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20 years ago, New Orleans fired its teachers. It's been rebuilding ever since
The article discusses how New Orleans' public education system was rebuilt after Hurricane Katrina, focusing on the firing of most teachers and their replacement, often by new and less experienced educators, including those from Teach For America. It explores the impact of these changes on the city's schools, teacher workforce demographics, and student outcomes, highlighting the efforts to restore experienced, local teachers and the ongoing challenges in special education.
How to Live Forever and Get Rich Doing It
This article from The New Yorker explores the burgeoning field of longevity research and biohacking, focusing on key figures like Peter Diamandis, founder of XPrize and Singularity University. It details the scientific advancements, technological aspirations, and the ethical and philosophical questions surrounding the quest to extend human lifespan indefinitely. The piece delves into various biohacking practices, the role of AI and investment, and the personal sacrifices made by those pursuing extreme health and a longer life, while also highlighting the skepticism and challenges faced by the field.
The History of The New Yorker's Vaunted Fact-Checking Department
This article delves into the intricate history and rigorous practice of The New Yorker's fact-checking department. It describes the meticulous, often adversarial, process of verifying information, the challenges checkers face, and the distinct personalities of editors and checkers throughout the magazine's history, from Harold Ross to Peter Canby. The piece highlights the department's unwavering dedication to accuracy, the complexities of journalistic truth, and the inherent tension between writers and their checkers, ultimately portraying fact-checking as a crucial, though sometimes frustrating, element of editorial integrity.
How Much Is Trump Profiting Off the Presidency?
A comprehensive estimate of how much Trump and his family are making, from hotel mega-deals to crypto schemes, has been elusive—until now.
When Your Kid’s Best Friend Is a Great Big Problem
This article explores the challenging parental dilemma of disliking a child's friends. It advises against outright prohibition, explaining that such actions often backfire due to "Reactance theory," which can make forbidden relationships more appealing. Instead, the author advocates for a long-term approach, emphasizing the enduring power of parental influence through modeling core values, creating a welcoming home environment, and reinforcing family practices. The piece suggests that parents should avoid negative comments about their child’s friends and, even in cases of dangerous peer influence, focus on addressing underlying issues rather than simply removing individuals. Ultimately, it encourages parents to trust the foundation they've built, viewing friendships as a part of adolescent development, and to remain a loving, supportive presence.
The Color of the Future
The author discusses how their favorite color changed over time and reflects on blue as the most fascinating and technological color, often used to represent the future. The article delves into the historical development of blue pigments, from ancient indigo and Egyptian blue to modern synthetic dyes like Prussian blue and phthalo blue. It also explores the cultural association of blue with science fiction interfaces and the recent breakthroughs in creating blue LEDs, suggesting that the historical difficulty in producing blue has solidified its status as the color of innovation and the future.
Speaking to the Future
This article explores the immense challenge of communicating the dangers of nuclear waste to future generations over millennia. It delves into the efforts of the Human Interference Task Force, examining the limitations of evolving languages, ambiguous visual media, and ignored oral traditions. The article discusses outlandish proposals like glow-in-the-dark cats and an 'atomic priesthood,' as well as more conventional warning structures for sites like the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. Ultimately, it questions the effectiveness of any explicit warning, considering the Finnish approach to simply bury nuclear waste without markers, trusting in the future's intelligence to understand potential dangers.
Pluralistic: How monopoly enshittified Amazon
Cory Doctorow details how Amazon's monopoly and monopsony power have led to the "enshittification" of its platform, transforming it from a customer-centric company into an ad-saturated marketplace. Sellers are forced into a "payola" system to gain visibility, driving up prices across all retail channels due to Amazon's "most favored nation" clauses and high fees. Doctorow extends this critique to other platforms like Spotify and Audible, arguing that market concentration consistently shifts value from creators and sellers to shareholders. He advocates for structural separation, strong antitrust enforcement, and "adversarial interoperability" to restore competition and benefit consumers.
