"A majority of participants actually mentioned how human-like they found the neurotic robot," says Alex Wuqi Zhang, a researcher at the University of Chicago. "They found it to be a lot more relatable." - NPR
This spectacle raises a deeper question: why does infidelity, especially among the powerful, provoke such public outcry. Literary tradition offers some insight: intimate betrayal is never truly private. It shatters an implicit social contract, demanding communal scrutiny to restore trust. - The Conversation
Descartes had a famous dictum about the constitutive powers of the thinking self: I think therefore I am. Could it be that, today, I hate, therefore I am? - The New York Times
Where going online once evoked a wide-eyed sense that the world was at our fingertips, now it requires wading into the slop like weary, hardened detectives, attempting to parse the real from the fake. - The Atlantic
No one knows exactly how the system obtains its matches. There is an entire field in AI known as “mechanistic interpretability” that is attempting to understand how LLMs move from a given input (your passport photo) to a given output (identifying your face in the Facebook post). - Harper's
The problem with a competitive approach to puzzles is that you take what is intended as a soothing and distracting pastime and quietly hitch it to a goal and a ticking clock. - The American Scholar
Through small contributions from Americans who care about their museums, arts organizations, and libraries, a national fund could be built that provides steady, apolitical support to these institutions.- Chronicle of Philanthropy
Our lifespans have expanded, but our health spans—the number of years we live with mental sharpness, physical independence, and emotional well-being—has not kept pace. If we don’t prepare now, the result won’t just be personal hardship. - Time
There’s the softer version of wellness, one characterized by some combination of smoothie consumption and aspirational TikTok videos. Then there are the more hard-line (and health hazardous) variations involving everything from (basically) bleach drinking to parasite cleanses to “wellness farms” designed to wean you off antidepressants. - Wired
The promise of elusive answers implores you to plunge deeper, deeper, into a thriller of your own, one that you both consume and help construct. It says that the absence of answers is itself a kind of evidence. Proof is proof and so is the lack of proof. - The New York Times
In this world-view academics are seen as “anemic, priggish, effeminate;” “Harvard professors” as “twisted-thinking intellectuals”; Elite universities are the breeding grounds for the “enemy from within,” and “rotten to the core.” - LitHub
Medieval Christian Europe inherited from antiquity a deep reverence for the virtue of friendship. Thinkers in the Middle Ages read Cicero and Seneca, and adapted the ancients’ ethical models to their own literature, exegesis and philosophy. But the decisive turning point occurred in 1246. - Psyche
I was able to differentiate between types of gossip through this association: the kind that aims to bring a rival low, that tries to set the record straight about some unfairly maligned individual, or that is akin to a secret stock tip and meant to benefit a shrewd listener. Every subject was fair game. - The Walrus
