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The Brighter Side – Understanding where a tree’s mass comes from reshapes how you think about growth, food, and the environment. “Trees are not just passive recipients of soil nutrients. A Different Reading of Familiar Material. The practical implications of this are easy to underappreciate. Wood is not geological material shaped by roots. It is …
The Alliance for Secure AI, AI Job Loss Tracker – Newly reported layoffs where AI is either explicitly cited or credibly blamed as a material factor. Reporting window starts January 1, 2025.
Pew Research Center – “Digital books have grown in popularity over the past decade, but more Americans still read books in print than in digital formats. Overall, 75% of U.S. adults say they have read all or part of at least one book in the past 12 months, according to a Pew Research Center survey …
Washington Post – no paywall: “The court is the first since at least the ’50s to reject claims in a majority of cases involving women and minorities, an analysis conducted for The Post shows. The sharply conservative Supreme Court that President Donald Trump’s three appointees remade is the first since at least the 1950s to …
Meta’s New AI Asked for My Raw Health Data—and Gave Me Terrible Advice. Meta’s Muse Spark model offers to analyze users’ health data, including lab results. Beyond the obvious privacy risks, it’s not a capable stand-in for a real doctor. Meta’s Superintelligence Labs launched its first generative AI model, called Muse Spark, earlier this week. …
Reuters – “A U.S. historians’ organization and a government transparency group are suing President Donald Trump to force his administration to comply with a presidential records preservation law after the U.S. Justice Department declared the measure unconstitutional. The American Historical Association and American Oversight on Monday asked the federal court in Washington to declare the …
Washington Post – no paywall – “The acting CDC director cited concerns with the methodology, but the design has long been used to test vaccine effectiveness. The acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has delayed publication of a CDC report showing the covid-19 vaccine cut the likelihood of emergency department visits …
The New York Times – no paywall: “Emperor penguins, the world’s largest and perhaps most recognizable penguin species, have joined the list of wildlife endangered by global warming, the International Union for Conservation of Nature announced on Thursday. In an update of its Red List, a comprehensive and authoritative listing of global species based on …
Zacharie Laïk – There is no single place to find the world’s laws. “Legal Data Hunter is trying to fix that and 10 weeks in, it might actually work. 2 weeks ago, 351 collection scripts built by an AI agent to index the world’s laws were open sourced. Within days, lawyers and developers from around the …
The New York Times Gift Article – The company’s A.I.-generated answers look authoritative, but they draw on an array of sources, from trustworthy sites to Facebook posts: “A recent analysis of AI Overviews found that they were accurate approximately nine out of 10 times. But with Google processing more than five trillion searches a year, …
Below the Beltway: “COURIER has launched The Cover-Up, a major campaign on the Jeffrey Epstein story, renewing a national push to investigate one of the biggest federal cover-ups in history and hold powerful figures, including Donald Trump, accountable while supporting survivors. An Epstein-focused microsite and newsletter now deliver original investigations, sharp analysis, and curated news, …
CBS News: “The Trump administration is quietly seeking unprecedented access to medical records for millions of federal workers and retirees, and their families. A brief notice from the Office of Personnel Management could dramatically change which personally identifiable medical information the agency obtains, giving it the power to see prescriptions employees had filled or what …