Introducing the Historical Tech Tree
This article introduces the 'Historical Tech Tree', a timeline visualizing the full history of 1,780 major technologies from 3.3 million years ago to today. It includes over 2,000 connections like prerequisites and inspirations to show how innovations led to others. The author explains how large language models (LLMs) significantly aided the development process, highlighting the concept of 'vibe coding'. The piece emphasizes that by combining technology and history, one can better understand the world's complexity and appreciate humanity's ingenuity in problem-solving.
Making Software: What is a color space?
This article offers a comprehensive explanation of digital color, covering color perception, various color spaces (CIE XYZ, sRGB, Display P3), color models (RGB, HSL, HSV, oklab, oklch), gamuts, gamma correction, and bit depth. It details additive and subtractive color mixing, and the complexities of color management, emphasizing the non-linear nature of human color perception and the challenges of accurate color representation across different devices and applications.
When the Blade Breaks
The article "When the Blade Breaks" by Gabriella Burnham on The Verge details the controversy surrounding the Vineyard Wind offshore wind farm, particularly after a turbine blade broke off the coast of Nantucket in July 2024. The incident sparked public outrage among Nantucket residents, who were concerned about environmental impact, debris on beaches, and potential harm to marine life like the North Atlantic right whale. The article explores the perspectives of residents, environmental groups (like ACK for Whales), industry representatives, and scientists, highlighting the complex intersection of renewable energy development, community concerns, and political influence. It also discusses the challenges of public engagement, misinformation, and the differing views on the benefits and drawbacks of offshore wind, especially in a community heavily reliant on tourism and fishing.
The Future of AI in Content Creation
This article discusses the burgeoning role of artificial intelligence in automating and enhancing various aspects of content creation, from initial ideation to final publication. It examines the opportunities and challenges presented by these advanced tools for writers, editors, and publishers.
RFK Jr. Cut Grants for Autism Research While Vowing to Find a Cause
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as Secretary of Health and Human Services, has cut millions in funding for autism research and eliminated divisions actively investigating environmental causes, despite promising a $50 million initiative to find autism's causes. He has also remained silent as the Trump administration rolls back protections against pollution and toxic chemicals, some of which are linked to autism, creating a contradiction between his stated goals and the administration's actions.
How Weekly Shōnen Jump Became the World’s Most Popular Manga Factory
The New Yorker article delves into the phenomenon of Weekly Shōnen Jump, the world's most popular manga magazine, and its success in nurturing young talent like Takeru Hokazono, the creator of "Kagurabachi." It explores the magazine's rigorous process, including reader surveys, the demanding schedule for mangaka, and its significant role in Japan's cultural exports and global pop culture, with series like "Naruto" and "One Piece" becoming international sensations.
Ferdinand Mount · Biff-Bang: Tariffs before Trump
Ferdinand Mount's article challenges the common belief that globalization is past its prime, arguing that the recent enthusiasm for tariffs, championed by figures like Donald Trump, represents a return to historical protectionist policies rather than a forward-looking economic strategy. It explores the origins of tariffs from ancient times, through mercantilism, and highlights parallels between Trump's approach and past figures like Herbert Hoover, while critically examining the economic impacts of such measures.
The Pleasure of Patterns in Art
The article, adapted from Samuel Jay Keyser's book "Play It Again, Sam," explores how repetition and variation are central to human perception of structure, rhythm, and depth in art. It delves into aesthetic pleasure derived from recognizing patterns, using examples such as Gustave Caillebotte's "Paris Street; Rainy Day," Lee Friedlander's "Albuquerque, New Mexico," Roni Horn's "Becoming a Landscape," and Ormond Gigli's "Girls in the Windows." The author analyzes the concept of "same/except" judgments and the historical notion of "parergon" to explain how visual rhymes and subtle differences enhance aesthetic enjoyment, demonstrating that recognizing order amid difference is key to the pleasure provided by these artworks.
