Today’s Daily Cartoon, by Matt Reuter. #NewYorkerCartoons

"I live in this city because it’s endlessly fascinating to me; why do I tune out so many of its microtransactions and minor negotiations of humanity that make up its shared space?" @timdonnelly.com makes a compelling case for taking off your damn headphones nygroove.nyc/stop-wearing...

Celebrate #WorldBookDay with a look at some of the most beautiful and unusual examples from the first 100 years of the “modern” book cover, since the rise of publishers' bindings circa 1820: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-art-of-book-covers-1820-1914

never, ever, ever, ever accept "how will you pay for it?" as an argument against social programs.

"Globally, the research found ocean levels are an average of 30cm higher than previously believed, but in some areas of the global south, including south-east Asia and the Indo-Pacific, they may be 100-150cm higher than previously thought."

Glad people are settling on the term "pervert glasses". Bonus points if you also say it while posting a picture of Mark Zuckerberg or call them Mark Zuckerberg's pervert glasses.

When the New York Public Library's wealthy trustees tried to get rid of physical books, & turn the beloved main branch (guarded by the two lions) into a kind of upscale mall, they presented this as inevitable too. People fought back—turns out people really like books!—& they had to drop the plan.

"Solar panels, once installed, generate energy locally. The vulnerability shifts from ongoing fuel imports to upfront manufacturing dependence...Reducing oil dependence is often framed as climate policy. But it is also vital to energy security and national security."

Social media created this nonsense idea that not exposing yourself to hatred is isolationist. Choosing to not spend your free time with bigots isn’t living in a bubble. I don’t need to know what’s going on at X. I won’t be smarter or more knowledgeable or empathic by being there. Neither will you.

Everybody is really sleeping on the “Oracle gets destroyed by openai and data center debt” as a possibility

People are always like what’s something you miss from the past and one of mine is antitrust laws

Ancient stepwells brought back to life as India begins to run out of water

"Prominent economists, including from Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase, calculate that the AI buildup was directly responsible not for 92 percent or 39 percent of gains to the U.S. economy in 2025, but as little as zero."

In 1993, Octavia E. Butler wrote a defense of public libraries. “Public libraries in particular are the open universities of America. They're free; they're accessible to everyone… I'm a writer at least partly because I had access to public libraries.“

This one hits hard.

Georgia was skating to MORTAL KOMBAT at the Olympics exhibition gala

Every word of this is a nightmare www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

"The public thinks AI will worsen our ability to think creatively, form meaningful relationships, and make difficult decisions, Pew found. Other surveys show Americans believe AI will spread misinformation, erode our sense of purpose and meaning, and harm our social and emotional intelligence."

In 1942, over 125,000 people of Japanese ancestry were unjustly incarcerated in America's concentration camps and deprived of their civil rights and due process. Sadly, there is an absolute parallel between what happened then and what’s happening today to immigrant communities throughout the nation.

"The brain drain is prompting existential fears that American science, a powerhouse of the US economy and of global public health, is being deprived of its lifeblood."

A network of free private schools for war orphans and other children has sprouted in Gaza. The schools, called Academies of Hope, are the brainchild of a Palestinian American neurosurgeon, Dr. David Hasan, who visited Gaza on relief missions. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/18/w...

If you want to understand this moment in time, and all the ways unassuming tech is weaponized, you need to be reading @404media.co.

GDP, the worst and most harmful of the measures esteemed by a long procession of thoughtless, careless economists: "A focus on growth as measured by the gross domestic product” has resulted in significant damage to the natural world, says the study..."

'Global temperatures have been rising for decades. But many scientists say it’s now happening faster than ever before...“We’re not continuing on the same path we had before,” said Robert Rohde, chief scientist at Berkeley Earth. “Something has changed.”'

As if public infrastructure construction collapses aren't enough of an indicator already...

The disparities and inequalities have gotten so bad even the WSJ is forced to address the facts.

