“The ability to communicate with anyone in any language — that’s a superpower people have dreamed of forever, and AI is going to deliver that in our lifetimes.” - Protocol
Deconstruction, city officials say, is a green alternative to demolition, sending up to 85 percent less material to landfills. Building materials and construction account for just under 10 percent of the world’s energy-related global carbon emissions. - Wired
Although small modifications do not undo a tradition, small changes can aggregate into significant deviations. For example, if someone is tall, then if they were a half a millimeter shorter, they would still be tall. A minor change is minor. But these small changes can aggregate. - 3 Quarks Daily
Once one has been presented with the hypothesis that we could exist as the conscious beings we are in a purely fabricated world of experiences, or even that we already may exist in such a world, one is presented also with a certain set of obvious issues to consider. - The New Atlantis
The reality is we simply don’t have the long-term studies that tell us whether our collective attention span has actually shrunk. What we do know from our study is that people overestimate some of the problems. - The Conversation
"In an image-saturated world — over 63 million were uploaded to Instagram alone in a single day in February, according to Internet Live Stats — it can be difficult for people who are blind or have low vision to fully experience the web." - The New York Times
Talk less; play more. When people used their hands to build a model Los Angeles, they made "bioswales, pedestrian zones, unearthing creeks long covered over by asphalt, storage sheds and bathing facilities for homeless people, more light rail, lower curbs, urban farms." - Fast Company
It's a bit alarming. "Farid and Nightingale asked participants to look at a selection of them and sort them into real and fake. Participants were correct less than half the time, with an average accuracy of 48.2%." And even with training, the percentage doesn't move much. - Fast Company
If one person shouts that she can’t stop thinking about something, the natural response is not to join in her particular obsession but to yelp that you, too, have something that you are obsessed with. An unspoken competition takes place to see who can profess their passion. - The New Yorker
I think people accurately recognize that just by watching people get involved in crypto. You watch an artist who starts selling NFTs, and over the course of months, their artwork itself shifts and it starts becoming more and more about crypto itself. - Salon
Such cultural programming is often invisible, unquestioned, limiting and even dangerous when applied carelessly beyond its community of origin. That’s why ethical frameworks for AI are being hastily commissioned around the globe right now, drawing upon as many different perspectives as possible. - Aeon
Like a Tammany Hall-type of administrative corruption but on a national or even international scale, key actors representing political regimes and multinational corporations conspire to change the rules to protect special interests with the most wealth in financial as well as symbolic terms. - Aeon
A growing body of research suggests that it is our beliefs about our feelings, as much as the feelings themselves, that determine their effects on the brain and body. Negative views of stress and anxiety often exacerbate our problems. - The Guardian
Disney Imagineers will help design these sub-developments, and this first effort “will welcome homeowners of all ages and will include at least one section expressly for 55+ residents” and a “voluntary club membership” with exclusive Disney programming. - New York Magazine
As we move toward a new, post-pandemic era, the tensions in the labor market of the 14th century may have something to teach us about turmoil to come. - The New York Times
