Improved reporting on the state of the world is a sign of human progress, but the wider surveillance of suffering this brings creates an impression of the exact opposite.

The data unilaterally declares we're living in the humanity's best era. Poverty, famine and child deaths are at their lowest in history, but because we're more aware of them than ever before, we think that they're getting worse.

One fly in peril makes tiny ripples when caught in a spider's web. When we see such suffering against a still, peaceful backdrop, those ripples appear seismic.

Inspired by the book "Factfulness" by Anna Rosling Rönnlund, Hans Rosling and Ola Rosling

We've been stuck in Italy for more than 4 months now and, as we pass through the year, our worst scenarios repeatedly become our best. Before, we were hoping to go back to Vietnam in May, then July, and now our best bet is September.

When we see light refract in water, our perspectives are skewed from the outside, but when we immerse ourselves in that water, everything seems normal again.

We adapt our perspectives to fit the current situation. What might have seemed unthinkable from the outside seems plausible and tangible and real from within.

The constants are still constant on both sides - the moon is there and you are there - but the ever-changing circumstances out of our control just have to be accepted. Take a dip in a cup half full and watch how refracted light illuminates new horizons.

Some people are virtuosos in playing other people's feelings. They pluck despairing strings and draw from hollow bodies our miserable reverberations. They seek gratification from our anguished longing to feel the music within us, and play it all, note by note, for their own sadistic audience.