This week’s top recommendation(s)

The Weekly Filet usually is not about breaking news, but about making sense of the bigger picture. But today, it would just feel wrong not to highlight what’s happening in Japan. As you will know by now, early this morning, at 2:46 pm local time, a massive earthquake has hit Japan, triggering a 10 metre tsunami. It measured 8.9 magnitude on the Richter scale, which is almost 80 times bigger than the one that devastated Haiti last year (the Richter scale is logarithmic). The news is breaking as I write this, and the Guardian – as so often the case – proves to be an excellent source of information. Not only do they have precise live coverage, but thanks to their excellent data team, they have a seismic monitor recording all earthquakes around the world, giving some perspective on just how extraordinary this earthquake is. And then, of course, it’s Twitter that is giving the most immediate and most personal accounts of how people are experiencing the earthquake and its aftermath. ZEIT Online does a good job curating sources.

• Japan earthquake – live updates (The Guardian)
• Earthquakes around the world: see every quake, updated live (The Guardian)
• How much bigger…? Earthquake calculator. (US Geological Survey)
• Japan Erdbeben (Twitter List curated by ZEIT Online)

You might also like

• A Declaration of Cyber-War (Vanity Fair)

A thrilling piece about the first unattributable act of war in human history: the computer virus Stuxnet that had attacked Iran’s nuclear program.

• Recent Scenes from Antarctica (In Focus)

Having left The Boston Globe’s Big Picture that we founded, Alan Taylor is now curating an outstanding image blog at The Atlantic. To be bookmarked instantly.

• Build A Rocket Boys (Elbow)

Elbow, from Manchester UK. They are quite simply the best band in the world right now.

• MIT Media Lab’s Brilliant New Logo Has 40,000 Permutations (Fast Company Design)

The MIT Media Lab has a fascinating new logo, that in fact gives every employee their very own algorithm-customized logo. Genius!

Want more of this?

If you like my recommendations, here’s the good news: I’m posting them every week to treat you to a nice start into the weekend (here’s all the info you’ll ever need about it). Follow me on Twitter to stay in touch or grab yourself the RSS-Feed for the Weekly Filet. However, I recommend you subscribe to the newsletter the sole purpose of which is to add some tasty filet to your inbox once a week. It’s simple, it’s free and I won’t spam you, promised.