“Chemical systems that do not meet our criteria for what it means to be ‘alive’ exhibit a surprising array of behaviors we usually only attribute to things we think of as living.” — @ConorFeehly.bsky.social

“Think of satellites, soil probes, buoys & bioacoustics as ‘nerve endings’ that take in information, the ‘reflexes’ are machine forecasts that fire on patterns at speed, & the ‘cortex’ is human intuition, integrating senses to understand what matters & why.” —Rimma Boshernitsan #planetary #ai

Our gravest AI risk isn't runaway superintelligence but our cultural readiness to surrender collective judgment to algorithmic systems, Andrew Sorota argues. www.noemamag.com/rescuing-dem...

We are starting to witness tantalizing glimpses of the net good that can be achieved via genetic editing. How far will we allow it to go? Aryn Baker explores.

Europe needs to stop pretending it's a neutral market in a world where digital infrastructure is geopolitical, @francescabria.bsky.social writes. It should act like what it is: a political project with a democratic mission. www.noemamag.com/reclaiming-e...

Lush multimedia feature on yak herding, preserving ways of life, and a future on climate change. @noemamag.com always has such fantastic work.

“I never imagined that America would reach a point where our constitutional protections are teetering because the latest innovations in technology are converging with demagogic politics to corrode the institutional checks & balances by which republics endure.” —Editor-In-Chief Nathan Gardels #ice

Global climate efforts are failing because they do not tackle the power imbalance between fossil and green asset owners. This piece unpacks how fossil fuel elites exploit weak global rules to protect profits, stalling decarbonization. By @greenprofgreen.bsky.social in @noemamag.com buff.ly/vmfb9sx

As Oliver Wendell Holmes said of William James: "turning the lights down low so as to give miracle a chance...."

“Without the cultivated, meaning-laden, embodied intuition of the human scientist who is instinctively driven to ask questions about the nature of the world, AI systems remain rudderless when they enter the realms of uncertainty.” — @conorfeehly.bsky.social #ai #science #scientificdiscoveries

“Emmanuel Macron, J.D. Vance & Berlin artist collectives may seem like unlikely allies, but they all agree that Europe’s ‘regulate first, build later (maybe)’ approach to AI is not working.” —Benjamin Bratton

“This is a slow erasure, a death without spectacle: ‘We are disappearing without being noticed,’” Thinlay Nurboo, a yak herder, told us.” —Sajad Hameed & Rehan Qayoom Mir #climatechange #india #pastoralism

“The integration of AI into education is no longer hypothetical — it is well underway.” Let’s use it to shape students for the better, Greg Easley argues.

“Instead of offering easy answers, thinking historically provides the intellectual equipment to engage with hard questions, a skill indispensable for navigating a future that will surely be as unpredictable as the past.” —Francis Gavin

What do computer science, quantum physics & Hindu tradition have in common? It’s more than you might think, Swami Sarvapriyananda, @blaiseaguera.bsky.social & Carlo Rovelli write. www.noemamag.com/consciousnes...

“When inequality is too vast to last, it doesn’t. The skyrocketing valuations of Big Tech & the staggering concentration of wealth accruing to its titans only presage a revolt against the depredations of disparity.” —Nathan Gardels #inequality #wealthgap

“Exposure to nature can lower our blood pressure, slash the risk of diabetes, improve our mental health & treat ADHD in a way that’s similar to a dose of Ritalin,” @olliemilman.bsky.social writes. What could it do on a larger scale for society as a whole? #nature #society #wellness

My latest on Existential Politics and climate change in @noemamag.com. Climate policy should focus on dollars, not tons of emissions!

“Science & advocacy awakened people to the threat of fossil-fuel-driven environmental catastrophe...” @bentleyallan.bsky.social writes. “Yet it was naive to believe that this alone could transform a global energy system forged over centuries by war & empire." www.noemamag.com/the-new-geop...

“Roughly two-thirds of global emissions between 1854 & 2010 are linked to just 90 firms. And for decades, these firms have been obstructing progress on climate change to protect their bottom lines & to avoid the potential total devaluation of their assets.” — @greenprofgreen.bsky.social

“Might embodied AIs, combined with living systems, become meaning-makers with agency?” —Natalie Lawrence #intelligence #consciousness

"How close are we now to lucrative evangelical expressionism?" What we're reading this week: pieces from @vanmusicmag.bsky.social @noemamag.com @aeon.co @theatlantic.com @artforum.com @nplusonemag.com @newrepublic.com @thebaffler.com @intelligencer.com @nytimes.com pghrev.com/what-were-re...

"The successor to mass social media is [...] emerging not as a single platform, but as a scattering of alleyways, salons, encrypted lounges and federated town squares — those little gardens."

