And a bunch of Disney adults are not exactly thrilled about it. “It’s another fracture within one of the largest and most intense fandoms, one that I think signals trouble for Disney’s generational appeal.” - Spitfire News
The space of possible languages is vast, and full of exotic languages that are much weirder and stranger than any we have yet imagined. We should explore what those might be – and for more than intellectual curiosity alone. - Aeon
Sycophancy is a common feature of chatbots: A 2023 paper by researchers from Anthropic found that it was a “general behavior of state-of-the-art AI assistants,” and that large language models sometimes sacrifice “truthfulness” to align with a user’s views. - The Atlantic (MSN)
Rather than passively perceiving music, the brain physically embodies it, synchronizing with musical patterns to produce sensations of timing, musical pleasure, and even the impulse to move. - Earth.com
Rather than freezing, fleeing or fighting, I propose that you forge. Forging ahead is an intentional approach to engaging with people who say or write offensive, disparaging, insulting or discriminating words. - Psyche
Fewer working-age adults entails a shrinking tax base, even as the need for public services swells. Education, healthcare, infrastructure, public safety and welfare will be underfunded. The pie will shrink. And as lifespans grow, the demand for healthcare will increase while the number of healthcare workers decreases. - Aeon
Paradoxical though it may seem, studies have found that many creative people had difficult childhoods. Indeed, many well-known artists owe their genius to tough childhood events, from which they escaped by creating mental worlds where they were free to develop their talents. - PsyPost
According to a recent YouGov poll, Americans rate the 2020s as the worst decade in a century for music, movies, fashion, TV, and sports. A 2023 story in The New York Times Magazine declared that we’re in the “least innovative, least transformative, least pioneering century for culture since the invention of the printing press.” - The Atlantic
For one thing, there is a desire in conversations to be cooperative with your partner. When they ask a question, the default cooperative answer is usually “yes,” so you often go with that default. On top of that, it you may feel deficient if you’re lacking knowledge or awareness that someone else has. - Fast Company
"I do think intellectual history has been revitalized but primarily outside the confines of the academy. Of course, there are plenty of great intellectual historians currently writing, but the field has experienced the same fate as the general history profession in terms of the so-called academic jobs crisis that has significantly deepened since 2016." - The Ideas Letter
AI developers are firmly on track to build better replacements for humans in almost every role we play: not just economically as workers and decision-makers, but culturally as artists and creators, and even socially as friends and romantic companions. What place will humans have when AI can do everything we do, only better? - The Guardian
Fake images didn’t really bother me until I started looking at them with my kids. They wanted pictures of baby animals; at some point, Google Images started showing us A.I. creatures, ruining the whole idea, which was to marvel at the fact that these baby peacocks and baby lions actually exist. - The New Yorker
He found a way to be both a public intellectual and an academic, a scholar with the fervor of the preacher and a pundit with the depth of a teacher. - BookForum
Research has drawn on principles of fluid dynamics to improve traffic predictions, sped up simulations of turbulence to enhance our understanding of hurricanes and devised tools that helped predict the spread of Covid-19. - Quanta
