Here we are again! New readers, welcome!! There are already quite a few of you—so cool! Please do reply to this email; the downside of a newsletter compared to social media is that I hardly ever hear back (but hey, no hate messages either, which is nice…).
404 Media:
It was, of course, DeepSeek week, but these five bullet points from Gary Marcus are really all you need to know about it. And then there’s this piece from 404 Media—the headline is satirical, but the article itself is as sharp and well-crafted as 404 Media always is! Founder Samantha Cole even guested on Mystery AI Hype Theater this summer—definitely an episode worth checking out.
Teen Vogue:
Since Trump’s first term, Teen Vogue has been a beacon in the darkness—a publication offering solid background pieces and left-leaning political analysis, proving that there’s more to life than “superficial girl/women entertainment”; the world is far more complex. In one excellent article, a Black woman recounts how she received hardly any responses on LinkedIn when presenting her true identity, but when she passed as white, she suddenly had much more success. A tale as old as time, of course, but it remains painfully relevant, especially with the rollback of DEI initiatives on both sides of the political spectrum. And by the way, this is another example of an AI application that makes me think: yes, I can see that! If I could present myself as a man in the digital world… maybe I would!
Byline Times:
A strong, historical overview of Russian disinformation on Twitter (now X) reads like a Tom Clancy thriller! The trajectory from Brexit to Trump gives you goosebumps, and it clearly shows that the anger of “the people” isn’t innate but is systematically fanned by those spinning their own agendas. The piece also reminds us of the Cambridge Analytica scandal—something that seems to have been forgotten by everyone and their grandmother! In my naïveté back then, I thought: this is the end of Facebook; now everyone will finally leave it, but alas.
Guardian:
The AI pilots in the UK aren’t going very well. In my experience, pilots in large organisations are really just the starting points for projects that people don’t really want, yet they’re framed as pilots to defuse critics by saying, “it’s only a pilot.” So I find it encouraging to see that pilots which aren’t working are being scrapped—even though it also shows just how badly things are going!
Bloomberg:
The European Commission is inviting major tech companies—consistent with the Digital Markets Act that requires online platforms to filter out “socially harmful content”—to undergo a stress test. I talked about this in my BNR column this week.
Dan Meyer on SubStack:
Did you see those astounding AI results in Nigerian education earlier this week? There’s certainly a lot to be said about that.
And now, a little POSITIVE NEWS to wrap things up!
It’s nice to have some good news every now and then!
Guardian:
In 2024, 11% of all electricity in the EU was generated by solar panels, compared to 10% from coal. Gas accounted for 16%, and that share has been declining for the fifth year in a row. Perhaps we’ll still make it in time…? One can dream!
New York Times:
Bookshop, an online platform that enables small bookstores to sell physical books to compete with Amazon, will soon also offer ebooks! As a not-so-proud (actually, rather embarrassed) owner of a Kindle, I’m really going to try to switch over to Bookshop as much as possible! Tucked away in the article is the fact that many more paper books are still being sold than ebooks, which is great! There’s nothing quite like a real book—with bookmarks, scribbles, dog-eared pages, and all that. When I got back a completely battered book from a student last year, along with a heap of apologies, my heart skipped a beat! What could be better than a student who literally devours a book?
This article was translated by Johanna Guacide.
