Browsed by
Category: Culture

AI companies polluted the internet with slop. Now they are harvesting and destroying millions of rare books

AI companies polluted the internet with slop. Now they are harvesting and destroying millions of rare books

In January, the Washington Post reported: In early 2024, executives at artificial intelligence start-up Anthropic ramped up an ambitious project they sought to keep quiet. “Project Panama is our effort to destructively scan all the books in the world,” an internal planning document unsealed in legal filings last week said. “We don’t want it to be known that we are working on this.” Within about a year, according to the filings, the company had spent tens of millions of dollars…

Read More Read More

‘A brilliant reprieve, a unifying force’: America falls in love with the World Cup

‘A brilliant reprieve, a unifying force’: America falls in love with the World Cup

The Guardian reports: There were plenty of reasons to believe the US hosting the World Cup would be a disaster. In the year and a half leading up to the kick-off, Donald Trump had threatened to annex tournament co-host Canada, and to invade the other co-host, Mexico; he was at war with one of the tournament’s participants, Iran. Harsh travel restrictions were preventing fans from Senegal, Ivory Coast and Haiti from getting visas. Ticket prices were outrageous. Hotels weren’t filling…

Read More Read More

The World Cup is exposing the contradictions of national identity

The World Cup is exposing the contradictions of national identity

Mohamad Elmasry writes: The World Cup always brings to the fore what is sometimes seen as a pure and mostly straightforward form of identity: national identity. But the 2026 tournament has demonstrated, perhaps as clearly as any global event can, that modern national identity is complex, contested and far from straightforward. The composition of the Moroccan World Cup squad offers a useful case in point. Nineteen of the 26 players on the squad were born outside Morocco, many of them…

Read More Read More

The radical reasons why you dream of making things by hand

The radical reasons why you dream of making things by hand

Joshua Habgood-Coote writes: In the 18th century, the streets of East London were filled with flowers. Fuchsias, auriculas and star-of-Bethlehem grew from the window boxes of tall terraced houses. And tulips and dahlias sprouted from the narrow allotments kept by local silk weavers, who often tended to their gardens on Mondays. But as mechanical looms took over, and the weavers were forced to work long hours in factories to earn a living, there was little time left for growing flowers….

Read More Read More

One sleazy president called another to intervene on behalf of a classy goalscorer

One sleazy president called another to intervene on behalf of a classy goalscorer

The New York Times reports: President Trump called Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA, on Wednesday and asked him to review the suspension of the United States’ top goal scorer in the World Cup, Folarin Balogun, after he was given a red card in the team’s match that night against Bosnia and Herzegovina, according to three people familiar with the conversation. On Sunday, FIFA reversed the suspension, announcing that Mr. Balogun would be eligible to play Monday against Belgium. The…

Read More Read More

The Trump-shaped shadow over the 2026 World Cup

The Trump-shaped shadow over the 2026 World Cup

Chris Jones writes: It’s hard to imagine a more fraught combination for what was supposed to be a fun Friday night: Seattle’s Pride celebration will feature a World Cup match on June 26 between Iran, where homosexuality is punishable by death, and Egypt, where homosexual activity is punishable by up to three years in prison. When FIFA’s schedulers announced the Pride Match pairing after December’s draw, it felt a little like a sick joke. The Egyptian Football Association has said…

Read More Read More

Pope Leo just schooled the tech bros on Tolkien

Pope Leo just schooled the tech bros on Tolkien

Miles Klee writes: Nobody was surprised that Pope Leo XIV cited well-known saints and previous pontiffs in his first encyclical, or papal letter of spiritual guidance, “Magnifica humanitas,” released Monday. But the name that immediately jumped out to many readers is one synonymous with high fantasy literature: J.R.R. Tolkien, the Catholic author of The Lord of the Rings. Leo’s letter is concerned with “safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence,” a major theme of his first year…

Read More Read More

Neanderthals used stone drills to treat cavities 59,000 years ago, tooth suggests

Neanderthals used stone drills to treat cavities 59,000 years ago, tooth suggests

The Guardian reports: Neanderthals used stone drills to treat cavities almost 60,000 years ago in what is the earliest known evidence of dental treatment. The single molar, which was unearthed in a cave in southern Siberia, features a deep hole that appears to have been created using a sharp, thin stone tool during the lifetime of the tooth’s owner. While the prospect of stone age root canal treatment may be excruciating to even contemplate, archaeologists say the discovery provides remarkable…