Neuroscientist @anilseth.bsky.social's new essay in Noema is a rigorous & compelling challenge to the notion that complex computation like AI can give rise to consciousness, Nathan Gardels writes. #consciousness #ai

"Find yourself in another world." Today's article pick from Damn History, a free newsletter for readers/writers of #popularhistory. Congrats to writer @christianelliott.me & @noemamag.com! Read/subscribe to Damn History: damn-history-16d93f.beehiiv.com/subscribe www.noemamag.com/where-the-pr...

“The last days of social media might be the first days of something more human: a web that remembers why we came online in the first place — not to be harvested but to be heard, not to go viral but to find our people, not to scroll but to connect.” — @jamesosullivan.bsky.social

"The tech industry’s whiz kids once promised convenience at your fingertips. Now they’re embracing the military-industrial complex to defend the West." — @tfa.ng in @noemamag.com www.noemamag.com/silicon-vall...

The tech industry’s whiz kids once promised convenience at your fingertips. Now they’re embracing the military-industrial complex to defend the West, @tfa.ng writes. #defensetech #siliconvalley #defense

From the iconic "Earthrise" photo to the shifting hues of oceans, Earth's colors have long shaped our political imagination. This essay argues: color is not mere decoration but a mirror of human impact—and an invitation to act. By @frederic-hanusch.bsky.social in @noemamag.com

So glad sometime finally told this story. I learned about pioneer cemeteries holding the last remnants of tallgrass prairie when I lived in Iowa. Christian Elliott in @noemamag.com does justice to a complex story about loss, restoration, and a clash between culture and nature. #scicomm #Writing

“When we mediate our forms of worship through the architecture of algorithms, we are inviting another god into the room.” — @johnwlast.bsky.social www.noemamag.com/the-vanishin...

“Sovereignty is the power to decide what appears to machines — &, through them, to the humans & institutions that depend on their judgments.” — @digitaldang.bsky.social www.noemamag.com/a-third-path...

“Efforts to combat misinformation have largely left us defensive, reacting to strategies & narratives used by those who spread it.” — @zevesanderson.com & Scott Babwah Brennen

“In the most powerful speech in Davos this week, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney laid out a forward-looking vision for those who must operate in the breach.” —Nathan Gardels #carney #davos #worldorder

“…sustaining the shared information commons” Compelling essay by Hamilton Mann for @noemamag.com www.noemamag.com/the-ai-power...

“Until recently, an implicit social contract governed the web: Creators produced content, search engines distributed it, & in return, user traffic flowed back to the creators’ websites that sustained the system.” But not anymore, @hamiltonmann.bsky.social writes: www.noemamag.com/the-ai-power...

NEW: The OII's DPhil student Ben Bariach writes for Noema Magazine on world models, epistemology and society, previewing his ongoing research on the philosophy and governance of frontier AI at Oxford. www.noemamag.com/when-ai-huma...

A future filled with many AI personas — from the bad boy to the brown-noser — isn’t a mistake; it’s the best way to work with the technology, Phil Nolan argues.

“World-model-powered AI could one day mediate how people perceive, move through & make decisions within their everyday environments.” —Ben Bariach #ai #worldmodels #aiagents

Love @noemamag.com for always having provocative reads; this one on the color of Earth and its political implications is a fascinating piece from @frederic-hanusch.bsky.social.

“People in Isan, Thailand’s northeastern province, consume bugs the way Americans eat potato chips.” —Rebecca Root

“As AI-generated posts continue to overwhelm Facebook, Instagram & TikTok, it’s unclear to what degree actual human communication will persist on these platforms, & what those remnants will look like.” — @mikesmariani.bsky.social www.noemamag.com/how-we-becam...

“Caring about diversity in the current era lays the groundwork for the continued survival of our own species in the long term, no matter what the future holds.” — @rdword.bsky.social

“When looking to the future of the labor market in an AI economy, we can’t talk about ‘job loss vs. gains’ in any general sense. The key issue is not the quantity of jobs, but the value of labor.” —Nathan Gardels #ai #futureofwork #economy #aijobs

This week's Top 5 #longreads: • ICE fighter, @spiegel.de • Tectonic researcher, @highcountrynews.org • Prairie preserver, @noemamag.com • Regal grandmother, Southlands (@boyceupholt.bsky.social) • Wild timekeeper, @emergencemagazine.bsky.social longreads.com/2026/01/16/t...

"Only in the last 200 years did farmers transform these acres into neat cornfields." —Christian Elliott for @noemamag.com www.noemamag.com/where-the-pr...

“Most often, color slips into planetary politics quietly, as the mood of a map, the warning of a dashboard, the tint of a season, the hue of a banner.” — @frederic-hanusch.bsky.social

Must-read article on the folly of conflating computational intelligence with human consciousness, and why the way our brains actually work makes this mistake so seductive.

Whew. Listen.

can't wait to read this