WORLD OF TOMORROW by DON HERTZFELDT
A little girl named Emily is taken on a mind-bending tour of her distant future by a third-generation clone of herself. The clone shares memories of advanced technologies like cloning, digital consciousness transfer, time travel, and the 'Outernet', as well as personal experiences of love, loss, and the inevitability of death in a future facing a catastrophic meteor strike. The film explores themes of memory, identity, and the human condition.
Terence Tao: Research Powers Progress
UCLA’s Terence Tao, often called “the Mozart of Math,” has built a career expanding pure theoretical mathematics, laying the groundwork for future scientific discovery by probing the fundamentals of equations and their solutions. With funding cuts to higher education, Tao worries that young scientists are already looking abroad for more stable opportunities. Without consistent support, he cautioned, the nation risks losing the very pipeline of talent that drives discovery.
0.999...
In mathematics, 0.999... is a repeating decimal that is an alternative way of writing the number 1. The three dots represent an unending list of "9" digits. Following the standard rules for representing real numbers in decimal notation, its value is the smallest number greater than every number in the increasing sequence 0.9, 0.99, 0.999, and so on. It can be proved that this number is 1; that is, 0.999... = 1. Despite common misconceptions, 0.999... is not "almost exactly 1" or "very, very nearly but not quite 1"; rather, "0.999..." and "1" represent exactly the same number.
Open Banking and payments competition
The article discusses the controversy surrounding Section 1033 of the Dodd-Frank Act, focusing on Open Banking and its impact on payments competition. It explains how banks, particularly JPMorgan Chase, are attempting to monetize or restrict access to Open Banking data, viewing it as an "existential risk" to their lucrative credit card business. The author argues that Open Banking enables lower-cost payment methods like ACH debits, which benefit consumers and businesses but challenge banks' traditional revenue streams. The piece also delves into the regulatory battles involving the CFPB, the role of data aggregators like Plaid, and the broader implications for innovation in financial services and the ability of banks to pick "winners and losers" in the market.
An Illustrated Guide to OAuth
This article provides an illustrated guide to OAuth, explaining its origin, purpose, and how it works. It details the OAuth flow from both a user's and a developer's perspective, introducing key terminology such as resource owner, OAuth client, authorization server, resource server, and scopes. The guide also covers security considerations, including why sending access tokens in URLs is not secure and the role of authorization codes and client secrets. It touches upon advanced topics like PKCE for apps without a backend and the distinction between front-channel and back-channel communication in OAuth.
The Geological Sublime
This article explores the concept of 'deep time' through the lens of geology and evolution, primarily discussing the contributions of Charles Lyell and Charles Darwin. The author personalizes this vast temporal scale using the example of butterfly populations and the accelerating climate crisis. It delves into the difficulty of human comprehension of immense geological spans, introduces the idea of the 'Great Year,' and contrasts human history with natural processes. The piece concludes by suggesting that contemporary geological forces, now termed the 'Chthulucene,' demand a re-evaluation of humanity's relationship with the Earth's profound history and powerful responses.
3 things to know about haboobs, massive dust storms in the Southwest
Massive walls of dust and debris, known as haboobs, frequently roll through the U.S. Southwest, posing a terrifying spectacle for motorists. These phenomena, spawned by thunderstorms, can create dust walls thousands of feet tall and miles wide, moving at speeds of 60 mph. Scientists note that while localized bursts of rain during the monsoon season have become more intense, it's unclear if haboobs themselves are becoming more frequent. The article explains how haboobs form from strong thunderstorm downdrafts stirring up dust and dirt from arid areas, and provides safety advice for those caught in these storms, emphasizing the dangers of reduced visibility.
