Friday headlines: Mind games

Yes, Democrats are panicking about Biden's poor debate showing, and while there are calls to replace him, he'd have to drop out first. / The New York Times [+], POLITICO

Hamilton Nolan: “This is the outcome of any system in which wealth and power naturally accumulate over time.” / How Things Work

By allowing officials to pressure social networks to remove content, the Supreme Court may have squashed influence operations—but the decision threatens free speech. / Platformer

AI search engine Perplexity, which bases its business on plagiarizing news sources, is under investigation by AWS for scraping sites without consent. / The Verge, Engadget

“My job wasn't to be a Shakespeare expert, it was to be interesting.” Behind the scenes as a book commentator tasked with training an AI reading companion. / WIRED

Human brains are nothing like computers—not in the ways they process, access, or store data—and it's a fallacy that has persisted since the dawn of the computer age. / Aeon

BreakTime is a game like Breakout, but it runs inside Google Calendar and can—if you wish—decline the meetings you destroy. / eieio.games

“Rather than living longer, people who consumed daily multivitamins were marginally more likely than non-users to die in the study period.” / The Guardian

How the colors fire hydrants are painted denote their capacity—red is the highest, blue is the lowest. / National Fire Sprinkler Association

See also: The federal government's official color palette—yes, it has one—controls much of what we see. An investigation into how America elects to paint itself. / The Morning News

Legendary Texas satirist, musician, and onetime gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman has died at 79. / The Texas Tribune

The BBC sound effect library. / BBC

View Post →