“China has gone from producing about half as much electricity as the U.S. to generating more than twice as much, at far lower prices; in 2023, it installed more solar power than America has installed in its entire history.” www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

“Financial firms use of AI in automated trading, risk management, and asset allocation creates serious risks of hyperinflating market bubbles, exacerbating safety and soundness problems, and exposing institutions and their customers to cybersecurity dangers.” ourfinancialsecurity.org/resources/ai...

Sandbox or Quicksand: The Perils of AI Exemptions from Federal Financial Laws - Americans for Financial Reform

The House and Senate are both considering legislation to create broad exemptions from federal laws and regulations for the use of artificial intelligence (AI) by regulated financial firms. It creates ...

ourfinancialsecurity.org

“The great emotion in Les Fleurs du Mal is ennui. It's not just boredom, it's this spiritual exhaustion of modern life. So for Baudelaire modernity… is demanding artifice rather than innocence and the decadent artists [are] uneasy observers of it” podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/p...

The History of Bad Ideas: Decadence

Podcast Episode · Past Present Future · August 5 · 57m

podcasts.apple.com

“Population estimates, after a long march downward, have been increasing for the past two years. This stabilization appears to be connected at least in part to efforts to save butterfly habitats in Mexico, the United States, and Canada.” www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

The Return of the Monarch

After years of decline, butterfly populations are rising—for now.

theatlantic.com

“Water use and noise are often cited as objections by neighbors and environmentalists. Less mentioned has been the pollution from the scores of gas-burning plants that will power these data centers.” www.nytimes.com/2026/08/05/c... All while kneecapping green energy.

Trump’s Push for More A.I. Data Centers Will Mean Major Air Pollution

nytimes.com

“Prescott argues that data centers in TIDs are almost always a bad bet & can end up raising taxes on residents, especially if developments end up smaller than planned. His website hosts a veritable library of blog posts and slide decks, complete with spreadsheets” jasmi.news/p/no-data-ce...

No Data Centers In My Backyard

money, power, and populism in the AI buildout

jasmi.news

Brown University has a widget that tracks the cost of the Iran war to American consumers (as contrasted to whatever the Pentagon is spending). Per-household cost now exceeds $600. iranwarcost.watson.brown.edu

As LLM text “becomes ubiquitous, it undermines not only our individual ability to write but also a society’s collective ability to reason, a culture’s inner capacity to create and everyone’s reason to care.” www.nytimes.com/2026/08/04/o...

Opinion | I’m Begging You: Never Write With A.I.

It’s bad for your brain and worse for democracy.

nytimes.com

“Foxconn taught many residents to never believe a tech company’s—or their local government’s—sweet-talking ever again. Yes, they might pledge jobs or infrastructure or taxes. But they can write carve-outs into the contract; they’ll go unpunished if they leave.” jasmi.news/p/no-data-ce...

No Data Centers In My Backyard

money, power, and populism in the AI buildout

jasmi.news

Great list, though I'd have found some way to include Joseph Cornell! www.nytimes.com/2026/08/04/t...

The 25 Most Important Sculptures Since the End of World War II (Gift Article)

Four artists and a curator debate the most important works since the end of World War II.

nytimes.com

“The most important skill in prompting is expertise in the domain you’re prompting for.” www.seangoedecke.com/llms-reward-...

“We already employ most mathematicians because we think human understanding of math, even without industrial applications, is inherently worthwhile. That isn’t likely to change in the age of AI.” www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-end-of...

The end of the age of heroes

AI will soon be better at math than any human. What does that mean?

noahpinion.blog

the world is on fire, and everything is awful, BUT my book is finally an actual, tangible thing in the world and not just a bunch of random computer files! holding my book about perfection and its preservation in my imperfect garden. huge thanks to everyone at @uminnpress.bsky.social

The Putin/Trump legacy: "a period of un-order: a jungle in which every country hedges, arms, subsidizes, hoards, and searches for choke points to exploit...it is the makings of a twenty-first-century Hobbesian struggle of all against all.” www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

“The UAE is creating a complex system of commercial, industrial and military entanglements that sometimes reinforce but also undermine the sovereignty of fragile states — most notably in war-torn Sudan.” www.ft.com/content/a4c6...

The UAE’s imperial push into Africa

The Gulf state is investing heavily in land, ports and influence across the continent. But its entangled goals come at a price

ft.com

“We decided to join commuters getting the packed, two-hour-plus service on Thursday evening. According to the DfT, the service had a load factor – how many people are on a train compared with its maximum capacity – of 170%” www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

hypothesis: there's an important cohort whom not only did the financial crisis fail to chasten, but instead emboldened. all you need is the levers of power, was the lesson. now they are extravagantly putting that to the test. we are along for the ride.

