Block mentality
With the inauguration of Trump's second term, the Doomsday Clock will move forward next week. / The Nation
See also: A subreddit that provides "the perfect soundtrack for your personal apocalypse." / r/CollapseMusic
Unrelated: When a scientist convinced members of the San Francisco 49ers to ingest radioactive material to determine if physical fitness predicts surviving a nuclear war. / Defector
"Humanity's Last Exam," a new test that's stumped every popular AI model, is now the yardstick by which AI is measured against humans' intellectual capabilities. / The New York Times [+]
Can the Stargate AI project really create as many as 100,000 jobs? Possibly, but they might not be for humans. / Vox
See also: According to a new poll, about half of US adults have an unfavorable view of Elon Musk, and even more disapprove of Trump relying on billionaires' advice. / Axios
A developer has released code that lures AI crawlers into a "tar pit" of randomly generated pages, and that website owners can deploy to defend their content, waste AI company resources—or both. / 404 Media
After the Supreme Court ended affirmative action in admissions, medical schools have reacted "overzealously," waving in a new era of discrimination. / STAT
"Being forced to really think whether you want to risk embarrassment by asking somebody if they carry a certain film or record in the shop goes a long way in learning to appreciate things." Bring back video rental stores. / The Melt
Trained on Minecraft, but without respecting object permanence, an AI model "fails so hard at being Minecraft that it becomes something else." / AI Weirdness
"If we want video game writing to be taken seriously as a craft, then we have to encourage players to engage with it as a creative process." / Florence Smith Nicholls
A very long, detailed history of how once-sprawling social media platforms splintered into smaller, politically homogenous communities. / Noema
Anne Helen Petersen: "I told myself I'd put both Instagram and email back on my phone at the end of the in-between weeks. Days kept passing, and I kept not doing it." / Culture Study
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Your headlines are sourced and composed by Rosecrans Baldwin and Andrew Womack (☜), Monday through Friday. View this edition and the latest headlines at TMN.