Scholars are increasingly voicing concern that the shift to working from home, spurred by the Covid pandemic, will bring the three-decade renaissance of major cities to a halt, setting off an era of urban decay. - The New York Times
Democratic governments, at all levels, spend billions of dollars publishing reports, manuals, books, videos so that all can read and learn. That is the good news. The bad news is that in our digital age, much of this is not accessible. Democracy’s Library aims to change this. - Internet Archive
"Do the politicians and pundits who speak of geopolitics really know what they are talking about? Geopolitics is a classically ambiguous or nebulous term, with an innocent and a dangerous use." - Aeon
Is there really something wrong with being clever? Even if it can get on our nerves sometimes, its associations remain overwhelmingly positive: Cleverness is seen as a source of not just amusement but insight. - Hedgehog Review
To create a new story, your child would begin by speaking, “Alexa, make a story,” and then following several prompts. The AI then generates an illustrated five-to-ten-line narrative — including animations, sound effects and music — built around their answers. - Engadget
“Most of the interesting things in the human experience need friction,” Honoré explained, and they benefit from a slower approach: cooking, creativity, thoughtful work, meaningful conversations, relationships. “Digital optimization just leads to a superficial way of being.” - The Walrus
During the past two centuries, educators, psychologists, toy companies and parents like us have acted, implicitly or otherwise, as if the purpose of play is to optimise children for adulthood. - The Guardian
The mystique of the too-quiet room, if construed by outsiders, has perhaps been bolstered by the company’s website, which advertises an experience called “The Orfield Challenge,” whereby, for $600 an hour, a person can attempt to set a new “record” for time spent in the chamber. - The New York Times
The company says it plans to invest $1 billion a year in movies to be released in theatres - that's 12-15 theatrical releases a year, far outstripping Netflix's plans for cinemas. - Seattle Times (Bloomberg)
Gmail keeps asking for money, and you start deleting ... everything. "I felt a sudden sense of mourning that I still have not gotten over. And yet, to my surprise, I felt something else alongside it: a conflicting sense of relief and even levity." - The Atlantic
It’s not impossible to make your argument stick. And there’s been some good scientific work on this. Here are two strategies that, based on the evidence, seem promising. - Vox
As one gets older and realizes that most of life’s good stuff is contained between two ledger entries, one sees that if it weren’t for dreams, for stories and for art, for inventing personas and writing books through their hands and eyes, life would be insufferable. - 3 Quarks Daily
Yotta (24 zeroes) was the largest prefix in the metric system before the new additions. Now, the Earth's mass can be said to be about 6 ronnagrams rather than 6,000 yottagrams. The sun can be said to be about 2,000 quettagrams rather than 2,000,000,000 yottagrams. - NPR