What these findings in the Harvard Business Review actually describe is a bunch of schnooks leaning into the unethical, unsustainable tech, thinking it will give them advantage, but end up having more to do for their masters with no greater reward and crashing out, like they deserve.

This is the utmost basic common sense. GDP: just a brutish measure of extraction. It's like trying to gauge how well your household is doing by measuring the size of the flame that's burning the house down.

The world is full of people suffering from the effects of their own unlived life. They become bitter, critical, or rigid, not because the world is cruel to them, but because they have betrayed their own inner possibilities. Carl Jung

‘As the Swedish diplomatic historian Anders Stephanson writes, “the alarming fact” is that “everyone on this earth has an enormous stake in how the United States chooses to be and act in this world.” Not just enormous, but existential.’ Adam Shatz’s Winter Lecture: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Thomas Kellner, "Washington, Capitol" 2004.

Spain gets it: “The Spanish government on Tuesday unexpectedly issued a decree that gives undocumented migrants a path out of legal limbo, putting Spain at odds with many countries around the world that have grown increasingly tough on illegal immigration.” Gift link www.nytimes.com/2026/01/27/w...

Is the area you live in water stress? You can explore regions of water stress around the world using our latest map: watershedinvestigations.com/find-out-wha...

Do not waste what little we have on that unsustainable, unethical tech: "Not only does the world overspend its annual water “income” — the renewable flows that come from rain and snow — but it has also exhausted the long-term “savings” stored in underground aquifers, glaciers and ecosystems."

'"The only way to change the trajectory is with strong laws,” she says. If such measures make plastic’s price reflect its true toll, other kinds of packaging—and systems enabling, for example, reusable takeout containers—could compete economically.'

Doctorow: "This is a reverse centaur, and it is a specific kind of reverse centaur: it is what Dan Davies calls an “accountability sink”. The radiologist’s job is not really to oversee the AI’s work, it is to take the blame for the AI’s mistakes."

Back in the day in Brooklyn, every memorable night was one that somehow ended up at Hank's.

May we have a fraction of this man’s courage and integrity www.nytimes.com/2026/01/14/w...

"...the emerging research is making clear that the ability to plagiarize is inherent to GPT-4 and all other major LLMs. None of the researchers I spoke with thought that the underlying phenomenon, memorization, is unusual or could be eradicated."

Eating less meat remains one of the fastest, easiest and cheapest ways to cut emissions. It requires no new technology, no subsidies or tax credits. "Our nation’s new food pyramid will mean environmental and health burdens for Americans," writes Matt Prescott www.nytimes.com/2026/01/10/o...

The US stands alone in dismissing the problem of climate change.

This is a stark (with stats) reminder of what the gradual collapse of the late 20th century international order means in terms of deaths in war. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/06/o...

"The Kra Ecotone is a national and global asset. If the land bridge cannot be built with credible safeguards that protect this living corridor, the wisest course is to rethink it radically -- or cancel it."

Siemen Dijkstra, Single Oak, color woodcut, 2008.

Just wait until these intelligent driverless cars suddenly stall during earthquakes and other widespread emergencies, and block vital evacuation and rescue routes.

The AI boom has caused as much carbon dioxide to be released into the atmosphere in 2025 as emitted by the whole of New York City, says academic Alex de Vries-Gao, founder of Digiconomist. AI-related water use now exceeds entire global bottled-water demand, too. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Cormac McCarthy line sticking with me this morning, from The Passenger: “Evil has no alternate plan. It is simply incapable of assuming failure.”

You know, some days I sit and think about how absolutely wild it is that we've built a society where we don't provide a place for people to even sleep at night without having to pay for it, and that we've somehow made it seem like that's normal.

"For the first time, a majority of Americans believe billionaires are a threat to democracy. A remarkable 71 percent believe there should be a wealth tax. A majority believe there should be a cap on how much wealth a person can accumulate."