Read More Read More

Lessons from the fairness of African fractal societies

Lessons from the fairness of African fractal societies

Likam Kyanzaire writes: Ron Eglash was not looking for a revolution when he stumbled across one. The American ethnomathematician, who tracks mathematics embedded in culture, was studying African settlement patterns in the 1980s when he noticed something strange in aerial photographs and village layouts. The settlements weren’t laid out randomly. They had a pattern – and not just any pattern. The same shape seemed to repeat at every scale: a cluster of homes that echoed the arrangement of a larger…

Read More Read More

Could the oldest human story really be 100,000 years old?

Could the oldest human story really be 100,000 years old?

Mihai Andrei writes: For as long as humans have existed, they have looked to the sky. There are thousands and thousands of different myths and legends linked to stars and constellations, but one radical new idea says that one such story could be incredibly old. The legend is linked to the Pleiades, a set of stars that many cultures call the “Seven Sisters”. But look at them with the naked eye and you’ll only see six; so where’s the seventh…

Read More Read More

AI’s fluency in other languages hides a Western worldview that can mislead users − a scholar of Indonesian society explains

AI’s fluency in other languages hides a Western worldview that can mislead users − a scholar of Indonesian society explains

AI models derive their assumptions from English-language sources based in the United States. Weiquan Lin/Moment via Getty Images By Gareth Barkin, University of Puget Sound A friend in Indonesia recently told me about a conversation he had with ChatGPT. He had typed a question in Indonesian – Bahasa Indonesia – about how to handle a difficult family dispute. The chatbot responded fluently, in perfect Indonesian, with advice about communication strategies and conflict resolution. The grammar was flawless. The tone was…

Read More Read More

Will China save Western civilization?

Will China save Western civilization?

Chang Che writes: In November, 2024, on the day of the U.S. Presidential election, Tim Whitmarsh landed in Beijing, jet-lagged and disoriented. It was the middle of the academic term at the University of Cambridge, where Whitmarsh holds the Regius Professorship in Greek. He had been flown business class halfway around the world and put up at a five-star hotel for what he had been told would be the first World Conference of Classics. What followed, he later wrote, was…

Read More Read More

Institutions are how we scale up cooperation among millions

Institutions are how we scale up cooperation among millions

Julien Lie-Panis writes: Every human society, from the smallest village to the largest nation, faces the same fundamental challenge: how to get people to act in the interests of the collective rather than their own. Fishermen must limit their catch so fish stocks don’t collapse. People must respect others’ property and safety. Citizens must pay taxes to fund roads, schools and hospitals. Left to pure self-interest, no community could endure; the bonds of collective life would quickly unravel. The solutions…

Read More Read More

What if our ancestors didn’t have feelings anything like we do?

What if our ancestors didn’t have feelings anything like we do?

Gal Beckerman writes: The historian Rob Boddice sat cross-legged on his couch in Montreal on a frigid day last winter and conjured for me the image of a medieval carpenter, hammering away in his workshop. “Imagine this guy; he’s building a table,” he said. Suddenly the carpenter misses the nail and bangs his thumb instead. “What did that feel like for him?” Boddice asked. I stared for a few seconds while Boddice smiled encouragingly, as if he’d just asked me…

Read More Read More

Just like humans, parrots can learn new tricks by imitating their peers

Just like humans, parrots can learn new tricks by imitating their peers

GrrlScientist writes: A recently published study reports that parrots can learn new tricks simply by observing their peers performing the desired behavior in response to a physical cue from a human. The study, by an international group of scientists, discovered that this method of learning – known as third-party imitation – is not exclusive to humans as was widely thought, and could help explain the subtleties of parrot culture and social interactions. Third-party imitation is a social learning trait associated…

Read More Read More

The history and future of societal collapse

The history and future of societal collapse

Damian Carrington writes: “We can’t put a date on Doomsday, but by looking at the 5,000 years of [civilisation], we can understand the trajectories we face today – and self-termination is most likely,” says Dr Luke Kemp at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge. “I’m pessimistic about the future,” he says. “But I’m optimistic about people.” Kemp’s new book covers the rise and collapse of more than 400 societies over 5,000 years and…

Read More Read More