Large language models can seem to do more than what we ask them to; they exhibit something that we might call creativity if a human did it. What is actually happening in these moments? - The New Yorker
In the last decade, thanks to advances in AI, the internet of things, machine learning and sensor technologies, the fantasy of digital twins has taken off. BMW has created a digital twin of a production plant in Bavaria. Boeing is using digital twins to design airplanes. - Noema
Often, when we hear about the benefits of physical activity, researchers are really referring to the benefits of fitness – the product of regular and repeated physical activity. But what’s interesting about creativity is that it appears to be enhanced through the very act of moving the body. - The Guardian
The video part seems inevitable, anyway. The classes part? It’s for UK users only, and are “video-based lessons from BBC Maestro, Skillshare, Thinkific, and PlayVirtuoso.” That’s because Spotify’s data say that people enjoy education and self-help-based podcasts. - The Verge
"This is not the religious end of time, or eschaton, that has fascinated humanity for thousands of years, but the end of the world as a pervasive mood – a vibe." - The Guardian (UK)
While we think of our genes as being set from birth, DNA does accumulate changes over the years. Sometimes errors are introduced when a cell divides, a spontaneous typo emerging when the DNA is copied and pasted from one cell into another. Mutations can also occur as a result of environmental exposures. - The New York Times
Going car-free is a lot harder than it seems. Not only has it led to politicians and urban planners facing death threats and being doxxed, it has forced them to rethink the entire basis of city life. - Wired
Twenty-five of America’s 26 largest downtowns have more residents today than they did on the eve of the pandemic. Meanwhile, both violent and property crime plummeted in cities across the country in 2022 and 2023. - The Atlantic
Cast your eyes across this burgeoning literature of cultural stagnation—now so voluminous it counts as an authentic subgenre in its own right—and you won’t find much acknowledgment of the critic’s role in all this. - The New Republic
Never is it discussed that a cordoned-off, highly policed, highly regulated urban fabric of the kind that exists in every metropolitan center in the Western world is created in the image of the people who dominate that world, at the expense of those who don’t. - The Nation
Once young people began carrying the entire internet in their pockets, available to them day and night, it altered their daily experiences and developmental pathways across the board. Friendship, dating, sexuality, exercise, sleep, academics, politics, family dynamics, identity—all were affected. - The Atlantic
How can these powerful systems beat us in chess but falter on basic math? This paradox reflects more than just an idiosyncratic design quirk. It points toward something fundamental about how large language models think. - The New Yorker
That aggregation of talent, energy and audience created what felt like a moment of rupture and renewal, a chance to reinvent Black life and Black consciousness, to escape the self-imprisoning consciousness that Du Bois anatomized and the even more debilitating quiescence and accommodation advocated by Booker T. Washington. - Washington Post
