So, the Spotify mirrorball app icon is seriously not going away? It's meant to stay? Really?

The impossible maths of the AI boom ft.trib.al/Y8sc22o | opinion

Excellent column by @polgreen.bsky.social: www.nytimes.com/2026/05/18/o...

In this post, I condemn Trump's shameful policy of deporting Russian dissenters fleeing Putin's regime. It's unjust, illegal, and damaging to US interests. But consistent in those respects with Trump's other refugee policies: reason.com/volokh/2026/...

"The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist." ― Hannah Arendt.

"2,000 mathematicians have signed a petition calling on the International Mathematics Union to move its quadrennial conference—scheduled to take place in Philadelphia in July—outside the United States." #AcademicSky #ResearchSky www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty...

Slightly diminish a book The Sound and the Irritation

As a Ukrainian journalist, I've covered the US for 20 years. I find it increasingly shocking 🖊️ Nataliya Gumenyuk My country has been under occupation, dogged by corruption and war. Yet even I've been bewildered by the way the US seems to be fracturing www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a...

Cioè io sono basita. Il voto popolare per chi vince la Biennale d'Arte Contemporanea. Come se fossimo a Sanremo o all'Eurovision.

This smells like a critique tinged with sexism from a mile away.

For the time being, please stay vigilant against phishing and account takeover attempts. Remember that no one from Signal Support will ever send you a message request or ask for your registration verification code or Signal PIN. 10/

However, sophisticated attackers have engaged in a harmful phishing campaign posing as “Signal Support” by changing their profile display name & using social engineering to trick people into handing over their credentials—information that allowed attackers to take over some targeted Signal accts. 2/

EU capitals are skeptical and even downright dismissive of a new European Commission app to check the internet users' ages, government ministers and officials have told POLITICO.

I can't imagine what would more effectively recruit US scientific talent to other countries around the world than destroying universities, eliminating research funding, and demonizing the very concept of expertise.

This one is particularly gross. Hey, let's co-opt the name of a woman scientist whose work was stolen by men who then went on to win a Nobel Prize without her. 👩🏻‍🔬

I have feelings I can't put into words about OpenAI's new model for drug discovery being called Rosalind.

I just signed, and I encourage all of my Stanford colleagues to do so as well. The idea that the DOJ is asking for private student data to promote "fairness" in admissions is ludicrous. Instead the info will be weaponized to force our compliance w discriminatory directives from the Trump admin.

Vast difference between religious freedom and imposing Christian nationalism in the workplace. The Trump admin is doing the latter.

crowd at the Tisza rally singing "Europa! Europa!"

Hungarian people, stand proud today and choose democracy.

So the UK is allowing nonsense AI slop to pass into law... > Writing a law is not something for which there is a technological solution. It is not a perfectible process, it is a moral act that requires belief and responsibility. It is a process of debate.

"Musk is requiring banks, law firms, auditors and other advisers working on the I.P.O. to buy subscriptions to Grok [...], which is part of SpaceX [...]. Some of the banks have agreed to spend tens of millions on the chatbot, and they have already started integrating Grok into their I.T. systems."

(futurism.com/artificial-i...)

If you are into political science in the age of AI, Prof. Andrew Hall's Free Systems newsletter is made for you: freesystems.substack.com?r=qnbx I've been reading it for a couple of months after finding out about it in some Stanford forum, but I wish I'd found it earlier!

Inside the German state trying to break free from Microsoft

Good news, everyone! This injected treatment has positive effects in regrowing human cartilage, too, targeting the cause of osteoarthritis. An oral version aimed at treating age-related muscle weakness is already in clinical trials. #arthritis #science #goodnews med.stanford.edu/news/all-new...

If there's another view, I'd love to see it, but this verdict seems completely right to me. America Lost. Iran Won. Trump Shat the Bed. open.substack.com/pub/thebulwa...

Empire of corruption: economist.com/europe/2026/... from The Economist

My self-sovereign / local / private / secure LLM setup, April 2026 https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2026/04/02/secure_llms.html

my working assumption is that Trump is mad at Reuters

"... the idea that an imperfect feminist cannot be a real feminist is an insidious one. Actual feminism is not a neat list of dos and don’ts; it’s simply the idea that women deserve the same agency and rights as men. That includes the ability to decide whom they want to be with."

This could be big. www.ansa.it/amp/sito/not...

We are thrilled to announce GHOST IN THE MACHINE is available for IRL and virtual community screening events, and on-demand rental on Kinema! Watch today! kinema.com/films/ghost-... "If there is one documentary with the power to burst the AI bubble, it’s this one." - The Wrap

Would you invite a serial killer to a garden party? Russia should not be welcome at the world’s top art show economist.com/culture/2026... from The Economist

So a big reason the executive class is so high on generative AI, not even specifically at work but in their personal lives, wanting to talk to it a lot, wanting to use it for everything, is a lack of distress tolerance for the messy business of dealing with other autonomous humans.

Again, after the UN resolution on the state of women, the USA finds itself in poor company, this time on the issue of slavery. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/25/w...

Hungary's Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó now admits he speaks to Sergei Lavrov before and after key EU meetings. "I talk not only to the Russian Foreign Minister, but also to our American, Turkish, Israeli, Serbian and others before and after EU Council meetings," Szijjártó said.

“[…] Instead of broadening our focus outward, many of us have turned it inward, turning critical thinking into overthinking; hyper-policing our thoughts and language until having a personality feels like a risk assessment exercise […]” www.vogue.in/content/in-2...

but if you stay quiet, they set the agenda, the framework, and the public discourse is gradually conquered by more nonsense (a mix of marketing and collective delusions). Much of it is just terrible philosophy disguised as science. 3/

i hate podcasts having to listen to 2+ people i don’t know ramble way off topic (if they ever get to the topic to begin with) and just having to sit there? silently? LISTENING? absolutely not i worry about you people it’s like enjoying voicemails

The United States was the only country to vote “no” against the women’s rights document at UN commission. This isn’t being talked about enough.

A scammer was so good at impersonating Apple Support that Matt Mullenweg thanked him for excellent customer service. Then came the phishing link. The attack worked because it felt real. It was real, mostly. That's the bit that should worry you. https://ma.tt/2026/03/gone-almost-phishin/

#8marzo L'Italia scivola al 18esimo posto in questo indice che misura l'uguaglianza nel mondo del lavoro (nel 2025 eravamo al 17esimo, nel 2020 al 13esimo). www.economist.com/interactive/...

“One-size-fits-all approaches are unhelpful” when it comes to discussing women’s rights, argues Alice Evans in a guest essay

Jenner & Block Susman Godfrey Perkins Coie WilmerHale All fought autocracy and won. Paul Weiss, A&O Shearman Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft Kirkland & Ellis Latham & Watkins Milbank Simpson Thacher & Bartlett Skadden Arps Willkie Farr & Gallagher Caved to autocracy. Who do you want as your lawyer?

Needless to say, also, the romantic image of the academic as solitary hero toiling away in the stacks is a very gendered one, and made possible only by all the similarly gendered and invisible labor that image leaves out. LLMs reproduce all of that as well.

Just because the world needs the tiniest glimmer of hope today: www.experimental-history.com/p/underrated... www.experimental-history.com/p/underrated...

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