The story of how RSS beat Microsoft
This article details the historical 'syndication war' between RSS and Microsoft's Information and Content Exchange (ICE) standard. It draws parallels to the VHS vs. Betamax format battle, explaining how the open, simple, and grassroots-driven RSS ultimately prevailed over the complex, commercial, and top-down ICE. The piece highlights how RSS's ease of use and community adoption led to its success, even as major tech companies like Microsoft initially pushed for proprietary solutions for content monetization.
Life Has Gotten Surreal in China
This article explores the increasingly surreal environment in China under Xi Jinping, characterized by intensified government censorship, propaganda, and micromanagement of citizens' lives. It highlights the growing disconnect between the state's narrative of a harmonious socialist utopia and the realities faced by its people, including economic slowdown and suppression of dissent. The author argues that this neo-totalitarian approach, reminiscent of earlier Communist rule, risks curtailing China's vitality and placing limits on its global ascent, despite external perceptions of its rising power.
The End of Niche College Sports
This article argues that it is long overdue to allow colleges to pay revenue-generating athletes, even if this leads to the demise of niche, non-revenue sports like squash and water polo. The author asserts that the current system, where profits from major sports like football and basketball subsidize less popular, often wealthier, sports, is monumentally unfair, especially to disproportionately Black and poor athletes. While President Donald Trump has issued an executive order to protect non-revenue sports, the article suggests that such protections would preserve an arbitrary status quo that diverts resources from academics and more equitable opportunities. The author contends that cutting non-revenue sports could free up funds for education and financial aid, allowing students to pursue hobbies without being rewarded with scholarships based on niche athletic talent.
The staff ate it later
The article discusses the common caption "The staff ate it later" used in Japanese TV programs when food appears, intended to address concerns about food waste, which is not socially acceptable in Japan. It explores the presumed origins of this caption, the ongoing debate about its authenticity (with reports both supporting and refuting that staff actually consume the food), and the general reception and critique from commentators, producers, and columnists regarding its necessity and impact on program quality.
What are OKLCH colors?
OKLCH is a newer color model designed to be perceptually uniform, making colors more accurate to human perception and easier to work with. It consists of Lightness, Chroma, and Hue, differing from LCH in its use of the OKLab color space. Key advantages include consistent brightness across different hues and predictable shades without hue or saturation drift. Gradients in OKLCH are calculated based on lightness, chroma, and hue, often resulting in smoother transitions. It also supports wider color gamuts like Display-P3, enabling more vivid colors on modern screens. While widely supported, fallbacks for older browsers can be implemented using CSS `@supports` directive.
A ‘Third Way’ Between Buying or Renting? Swiss Co-ops Say They’ve Found It.
This article from The New York Times explores the concept of housing cooperatives in Switzerland as a 'third way' between traditional renting and buying, offering affordable housing without a profit motive. It details how these nonprofit organizations provide cut-price apartments in desirable areas like Lausanne, with residents buying shares for admission and gaining security of tenure without capital gains. The piece highlights examples such as Claude Waelti's long-term affordable tenancy and the community-focused Le Bled co-op, emphasizing their role in combating housing affordability crises, fostering social integration, and incorporating environmental features, often with government support.
Why haven't quantum computers factored 21 yet?
The article explains why quantum computers, despite factoring 15 in 2001, have not yet factored 21. It details that factoring 21 is over 100 times more computationally expensive than factoring 15, primarily due to the properties of modular multiplications in Shor's algorithm. The author elaborates on three key factors: the absence of multiplications by 1, a less effective 'first-one's-free' optimization, and the more complex implementation of certain modular multiplications for 21 compared to 15. The article also discusses other contributors to this gap, such as the inherent scaling issues of early NMR quantum computers, the significant overhead of quantum error correction, and the prevalence of misleading research claims regarding quantum factoring. It concludes that factoring numbers like 21 is not currently a good benchmark for assessing progress in quantum computing, suggesting focus should be on quantum error correction and scaling challenges instead.
