Robot mock
New satellite imagery shows Mexico City is sinking by nearly 10 inches a year, and it’s damaging critical infrastructure. / Associated Press
For NASA to achieve its goal of 21 lunar landings in the next two-and-a-half years, it will need to solve some serious supply chain issues and rethink how it buys lunar landers. / Ars Technica
Researchers say a groundbreaking AI climate model is underestimating vehicle emissions in US cities by an average of 70%. / Gizmodo
Worker heat deaths in the US are surging, but if more states adopted California’s heat protections, it could save as many as 1,500 lives a year. / Jacobin
Related: How industry groups and lobbyists have blocked any meaningful heat protections from being enacted. / Common Dreams
“I come here for human interaction.” Hackers are complaining that their forums are now overrun with AI slop, due in part to the rise of vibe hacking. / WIRED
What it’s like to use Haotian AI, the real-time deepfake video software that’s become the weapon of choice for scammers around the world. / 404 Media
“Call it a reverse Turing Test.” To avoid accusations of using AI, some writers are inserting typos or “aggressively casual language” into their work. / The Wall Street Journal [$]
If you enjoy these headlines, please join us as a Sustaining Member to support what we do and unlock access to paywalled links.
It’s hard to argue AI won’t make college obsolete when the ruling class is pushing the technology and the price of a degree is out of reach for more and more people. / The New Yorker
Every time Google Chrome pushes a new AI model to users’ device, it’s the equivalent of up to 60,000 tons of CO2 emissions. / That Privacy Guy
Spotify releases a command-line tool that opens a door for OpenClaw to generate and upload personal podcasts. / Engadget
Newborns are dying from blood-clotting disorders because their parents are rejecting long-standard vitamin K shots at birth. / ProPublica
“It’s my turn to be a guinea pig.” In hopes of freeing themselves from addiction, some people are self-experimenting with unregulated medications acquired online. / The New York Times [$]
Unrelated: Overdosing on a not-yet-approved GLP-1, a man was hospitalized after experiencing diarrhea as much as 30 times a day. / Gizmodo
“I was afraid to go out into the world, talk to people, and do things, so we came up with playful ways of practicing these skills until the anxiety went away.” / Escaping Flatland
And now let’s hear from new Sustaining Member Richard K.!
Hello Richard! Can you tell us when you started reading TMN? I first encountered TMN around 2018 when I got a link to the site for a best-music-of-the-year article. A lot of the music was experimental in nature and not my taste but one of the albums was by an LA punk band called Hit Bargain titled Potential Maximizer. I still listen to that album often. If you know who the guy was who did that article tell him thanks for me.
That was me! Anything else to add? I also scrolled through the other articles and some of them were interesting. I would check in to TMN every couple of weeks and I would always find a worthwhile article or three to read. But then there came a time when it seemed the site went dead. I’d check in but the articles were the same ones from weeks ago so eventually I stopped visiting. Then maybe a year ago I saw somewhere—maybe Kottke—had an announcement about ToB. That got me to check in again and I saw TMN was up and running in its present form. So I’ve been reading ever since.
And what keeps you coming back? The variety and curation of the articles. The articles you choose help me make some sense of the news especially when you pair up articles from different sources that compliment each other.
Great to hear. And why did you decide to support today? Because of economics. It seems that what started slowly as a website here and there hiding behind a paywall has now turned into an avalanche. It’s clear to me now that there is no escaping it, I’ll have to pay for content. But it dawned on me that instead of paying many sites $6-9.00 per month I can pay you $70.00 per year and get behind several quality paywalled sites. Sure, maybe I don’t get to scroll the entire NYT or Atlantic site but your curation means that I don't need to wade through the articles I’m not interested in. And there’s tons of good reading on TMN. So keep up the good work. Thank you.