A list of good reads
- Scroll argues ‘brain rot’—the Oxford Dictionary Word of the Year—captures the mental effect of continuous engagement with digital content.
- Also in Scroll: a brief history on how Jaffna became a powerful economic hub under Dutch colonial rule in the seventeenth century.
- BBC News has a horrific must-read profile of a Tamil family who—fleeing persecution in Sri Lanka—were accidentally left stranded on the US military base in Diego Garcia (h/t subscriber Anita Rao Kashi).
- Aeon explains why AI-generated summaries flatten out the entire architecture of fascinating thought that makes the internet tick.
- Vox looks at the public’s uncharitable response to the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
- Bloomberg Businessweek looks at the explosion of crypto scams and ponzi schemes in the UAE.
- The Atlantic (splainer gift link) mourns the slow, quiet demise of American romance–and growing divide between men and women.
- TechCrunch lifts the lid on the abject weirdness of AI ads, from mimicking your spouse to faking fan letters to Olympic athletes.
- The Verge has a must-read on the meaningful and yet profoundly confusing world of AI-generated online friends.
- New York Times (splainer gift link) analyses the battle—between Amazon, Advanced Micro Devices and startups—to unseat Nvidia as the king of AI chips.
- Also in New York Times (login required): liberals’ exodus to Bluesky shows they are “giving up on the idea of a town square that holds all voices simultaneously.”
- CNN goes granular with the year’s most viewed Wikipedia pages.
- Also in CNN: examining the science behind whether scented candles are bad for you.