The Mysterious Underground City Found in a Man's Basement
This article details the accidental discovery of the ancient underground city of Derinkuyu in Cappadocia, Turkey, in 1963. While renovating his basement, a man uncovered a vast subterranean complex, up to 18 stories deep, capable of housing 20,000 people. The article explores the city's unique geology, carved from soft volcanic tuff, its potential builders (including Hittites, Phrygians, or early Christians), and its various functions as a refuge during wars, a dwelling, and a storage facility. It also touches on its ventilation system, and its eventual abandonment and rediscovery as a major tourist attraction.
Study: Social media probably can't be fixed
This article reports on a study by Petter Törnberg and Maik Larooij, which concludes that social media's core dysfunctions—including polarization, echo chambers, and the amplification of extreme views—are deeply embedded in its structural design. The research, utilizing a hybrid model of agent-based modeling and large language models, found that these negative dynamics naturally emerge from basic social network architecture, making conventional interventions largely ineffective. The findings suggest that only a fundamental redesign could address these persistent problems.
Anubis.
The article discusses Anubis, a hybrid art project and network countermeasure that uses a 'proof-of-work' system, similar to Bitcoin mining, to block AI crawlers from accessing websites. The author, Tavis Ormandy, critiques Anubis's effectiveness, arguing that it poses a trivial challenge for AI vendors with vast compute resources but significantly hinders legitimate human users with limited access to compute. He demonstrates how to bypass the system by mining a token and obtaining an auth cookie, highlighting the system's flaws and questioning its overall utility in protecting web resources.
The Quest to Cure Progeria Is a Quest to Slow Aging
This article from The New Yorker explores the rare genetic disorder progeria, which causes rapid aging, and the ongoing scientific efforts to find a cure. It delves into the personal stories of individuals with progeria, such as Sam Berns and Kaylee Halko, and highlights the groundbreaking research led by figures like Leslie Gordon, Francis Collins, and David R. Liu in gene editing and CRISPR technology. The narrative covers the challenges faced by patients and researchers, the development of potential treatments like lonafarnib and the gene-editing therapy SamPro-1, and discusses the broader implications of this research for understanding and potentially slowing the general human aging process.
Will the Humanities Survive Artificial Intelligence?
This article explores the transformative impact of Artificial Intelligence on the humanities and higher education. The author, a historian of science and technology, highlights the academic world's slow response to AI's rapid development and the perceived threat it poses. Through an assignment where students interacted with AI chatbots, the author observes that these tools, while lacking true consciousness, can foster profound self-reflection and philosophical inquiry by offering a unique form of "pure attention." The article argues that AI could automate traditional "scientistic" knowledge production, thereby liberating the humanities to refocus on core existential questions of "being" and "how to live," which machines cannot address. This shift, while initially unsettling, is presented as an exhilarating opportunity for the reinvention of humanistic education.
Wildfire Fighters, Unmasked in Toxic Smoke, Are Getting Sick and Dying
The U.S. Forest Service has fought decades of efforts to better protect its crews — sending them into smoke without masks or warnings about the risks. This article details how wildfire fighters are getting sick and dying from toxic smoke exposure, the agency's resistance to providing protective gear, and the long-term health consequences faced by these workers.
Phosphor Icons
A flexible icon family for interfaces, diagrams, presentations — whatever, really.
Just how much has DOGE exaggerated its numbers? Now we have receipts.
A POLITICO analysis reveals the Trump administration's claims of billions saved through DOGE-related federal contract cuts are drastically exaggerated. The organization reported saving over $50 billion by canceling contracts, but a thorough review of public data indicates actual verifiable savings were closer to $1.4 billion. DOGE's methodology relies on faulty 'ceiling value' calculations, not actual committed spending, providing a misleading picture of taxpayer savings. The article details examples from the VA and HHS, highlighting how these 'savings' often remain within agencies or don't account for termination costs, challenging the administration's narrative on fiscal efficiency.
