AI
‘BLOCKADE’: The Right Is Using AI Content Scanners to Try to Supercharge Book Banning
Groups that challenge books have begun using Gemini, ChatGPT, xAI, and other AI tools to try to get books banned.
The Abstract
Scientists Create Plant That Produces Ayahuasca, Shrooms, and Toad Psychedelics All At Once
The proof-of-concept system produces psilocybin, DMT, and other compounds in leaves of the tobacco plant, potentially easing pressure on wild species and preserving Indigenous traditions.
porn
I Tried to Find the ‘Arousal Intelligence’ In An Animated, Augmented Reality Porn Star
I spent some time with a new browser-based augmented reality porn app.
Podcast
Podcast: Inside the AI Slop Propaganda Wars
Iran's AI and LEGO-focused propaganda; drama in the world of baseball; and perhaps one of the worst sex apps ever.
AI
‘BLOCKADE’: The Right Is Using AI Content Scanners to Try to Supercharge Book Banning
Groups that challenge books have begun using Gemini, ChatGPT, xAI, and other AI tools to try to get books banned.
News
Paul McCartney Banned From Reddit After Promoting Himself in Paul McCartney Subreddit
Reddit blamed a technical glitch for the removal of the living legend’s concert footage.
ICE
How Thomson Reuters Powers ICE and Palantir
Thomson Reuters’ data, which can include peoples’ addresses and details on their ethnicity, is linked to tools used by ICE.
AI
'You Can't Defeat the Robots!': Baseball's AI Strike Zone Is Must-Watch Television
MLB's ABS system somehow feels extremely human. It's not human vs robot, it's human vs human as judged by a robot.
News
An AI Agent Was Banned From Creating Wikipedia Articles, Then Wrote Angry Blogs About Being Banned
The incident is yet another example of volunteer Wikipedia editors fighting to keep the world’s largest repository of human knowledge free of AI-generated slop.
Podcast
The Journalist Who Tracked Epstein Island Visitors’ Phones (with Dhruv Mehrotra)
This week Joseph talks to journalist and technologist Dhruv Mehrotra. Among many other things, Mehrotra tracked visitors to Epstein's island through location data.
The Abstract
Scientists Discover Giant ‘Cavity’ Beyond Earth That Isn’t Supposed to Exist
Earth’s magnetic field has created a huge void of galactic cosmic rays in space, which could help protect astronauts from radiation exposure.
News
Iran Is Winning the AI Slop Propaganda War
“White House videos—AI or otherwise—are like group-chat in-jokes aimed at keeping cohesion.”