“Our findings frame AI slop as a tragedy of the commons,” the researchers concluded, “where individual productivity gains externalise costs on to reviewers, maintainers and the broader community.” www.ft.com/content/cec8...

Fascinating, beautifully written magazine cover story by @samlearner.bsky.social on how vibe coding is overwhelming the unsung human caretakers who keep the web running. Your weekend must read right here as.ft.com/r/1e761e4c-c...

“The never-ending slop submissions take a serious mental toll to manage and sometimes also a long time to debunk. Time and energy that is completely wasted while also hampering our will to live.” www.ft.com/content/cec8...

“The Financial Times estimates – ‘under the most generous assumptions’ – that, with the exception of Amazon, all hyperscalers will see negative returns on investment for the 2025–30 period. Oracle’s figure is a staggering -35%.” newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...

“We should consider taking as strong a stance against ultraprocessed content as we already do against ultraprocessed food. Which is to say: Most people should avoid these diversions most of the time.” www.nytimes.com/2026/03/27/o...

“In 2016 my main concern was helping people find enough free time for deep work. Today I think we’re rapidly losing the ability to think deeply at all, regardless of how much space we can find in our schedules for these efforts.” www.nytimes.com/2026/03/27/o...

“AI does more than compete for attention. It can shape emotions & influence decisions. In the eyes of regulators, that makes its addictive potential more alarming. But the anti-addiction goal sits in direct conflict with business logic of AI companionship products.” www.thexpin.com/p/china-new-...

Haruki Murakami, Lydia Davis, Sigrid Nuñez, Jennifer Egan, Danzy Senna

Charles Taylor Hartmut Rosa Rachel Cusk Lawrence Joseph Byung Chul Han

“Cornell researchers found that at the current rate of AI growth, the burgeoning industry could represent 24 to 44 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions by 2030, the equivalent of adding five to ten million cars to US roadways.”

“The European Union has switched from Google to the French Qwant as a default search engine in its official systems, while Belgium and Finland have both moved away from Amazon Web Services.” www.nytimes.com/2026/07/09/o...

“Transforming cubicle farms into apartments is often challenging because of various codes and structural challenges, and this one was particularly complicated.” www.nytimes.com/2026/07/09/n...

“While energy projects on nontribal lands can face permitting delays of three to 10 years, projects on tribal land often proceed more quickly because tribes wield sovereign authority to handle their own regulations and permitting.” www.nytimes.com/2026/07/09/u...

“Always-on devices could violate data privacy or biometric data laws. It is also unclear whether the company or the wearer will be responsible for any breach of wiretapping laws, as it is illegal in multiple states to record audio of a third party without consent.” www.ft.com/content/ac28...

“Because they want features such as super-reliable “five nines”, or 99.999 per cent power availability with only a few minutes of downtime a year, they are often going for systems powered by gas and diesel, which emit air pollutants” www.ft.com/content/7800...

“In the 1980s, the country experienced, on average, one (inflation-adjusted) billion-dollar disaster every four months. Now, there is one every three weeks or so.” www.nytimes.com/2026/07/07/w...

“LinkerBot’s Zhuo dreams of a future where a factory of robotic hands builds more robotic hands – a self-perpetuating loop that has minimal human input. Further down the line, with the right hands, robots might be able to become fully-fledged household helpers.” www.theguardian.com/technology/n...

“For the most part, you don't really know how it came up with that text. In this sense, it's very much like what's called in Science and Technology Studies, or STS, the black box of technology.” www.indeliblevoice.com/podcast/the-...

Meyrowitz “predicted that the decline of print and rise of electronic media would ultimately push people toward populist leaders. They would shun authority and institutions in favor of the candidate who made good television.” www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

“Adult-literacy scores have also dropped: Nearly 30 percent of American adults cannot paraphrase or make inferences from a multipage text. In 2017, that number was less than 20 percent.” www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

social media platforms that operate to maximize engagement, nazi ideology built on hate and rage, weak regulation and enforcement... democracy is dying before our eyes and big tech is fuel powering it www.irishtimes.com/world/europe...

“ .. widely regarded as the most consequential AI hiring bias lawsuit in U.S. legal history. The decision on Monday by U.S. District Judge Rita Lin is a signal to every HR team using algorithmic screening software that legal exposure is no longer theoretical.” www.hcamag.com/us/specializ...

I don't know, man, I think if Joe Biden had kept confusing Zelenskyy with Putin and Iran with Japan, the media might have made a pretty big deal about it?

“Denmark insures the worker, not the job, and it prices the insurance to preserve the incentive to work.” thetwocents.substack.com/p/europe-cho...

Facebook’s own researchers found that “64% of all extremist group joins are due to our recommendation tools”, an internal report in 2016 found. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

👇 I always remember one of my early professors: "we called it artificial intelligence because we didn't have better language." (paraphrased).

