Most people don’t realize there are glaciers in the tropics — we think of palm trees, not ice. This explorer gives us a rare close-up look at the disappearing phenomenon: www.noemamag.com/when-the-ete... #climatechange #glaciers
Tami Abdollah
@latams.bsky.social
Deputy editor @noemamag.com. Priors: USA TODAY, The Associated Press, Los Angeles Times. Pitch me! DM or 📧 edit(at)http://noemamag.com
Most people don’t realize there are glaciers in the tropics — we think of palm trees, not ice. When they disappear, a rare part of the tropical cryosphere will be erased. This explorer is on a mission to map the last remaining tropical ice in Indonesia before it disappears.
When The ‘Eternity Glaciers’ Disappear | NOEMA
A race to map Papua’s tropical ice before it’s gone forever.
noemamag.com
I recently moderated a fascinating discussion with @anilseth.bsky.social & the @berggruen.org's Claire Isabel Webb on "The Mythology Of Conscious AI." It's very well worth the watch if you missed it in person during SXSW.
Why AI Will Never Become Conscious, According To Neuroscientist Anil Seth
YouTube video by Noema Magazine
youtube.com
“If positive discrimination is the regime’s modus operandi, the traditional family is its chosen object: the form of life it lavishly rewards, honors and holds up as exemplary.” — @lefebvrealex.bsky.social
The Return Of The Moral State | NOEMA
Hungary is not just an illiberal state. It is a state with a moral mission.
noemamag.com
“At each stage, we drew a line in the silicon — this is what machines cannot do because they are mindless — & at each stage, the line was crossed by systems that understood nothing.” —Ben Bariach www.noemamag.com/why-ai-doesn...
Why AI Doesn’t Need A ‘Mind’ To Matter | NOEMA
We’ve been searching for a mind inside the machine. The rise of AI agents suggests its shell may be enough.
noemamag.com
“A tradition can die without a funeral. And when it does, the land may still look the same — but it will no longer know our names, & we will no longer know its.” —Karma Sonam, a Ladakhi historian www.noemamag.com/the-last-yak...
The Last Yak Herder Of Ladakh | NOEMA
As glaciers melt and traditions fade, one man’s journey across Ladakh’s sacred pastures is a living archive of a disappearing way of life.
noemamag.com
"The tech industry’s whiz kids once promised convenience at your fingertips. Now they’re embracing the military-industrial complex to defend the West." — @tfa.ng in @noemamag.com www.noemamag.com/silicon-vall...
Silicon Valley Goes To War | NOEMA
The tech industry’s whiz kids once promised convenience at your fingertips. Now they’re embracing the military-industrial complex to defend the West.
noemamag.com
“If we confuse ourselves too readily with our machine creations, we not only overestimate them, we also underestimate ourselves.” — @anilseth.bsky.social, winner of the @berggruen.org Essay Prize Competition www.noemamag.com/the-mytholog...
The Mythology Of Conscious AI | NOEMA
Why consciousness is more likely a property of life than of computation and why creating conscious, or even conscious-seeming AI, is a bad idea.
noemamag.com
A must read by @anilseth.bsky.social — the 2025 English-language winner of the Berggruen Essay Prize — on our flawed assumptions about consciousness & AI.
Anil Seth@anilseth.bsky.social · 9mo ago4/ The Mythology of Conscious AI is published now in @noemamag.com (many thanks to Tami Abdollah @latams.bsky.social for her patient & peerless editing) www.noemamag.com/the-mytholog...
A beautiful piece by @christianelliott.me. “Set aside before industrial agriculture arrived in Iowa, pioneer cemeteries have become the prairie’s final resting place — one of the few where the land remembers what it once was.” www.noemamag.com/where-the-pr...
Where The Prairie Still Remains | NOEMA
Are pioneer cemeteries key to the Iowa prairie’s revival, or its final resting place?
noemamag.com
It's here! Check out our "Top 10 Reads Of 2025" in @NoemaMag, and read these amazing pieces or listen to our playlist. Enjoy! www.noemamag.com/noemas-top-1...
Noema’s Top 10 Reads Of 2025 | NOEMA
Our best longform journalism and essays from 2025.
noemamag.com
“The superintelligence narrative undermines democratic possibilities by presenting concentrated power as a tragic necessity. If extinction is at stake, then public deliberation becomes a luxury we cannot afford.” — @jamesosullivan.bsky.social www.noemamag.com/the-politics...
The Politics Of Superintelligence | NOEMA
Today’s tech “prophets” push a narrative that God-like artificial superintelligence is inevitable, and only they can ensure humanity’s safety from their creations.
noemamag.com
We can’t keep hitting up the richest to meet today’s affordability challenge. In an economy where the top 10% own 93% of all financial market equities, “it can only be met by spreading the wealth of ownership more broadly in the first place,” argues Nathan Gardels. www.noemamag.com/address-affo...
Address ‘Affordability’ By Spreading AI Wealth Around | NOEMA
The emergent “coalition of the precariat” should embrace the idea of universal basic capital.
noemamag.com
“Trump’s trade policy bypasses multilateralism, instead compelling each country to negotiate bilaterally — on America’s terms. In doing so, Trump is not merely reacting to a broken global order. He is forcing others into an entirely new one.” —Hui Huang www.noemamag.com/welcome-to-t...
