Elon Musk’s latest grok-thesque move: create a copy of Wikipedia and then have his AI edit it to reflect his increasingly extremist worldviews. Rather than hurt your eyes rolling them too hard, spend your time listening to Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. «We’ll still be around in 100 years. He won’t.» he says about Musk. The interview, however, is less about Musk and more about how Wales understands Wikipedia’s role in a polarised information ecosystem. The internet needs more Wales, less Musk. Or, to quote the wonderful Billie Eilish: «If you’re a billionaire, why are you a billionaire? No hate, but give your money away, shorties.»

Humans grow up within a framework of values, shaped by society, family, personal interactions. Where and how you grow up primes how you see the world. Large language models don’t have that; they are trained on text only. But then, this interesting experiment explores, isn’t it plausible that the language in which we interact with them «profoundly shapes the values and priorities they express»?

It’s almost ten years since all the world’s nations signed the Paris Agreement and committed to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees. In the coming days and weeks, you’ll hear a lot about broken promises, how we’re nowhere near this target, and instead on a dangerous path towards destruction and suffering. And rightly so. We can’t stress enough that we’re not doing enough. Still, hope comes from also seeing what is going well. This report focuses on areas where the past 10 years smashed expectations.

Always great to see two of my favourite podcasts work together. Planet Money and Twenty Thousand Hertz tell the story of arguably one of the most recognisable sound designs of our time: TikTok’s sonic logo that works as a Trojan horse whenever its videos are shared on other platforms.

A great visual explainer on how computers can trick us to see more colours than there actually are on the screen. The effect is called dithering, and what it does is replicate shades with fewer colours, which are strategically placed to maintain the original look. Sounds boring? Tap the link to be proven otherwise.

First, our friendships moved into the digital realm, at least some of the communication part. To ICQ, Facebook, Instagram, group chats. For a while time, that didn’t seem like a bad thing – more instant communication, easier to low-key stay in touch with people. But we’ve arrived in a world where these friendships have to compete for attention on that small black mirror in our hands with everything else that’s happening there. Social relationships and parasocial connections blend more and more.

Exactly my type of project. Rabbit holes, curiously and meticulously followed down and then documented beautifully for others to enjoy.

One of my favourite journalists has started a newsletter. Amanda Shendruk has done a lot of interesting, relevant work at the intersection of climate and data, so there’s a lot to look forward to. This first piece is mostly an announcement of what’s to come (love this: «Don’t have many answers, but I do have data.»), but it also contains interesting charts about spiking uncertainty, and a flowchart of how solving the climate crisis is interconnected with other crises.

Short musings on what it means when you’re really good at something that just isn’t useful any longer. And why we shouldn’t give up on learning skills that appear obsolete. «But, at the same time, acquiring these bodies of knowledge is part of what makes life great. Learning a new language is brain-melting, soul-enlarging.»