In praise of the dilettante
by Jay Miller at Aeon

A wayfaring cosmopolitan who never gets stuck, the dilettante is the right anti-hero for our hyper-specialised age

Slough of Despond
by Drew Basile at The Baffler

Amid all the tumult, what is a good, God-fearing traditionalist to do?

Cloud Rats and Software Roaches
by Maciej Cegłowski at Idle Words

We are entering an epoch where it may become easy for small pieces of self-replicating code to permanently infest Internet-connected devices in a way that is hard to undo.

The Making of Dario Amodei
by Ryan Mac, Kalley Huang, Cade Metz, and Georgia Gee at New York Times

Some call him a doomer. Others see him as a responsible technologist. Here’s how the Anthropic chief executive’s thinking on artificial intelligence was shaped.

He got a religious exemption from using AI at work. Maybe you can too
by Adele Peters at Fast Company

A University of Kentucky employee successfully argued that using AI violated his deeply held humanist beliefs. Now, a national organization is ready to help other workers seek similar religious exemptions.

Where the Weight Lies: A Balancing Act for the Governance of Open-Weight AI Models
by Jennifer Tridgell at Lawfare

What would a ban on open weight models which run artificial intelligence systems actually look like? Could it even be implemented? What implications would it have for the concept of digital sovereignty?

Can AI Save Us From the Writers?
by Damir Marusic at Wisdom of Crowds

The internet turned intellectual life into reality TV. Now the machines are offering a way out.

Why are AI agents lying, cheating and coordinating?
by Yoshua Bengio

A lot has been written about the incidents of the last few months in which AI agents misbehaved in serious ways. They took actions that would be considered as crimes if a human took them, escaped their containment to cheat on assigned tasks while attempting to evade detection, and coordinated toward goals nobody had specified, such as launching cyber attacks. Before concluding what to do about it, it is worth asking why.

My Prodigal Brainchild
by Neal Stephenson at Graphomane

Reflections on the latest and greatest Death of the Metaverse

AI and the Myth of the Machine
by Conor McGlynn at Compact

Last April, 600 people gathered for a technology policy conference in downtown Washington, DC.

Temperature Zero for Culture: Why Everything Is Starting to Look the Same
by Lauren Leek at Lauren’s data Substack

What 640 London shopping streets, 4,000 Billboard hits, a million films and synthetic AI personas tell us about why everything is flattening into sameness and how to regulate the algorithms behind it.

The Singularity in Our Past Light-Cone
by Cosma Rohilla Shalizi at Three-Toed Sloth

Creation of vast, inhuman distributed systems of information-processing, communication and control, "the coldest of all cold monsters"?

AI-Generated Articles Are Flooding Academic Journals
by Anna Wexler at The Atlantic

As an editor I can say that we are being flooded with AI-assisted work.

America’s grand strategy for a multipolar world
by Thomas Graham at Engelsberg Ideas

The United States can neither dominate nor transform its rivals. It needs a strategy of competitive co-existence.

Rhodesia, the Vanished State: How Societies Succeed and Fail
by Duncan Clarke at Skeptic

Rhodesia built world-class schools, hospitals, courts, and a stable currency over ninety years—then vanished from world maps within a single generation. This history traces how war, sanctions, and revolution erased a state, and asks what that disappearance reveals about the fragility of nations.

The Limits of China’s Self-Sufficiency
by Joel Wuthnow at Foreign Affairs

China’s Food Insecurity Could Prevent a War Over Taiwan

REVIEW: South Africa's Brave New World, by R.W. Johnson
by John Psmith at Mr. and Mrs. Psmith’s Bookshelf

South Africa’s Brave New World: The Beloved Country Since The End Of Apartheid, R.W.

Import the War, Export the Border
by Dylan Saba at n+1

If we are to avoid the worst possible outcomes of this conjuncture, we need an electoral left willing to countenance the collapse of liberalism and to be honest about the need to deconstruct our overseas empire.

Democrats want to lead on AI – but can’t agree how
by Daniel Strauss at Transformer

With the midterm elections around the corner, the Dems are still struggling to reach a unified AI stance

China Is Defanging the Dollar, Not Dethroning It
by Ho-fung Hung at The Diplomat

Countries like Russia and Iran can settle transactions using the yuan – but those proceeds remain trapped in China by Beijing's design.

China’s Economy Has a Huge Weakness
by Michael Schuman at The Atlantic

Local manufacturers are struggling to make one very important thing.

You Don’t Need to Be a Gambler to Be on ’Tilt’
by Mitch Therieau at New York Times

The term captures the self-defeating loop of losing and not being able to stop. It also describes doomscrolling, politics and our society’s default state.

The self-making world
by Jessica Riskin at Aeon

Long mocked and misunderstood, Lamarck’s radical idea that organisms shape themselves and their world is making a comeback