Welcome To The New Warring States | NOEMA
Today’s global turbulence has echoes in Chinese history.
noemamag.com
Our gravest AI risk isn't runaway superintelligence but our cultural readiness to surrender collective judgment to algorithmic systems, Andrew Sorota argues in his @noemamag.com piece this week www.noemamag.com/rescuing-dem...
Rescuing Democracy From The Quiet Rule Of AI | NOEMA
Our gravest AI risk isn’t runaway superintelligence but our cultural readiness to surrender collective judgment to algorithmic systems.
noemamag.com
“AI sovereignty, as it currently plays out outside of the U.S.-China vacuum, is not a banner‐waving claim to territorial control; rather, it manifests itself as the quiet right to decide what counts as knowledge & how that knowledge shows up in the world.” —@digitaldang.bsky.social
A Third Path For AI Beyond The US-China Binary | NOEMA
What if the future of AI isn’t defined by Washington or Beijing, but by improvisation elsewhere?
noemamag.com
As a journo who has spent time on fact-check desks, this story was an interesting one to edit. “The last decade has made clear that we aren’t going to fact-check or inoculate our way toward a healthier civic culture.” —@zevesanderson.com & Scott Babwah Brennen www.noemamag.com/we-failed-th...
We Failed The Misinformation Fight. Now What? | NOEMA
Defending democracy in the digital age will require moving beyond the focus of fighting online misinformation.
noemamag.com
“The stark cognitive dissonance between how people feel about social media & how they use it is one sign that we have entered a new era in our relationship with these platforms.” — @mikesmariani.bsky.social
How We Became Captives Of Social Media | NOEMA
Today’s social media has shifted from social networking platforms to AI-enhanced conveyor belts of vapid entertainment. Is there any escape?
noemamag.com
Beneath the rise of AI lies a deeper transformation: Power now flows through networks, emerges in patterns, & governs not by edict, but by architecture, @pettertornberg.com & @uitermark.bsky.social argue
The Ascendance Of Algorithmic Tyranny | NOEMA
As today’s platforms become all-powerful, the metaphors we use to describe our digitally infused world exemplify a new, stealthier form of domination that is emerging.
noemamag.com
The rift between conservatives & MAGA may be more consequential than the street demonstrations in Los Angeles, writes Nathan Gardels in @NoemaMag this week.
Molecular Civil War In LA | NOEMA
The rift between conservatives and MAGA may be more consequential than street demonstrations.
noemamag.com
The tech oligarchs choosing “to throw their lot in with the MAGA movement is not because they have all shifted allegiance from the political left to the political right,” Dan Zimmer writes. Rather, they see Trump as someone who won’t stand in the way of their goals for technological advancement.
A New Political Compass | NOEMA
The politics of left versus right no longer make sense when the future of all earthly life is at stake.
noemamag.com
“America is now spending more on interest payments on debt than on the defense budget for the first time in its history.” —Niall Ferguson #politics #american #history
America Is In A Late Republic Stage Like Rome | NOEMA
History suggests republics don’t last more than 250 years.
noemamag.com
Wow, congratulations! @mariafarrell.bsky.social
Maria Farrell@mariafarrell.eurosky.social · last yr.A year to the day that @robin.berjon.com and my viral article was published by @latams.bsky.social at @noemamag.com I got news that My book proposal "Rewild and Resist: How ecology can tame Big Tech to create a world we want to live in" may just have found its dream US publisher! More news soon...
A year ago today, @mariafarrell.bsky.social and I published "We Need To Rewild The Internet" with @noemamag.com, edited by @latams.bsky.social. First things first, if you haven't read it yet, today's a great to find out why it's still a hit a year on: www.noemamag.com/we-need-to-r...
We Need To Rewild The Internet | NOEMA
The internet has become an extractive and fragile monoculture. But we can revitalize it using lessons learned by ecologists.
noemamag.com
The divergence between China’s climate ambitions & America’s current outright denial of the crisis “could well lead to democratic capitalism’s hegemonic decline,” @doctorvive.bsky.social argues.
Trump’s Climate Denial Is A Gift To China (Who’s Ready To Receive It) | NOEMA
Far from making America great again, the Trump regime’s climate denial could enable China to assume the mantle of global economic leadership — a devastating blow to democracy.
noemamag.com
Excited to share this piece by Blaise Agüera y Arcas & James Manyika on how advances in AI are changing how we think of intelligence & giving us clues to unlocking AI's full potential.
AI Is Evolving — And Changing Our Understanding Of Intelligence | NOEMA
Advances in AI are making us reconsider what intelligence is and giving us clues to unlocking AI’s full potential.
noemamag.com
Well deserved! Congrats to @mariafarrell.bsky.social and @robin.berjon.com both!
Maria Farrell@mariafarrell.eurosky.social · 2y agoRead the email and thought: MUST BE A MISTAKE ... but "We need to rewild the internet" by @robin.berjon.com + me for @noemamag.com will be in this year's Best American Science and Nature Writing anthology!!!!! Thank you, @jaimealyse.bsky.social and @susanorlean.bsky.social ky.social
“The days of pretending we have binary, easy-to-recognize categories of machines & living beings are over.” — @drmichaellevin.bsky.social
Living Things Are Not Machines (Also, They Totally Are) | NOEMA
Our formal models of life, computers and materials fail to tell the entire story of their capabilities and limitations.
noemamag.com