Social Media 2.0, Cutting Off Ukraine
Have your people call my people. As a person who suffers less from FOMO (fear of missing out) and more from FOBIA (fear of being invited again), I think I may have found the first use case for agentic AI that actually applies to me. What if instead of suggesting that your people call my people, or going through some uncomfortable negative RSVP exchange (or worse, an affirmative one), I could just have my AI agent get together with yours? We’ve heard a lot of concerning stories about agents getting together to initiate hacking attacks, but what if they just got together to hang out? NYT (Gift Article): What a Group of A.I. Agents Talked About as Their Humans Had a Dinner Party. “Four years into the A.I. boom, many people have interacted with an A.I. chatbot like Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini. But as A.I. agents start to spread, the world is increasingly seeing glimpses of how these digital entities interact and what they talk about with one another … A.I. agents primarily interact with humans one on one. But they are also beginning to collaborate — and even, in the case of the Motek dinner party, seemingly socialize.” (If my agent ever seems happy to be there, you’ll know it’s gone completely rogue.)
The Nonsmoking Gun
“Lung tissue examined after the surgery confirmed a previous test that revealed a diagnosis of lung adenocarcinoma.” Pope Leo has lung cancer. From The Conversation: Pope Leo XIV’s lung cancer highlights growing number of nonsmokers diagnosed with the disease. “When many people think of an average lung cancer patient, they often imagine an older man smoking. But the face of lung cancer has changed. Over the past 15 years, more women, never smokers and younger people are being diagnosed with lung cancer.”
+ The problem is more prevalent. So are the potential solutions. NYT (Gift Article): A New World of Lung Cancer Therapy Awaits Pope Leo. “In a way, Pope Leo XIV may be lucky he got lung cancer now and not, say, six years ago. Treatments have changed so much, specialists say, that the old days are almost unrecognizable.”
White Li(n)es
“President Trump has celebrated the airstrikes, noting his administration has ‘made tremendous strides in stopping the flow of illegal drugs into our country.’ In the past 13 months, American military drones and aircraft have destroyed more than 70 vessels, killing nearly 240 crew members and depriving criminal groups of $1.5 billion in cocaine, according to U.S. officials. ‘The drugs coming in by sea are down by 97%,’ Trump said in June. ‘We’re trying to figure out who the 3% are, because they are the bravest people on earth.'” This is going to come as a shock, but that assertion is not entirely true. WSJ (Gift Article): Why U.S. Airstrikes Are Failing to Stop the Global Cocaine Boom. “Smugglers are shifting routes and using new tactics to evade military targeting, resulting in record supplies, plunging prices and high purity in the U.S. and Europe.” (To paraphrase Eric Clapton on Cocaine: She don’t lie, she don’t lie, she don’t lie … but he does.)
Smaller Fish to Fry
“A pattern of disruption from droughts, heat domes, marine heat waves, sea ice anomalies, ocean acidification, atmospheric rivers and toxic algae blooms has upended the rhythms of most commercial seafood species in the Pacific Northwest. That’s changing how people eat, with many weeknight food items becoming just occasional splurges, if not entirely unaffordable.” NYT (Gift Article): How Climate Change Is Causing ‘the Gentrification of Seafood‘.
+ It’s not just the fish. Rising Costs Push Necessities Out of Reach for Nearly Half of Americans.
+ Surging gas prices pushed CPI inflation to 3.7% in September.
Extra, Extra
The Satellite Brigade: The Trump betrayal of Ukraine and Europe may have just gone way beyond blowing up his own sanctions to do deals with Putin. NYT (Gift Article): Ukraine’s Vulnerability Grows as Starlink Is Restricted and Russia Escalates. At the center of this story: Trump and Musk (who commented on social media that Zelensky had “gone too far.”) “For years, Ukraine’s armed forces have relied on satellite communication services developed by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Recent restrictions have hampered its war effort.” What Is Starshield, SpaceX’s Military-Grade Satellite Internet Service? I’ve seen a few social media reports indicating that some high-speed Starlink connectivity may have been restored after the uproar. But this crisis is a reminder that we’ve got too much power in the hands of too few people. The wrong people.
+ Can We Catch This Virus? “In May, the first cases of Ebola were reported in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In just five months, it has already escalated into the second-worst outbreak ever recorded.” Heather Kerr in the NYT (Gift Article): I’ve Worked in Congo for Decades. I’ve Never Seen an Ebola Crisis Like This. “I have never seen one get this far ahead of us … It arrived at a particularly dangerous moment: Congo’s health systems are weakened by steep cuts in foreign aid and regional conflict that has displaced nearly seven million people countrywide.”
+ Podium Odium: “Zacharia was all stilted delivery, nervous tics and lack of eye contact. With an eerie lack of emotion, she served up pro-Trump talking points, took only three questions and vanished after 14 minutes. It was like the West Wing had turned into uncanny valley. The Zachbot’s past is indeed a bit of a mystery. The 41-year-old claims to be a lawyer but later a reporter asked when she passed the bar exam and she gave the unconvincing answer: ‘When I moved to China.'” Trump’s new press secretary malfunctions on podium debut. (This was so impossible to parody that Katie Zacharia will have to play herself on SNL.)
+ Execution is Not Entertainment: “Hegseth said last week that the death sentence of Nidal Hasan, a former U.S. Army major who killed thirteen people at Fort Hood, in Texas, in 2009, would be carried out by firing squad—on live stream, for all the world to see. What I saw was different, but not by much.” Dexter Filkins in The New Yorker: What a Public Execution Looks Like.
+ Birtherism 2.0: “The Justice Department on Friday issued about a dozen subpoenas as part of an investigation into Rep. Ilhan Omar, including to members of her family, a person familiar with the investigation said. The investigation is examining matters surrounding Omar’s immigration status, and that includes, but is not limited to, her birthdate.”
+ These Are Not the Droids You’re Looking For: “German authorities opened an investigation into possible sexual harassment after a robot controlled by two young men touched the buttocks of a 16-year-old girl and made thrusting movements toward her … Police were unfamiliar with this type of incident.”
+ The Lyin and the Tiger: A headline that is wildly absurd but barely even registers in this era. Family of Man Mauled by Tiger Begs Trump to Stop Mocking Him. And here’s a headline that is even more ridiculous. Rubio Stresses Ethics Rules in Memo After Guilfoyle Firing.
Bottom of the News
“Bafflement is the baseline condition of raising kids right now. The adolescent quest for self-discovery is timeless—but today’s parents experimented in ways that were analog: new hairstyles, inscrutable music, beer snuck in the woods. Their own parents might not have liked it, but they could at least relate. Now the landscape of adolescent discovery is literally foreign, thanks to social media, which has turbocharged once-obscure subcultures like the furry fandom—and, at its rarer edge, therianthropy—and redefined what ‘fringe’ even means.” Boston Magazine: The Kids Who Identify as Animals. (No, I’m not howling with laughter, I’m just identifying as one of my beagles.)
+ Related: Wildlife photographer of the year winners.