The biggest technological revolution of our lifetime and it has nothing to do with AI, crypto, metaverse, robots or any of the other massively hyped "tech" the media always talks about instead

Sarah Taber@sarahtaber.bsky.social · 2d ago

Absolutely unbelievable how solar power has taken off worldwide during the Hormuz oil crisis. You don't have to hand it to him, but Trump may have done more to finally kick off a global civilization of effete librul solar users than anyone else in the West

You can now access many more digital laws, not just the GDPR, at the UCL Massively Crossreferenced Digital Laws page: EU: GDPR, DSA, DMA, AI Act, UCPD, NIS2 UK: OSA, DPA18, ...+ Each article/para/recital, links to what-cites-it in int'l cases/statutes/guidance homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~ucqnmve/law...

michael veale@michae.lv · 6d ago

Parts of the GDPR are cited and interpreted by thousands of pieces of case law and guidance, but there's no easy and free way to find out what. We've made a tool which makes it super easy, for 13,000 citing documents, all in one place. More regulations to come! homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~ucqnmve/law...

Continuing my theme of "the year of the data broker," I'm excited to share my latest issue brief, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘉𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘋𝘢𝘵𝘢 𝘉𝘳𝘰𝘬𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘨𝘦: 𝘈𝘯 𝘖𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘷𝘪𝘦𝘸 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘜.𝘚. 𝘙𝘦𝘨𝘶𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘺 𝘓𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘴𝘤𝘢𝘱𝘦. 🔗 fpf.org/blog/fpf-rel...

FPF Releases New Issue Brief on U.S. “Data Broker” Regulatory Landscape

Data brokers have been the subject of intense scrutiny in recent years, including through critical media coverage, public hearings, private lawsuits, regulatory enforcement actions, and new state and ...

fpf.org

There are 7 PR people for every journalist in the US. www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

“Wachtell is rare in having clung on to …a lockstep pay system in which lawyers are paid based on seniority — a model many large law firms abandoned in order to free up large sums for star hires.” www.ft.com/content/1023...

The talent raid that shook New York’s most prestigious law firm

Gibson Dunn’s move on a group of Wachtell litigation partners has expanded the law firms’ talent war beyond dealmakers

ft.com

“Seven members of eBay’s security team, including former police captains, worked together to harass and intimidate the Steiners, according to prosecutors.” They sent “a box of live cockroaches. A bloody Halloween mask of a pig’s head. A funeral wreath” & more www.ft.com/content/06ec...

‘Crush this lady’: how eBay harassment campaign led to $56mn payout

Employees’ cyberstalking of Boston couple involving macabre deliveries ended in jail time and financial settlement

ft.com

Most plastic items are too small for recyclers to bother sorting and processing, or they're assembled in such a way that it's less expensive to just make new plastic. In fact, only 5% of Americans’ plastic finds new life. (Published Aug. 2024)

When Is “Recyclable” Not Really Recyclable? When the Plastics Industry Gets to Define What the Word Means.

Companies whose futures depend on plastic production are trying to persuade the federal government to allow them to put the label “recyclable” on plastic shopping bags and other items virtually guaran...

propublica.org

“Although the GDPR remains an appropriate baseline, the distinctive challenges posed by agentic AI require a broader approach.” www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Data protection in the era of agentic artificial intelligence

This article examines whether current data protection law, particularly the European Union (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), remains ade…

sciencedirect.com

Audio reporter Laura Karpas talks to the Center for Democracy & Technology's Michal Luria and Harvard Business School's Julian De Freitas about dark patterns in AI companions—and what happens when users try to say "goodbye."

When Users Say 'Goodbye' to AI

Laura Karpas on recent research from the Center for Democracy and Technology's Michal Luria and Harvard Business School's Julian De Freitas.

techpolicy.press

“Nolan presents a vision of civilizational collapse motivated by the collapse of social norms of hospitality, kindness, and mercy.” foreignpolicy.com/2026/07/23/o...

Odysseus at the End of Civilization

Nolan’s film confronts the betrayal of the West’s own values.

foreignpolicy.com

“Conscientiousness may be the best single word describing what drives social capital: conscientious people do their bit without being told. It is declining precipitately.” nicholasgruen.substack.com/p/social-fab...

Social fabric: The Price of What Survives

Some reflections on the social fabric (which we've taken to calling 'social capital')

nicholasgruen.substack.com

Rhode Island “requires grocery stores to have at least one human-operated checkout station for every three self-service stations during peak hours. It also stipulates at least one must be compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)” (of January 1, 2027) www.forbes.com/sites/briand...

Self-Checkout Regulations Spread As NY's A11501 Signals A New Approach

New York's self-checkout bill could force retailers to offer a discount. The outcome could reshape automation strategy as retailers already rethink self-checkout.

forbes.com

what we love to see from the heart of it all

Harvey J. Miller@mobileharv.bsky.social · 3d ago

Cincinnati has developed a Climate Migration Readiness Plan to absorb as many as 525,000 newcomers by 2050. It calls for building much denser housing, expanding public transit and decreasing the city’s reliance on fossil fuels.