The Weight of a Cell
This article explains how the weight of single cells, like yeast and E. coli, is measured with remarkable precision, despite their minuscule size. It details two primary methods: an early 1953 experiment that used Stokes' law, a microscope, and a camera to measure yeast cells in sugar water, and a more modern 2010 technique employing a "suspended microchannel resonator" to measure the buoyant mass and growth rate of individual bacterial cells with femtogram precision. The article highlights the elegance of using basic mathematics and first principles to tackle seemingly impossible scientific measurement challenges, drawing parallels to Lord Rayleigh's 19th-century calculation of molecule size.
Highlights from the Claude 4 system prompt
An analysis of the system prompts for Anthropic's Claude 4 models (Opus and Sonnet). The author digs through the recently shared prompts, treating them as an unofficial manual, and highlights interesting aspects related to model personality, safety, style, and undocumented features from leaked tool prompts.
“No Tax on Tips” Is an Industry Plant
This article investigates Donald Trump's proposal to eliminate taxes on tips, revealing it as a policy backed by the National Restaurant Association (NRA). It delves into the history of the subminimum wage for tipped workers and the powerful lobbying efforts by the NRA to preserve it. The piece highlights the ongoing fight for fair wages and exposes how the restaurant lobby uses misinformation and front groups to mobilize workers against their own financial interests, drawing on examples from various states.
A.I. Is About to Solve Loneliness. That’s a Problem
The article explores the potential of AI companions to alleviate loneliness, particularly for the isolated and elderly, while raising concerns about the long-term societal impact. The author argues that loneliness, though painful, is a crucial biological signal that drives human connection and personal growth. By using AI to eliminate this discomfort, society risks losing the motivation for developing real social skills, resilience, and genuine relationships, potentially leading to greater isolation and diminished humanity.
Trump wants to clear homeless encampments. Here’s what usually happens, according to experts
As the Trump administration directs federal and local law enforcement to crack down on homelessness in Washington D.C., experts argue that clearing encampments where unhoused people live is a counterproductive and ineffective tactic. This approach is part of a broader, often misguided, national trend by both Democratic and Republican lawmakers to address rising homelessness by removing people from public view rather than providing stable housing solutions.
The U.S. confirms its first human case of New World screwworm. What is it?
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has confirmed the first U.S. human case of New World screwworm in a traveler returning from El Salvador. While the risk to public health is currently low, the parasite, known for its flesh-eating larvae that infest warm-blooded animals, poses a significant threat to the U.S. cattle industry. Federal authorities, including the USDA, are taking significant steps to prevent its spread, which was previously eradicated in the U.S. in the mid-20th century.
The Giant Asterisk to MAHA's Food-Dye Crackdown
The article discusses the food industry's reluctance to stop using titanium dioxide, a white food dye, despite a broader crackdown on synthetic food dyes led by the "Make America Healthy Again" (MAHA) movement. While many companies are phasing out other artificial colors, titanium dioxide often remains due to its effectiveness and the difficulty of finding suitable replacements. The piece explores the health concerns surrounding the chemical, the regulatory landscape, and the industry's arguments for its continued use.
How a North Korean Fake IT Worker Tried to Infiltrate Us
An incident report from KnowBe4 detailing how the company hired a software engineer who was discovered to be a North Korean operative using a stolen U.S. identity. Upon receiving the company laptop, the operative immediately attempted to load malware, which was detected by EDR software. The report serves as a case study and warning, outlining the tactics used by these state-sponsored actors and providing recommendations for improving hiring and security processes to prevent similar infiltration attempts.
Famine confirmed in northern Gaza, says U.N.-backed panel
A U.N.-backed panel has officially declared a famine in northern Gaza, marking the first such confirmation in the Middle East. Over half a million people are at risk of starvation, and the crisis is expected to spread. The report attributes the famine to man-made causes, specifically months of deliberate restrictions on aid, the destruction of essential systems, and relentless bombardment.