“The question is not whether exceptions are possible, but rather who is sufficiently legible to systems of power to benefit from exception-making that is baked into the design of machines that make probabilistic predictions about the future.” cyber.jotwell.com/how-algorith...

“Projects I would have charged several thousand dollars for because they were a function of hours spent are now worth a fraction of that because a client’s first question will be whether you use AI or not to write a first draft” tedthoughts.substack.com/p/the-end-of...

“The retention rates of digital mental health tools are relatively low: studies have found that user engagement typically drops off after just fifteen days” www.cambridge.org/core/element...

“The Bank for International Settlements suggests in its latest annual economic report that if AI replaced much of human labour, the latter’s share of income could fall to 20 per cent. This would be a return to a feudal society” www.ft.com/content/2dca...

TL;DR: The article examines how algorithms leverage individuals' past behaviors, including credit and criminal histories, for predictive decisions in tenant screening and parole assessments. It addresses the implications for fairness and accountability in algorithmic practices.

Emotion shapes reasoning. AI that can read and predict emotional states can therefore intervene in the chain between mental state and decision.

“Fundamental philosophical questions about the manifestation, nature, and value of emotions appear to be neglected within emotion recognition research.” link.springer.com/article/10.1...

“Knowing too much about an agent’s emotions and being able to manipulate these states, restricts an agent’s autonomous agency.” journals.ub.uni-koeln.de/index.php/ph...

“Human language produces an infinity of meaning from a handful of signs. Generative AI does the opposite. It takes in billions of words and ends up with a probabilistic middle.” feelingdigital.substack.com/p/let-ai-be-...

“We often adopt technologies without noticing how thoroughly they reorganize society. The automobile did not just add a faster way to travel between existing destinations. It reorganized where people live, work, shop, and socialize.” rogerhuntphdcand.substack.com/p/wittgenste...

“Gina Rinehart, Australia’s richest person and a vocal supporter of Trump’s Maga movement, donated a private plane to One Nation for campaigning and has appeared onstage alongside Hanson.” www.ft.com/content/ee90...

“Perhaps echo chambers, conspiracy theories, mood manipulation, fake news, etc. are a consequence of increasingly unleashed affectivity as the new normal.” journals.ub.uni-koeln.de/index.php/ph...

“Where job tenure depends on fealty to the President, the officer, quite literally, puts her job on the line any time she regulates in a manner the president disfavors,” even when such regulation is commanded by statute. balkin.blogspot.com/2026/07/free...

“Air France last year unleashed a ‘musky scent’ on unsuspecting visitors to its airport lounges that was designed by a master perfumer…and aims to kindle ‘a feeling of space, calm and light.’ A more apt airport aroma would summon a sense of crush, dread and fury.” www.ft.com/content/e736...

A must read! @alexcampolo.bsky.social new paper on the entwined histories of machine learning and the psychology of emotion recognition. Such important work in context of our contemporary moment #machinelearning #recognition journals.ub.uni-koeln.de/index.php/ph...

48% of Americans “wrongly assume that everyone pays full price. This contributes to the overwhelming, but incorrect, sense that college keeps getting more and more expensive. On average, Americans are paying less for college than they were a decade ago.” www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

“The real nightmare—for her and so many others who are anxious about flopping right now—is not that she’s being blocked from the market, but rather that the market is all there is.” www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026...

“Wisconsin residents sue Microsoft over noise caused by new data center *** Residents have also complained the area has become a ‘dust bowl’ due to construction” 7/4/26

“The cost of developing a new electric vehicle platform in Germany is more than 3.5 times as much as in China. And the cost of setting up a new nuclear fission reactor in France is about three times more than in South Korea.” www.ft.com/content/33da...

SpaceX value proposition: “hand the deferred wages of union members, at a 35-to-75 percent premium to fair value, to a company dismantling the legal regime under which those same members organized — in exchange for a share with no vote, no court, and no board.” stephen-diamond.com/2026/06/22/a...

“A coalition of trade groups recently wrote to the Trump administration that the memory shortage was jeopardizing the “production and availability of automobiles, medical devices, and other manufactured goods.”” www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

“The most obvious reason that culture brims with the melting-together of the goofy and the horrible is because undeniably stupid stuff really is crashing into the very serious news in undeniably disturbing ways” news.artnet.com/art-world/ma...

“This is a war whose aggressors seem less in hock to Carl von Clausewitz than to the instant dopaminergic kill-feed of a fifteen-year-old hooked on Call of Duty missions—with strategy configured as content, war as engagement metric.” www.e-flux.com/notes/678351...

Paleoconservatism on the Seine: “Le Pen’s National Rally has fought renovations to make buildings energy-efficient and sought to block wind turbines and solar panels” www.theguardian.com/environment/...