couldn’t explain their thinking—seemingly because they used AI. (Read)

 

Health & Science

pretty hurts, pretty hurts

What happens when you stop taking Ozempic?

With the boom in weight-loss drugs, the GLP-1 market has grown from $280 million in 2018 to $26 billion in 2024. One out of five adults in the U.S. have used a product of this type.

But one gap has been causing concern in this discussion… What are the effects when treatment is stopped?

  • A new study published in the British Medical Journal indicates that, on average, people who stop using the medication gain four times as much weight as someone who lost weight through lifestyle changes.

  • In numbers, people who stop using these medications regain, on average, 9.5 kg of the 14.5 kg they lost in just a year and a half.

Why this matters: It is estimated that more than half of people stop using Ozempic or similar medications within a year. The reasons vary, ranging from a lack of discipline to financial constraints. To make matters worse, this weight regain reactivates certain metabolic mechanisms associated with obesity, such as insulin resistance, sodium retention, and chronic inflammation.

Ultimately, starting and then stopping GLP-1 medications can create a snowball effect in the body, causing the opposite of the initial goal of weight loss. But what did you expect sir? A miracle?

What else is on:

  • Semen with an IQ. The Danish sperm bank Donor Network has decided to ban donors with an IQ below 85 and those with a criminal record. The measure, which aims to ensure a higher “cognitive profile” for export, has sparked an ethical debate in Europe. (Read)

  • The era of brain chips has begun — in China: China has approved the first commercial brain chip for public use: the NEO chip. Similar to Neuralink, but with a key difference — the NEO sits against the brain's outer membrane rather than inside it, reducing scarring and improving durability. It's the first invasive brain device to move from restricted trials into everyday civilian use, with China aiming to integrate brain chips directly into its robotics infrastructure by 2027. (Read)

     

EDITOR’S RECOMMENDATIONS

Music

j’la graille comme un Kit-kat

 J’SUIS PAS CELLE by Sheng: This one caught me off guard. I don’t speak French, I don’t speak Mandarin — and yet I kept finding myself trying to sing along.

Sheng is a Paris-based artist of Chinese origin, moving between hyperpop and rap, switching languages as if they were textures rather than barriers. There’s something very fluid about the way she builds her sound: edgy, but never aggressive; melodic, but never excessive. It sits in that rare space where everything feels carefully constructed without ever feeling heavy. Almost like this newsletter.

I actually found the album on TikTok — and, lately, the algorithm has been unusually generous. But what really stayed with me is how the production breathes. A lot of hyperpop tends to flatten itself into a straight line: loud, saturated, almost exhausting. Here, the beats shift, open up, pull back. They give her voice space to exist. And her voice does cut through — present, intentional, almost conversational at times.

  • Even without fully understanding the lyrics, you can feel that there’s something grounded underneath. And if you take the time to translate them, the writing reveals itself: clear, emotional, but never flat. It’s not trying to be overly profound — and that’s exactly why it works. Within her universe, she’s simply being honest.

Her music circles around identity in a way that feels personal without being over-explained. It’s there in the language shifts, in the tone, in the emotional weight she allows herself to carry without dramatizing it.

If anything, this is what stayed with me: I didn’t fully understand it — and I didn’t need to. It’s the kind of album that doesn’t demand your attention, but slowly earns it. (Rating: 8.0/10)

Best Songs: DIS-MOI PK?; TOUT VA MAL; TOI + MOI (this one for the lyrics!)

WHAT ABOUT ME?

Micael

or as Rupaul says, your inner saboteur

 

 "The mind is an excellent servant, but a terrible master." — David Foster Wallace

The sentence I’ve started this edition with has been living in my head all week.

And I think that's fitting, given what it's actually about.

  • A while back, I read a book called Chatter — I've mentioned it in the second edition of tanamesa — and it introduced me to an idea that quietly changed something in how I relate to myself: you are not your mind. That voice that runs in the background all day, judging, predicting, catastrophising, replaying — it isn't you. It's just a voice. An automatic narrator that showed up uninvited and never really learned when to stop.

Here's the thing that still gets me: you can hear it, can't you? Which means you're not it. You're the one listening. The observer. The voice is in you, but it isn't you.

I've been having weeks lately where that voice hasn't been particularly kind. It's been noisy, restless, complaining — painting things in grey when, if I'm honest, my life right now has a lot of colour in it. Good things are happening. Real ones. And yet the voice doesn't always get that memo.

But that contrast — between what the voice is saying and what's actually true — has been one of the clearest reminders I've had in a while that I am not that voice. It's just visiting. Loudly, sometimes. But still just visiting.

  • The mind is an extraordinary tool when you're the one holding it. It can be creative, focused, generous, visionary. But the moment you forget you're supposed to be driving — the moment it takes the wheel — it can turn even a beautiful season into something that feels heavy and insufficient.

I don't think this is easy to practice. I'm certainly not claiming I've mastered it. But noticing the voice — just noticing, without immediately believing everything it says — already shifts something.

If any of this resonates, I really do recommend Chatter. It won't silence the voice. But it might help you stop mistaking it for the truth.

With love,

Micael.

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