Tropical cyclone Freddy has now killed more than 400 people in Malawi, Mozambique, and Madagascar. / Reuters

By mid-century, storm damage in the northeastern United States is anticipated to rise 87%. / Bloomberg

Some $229 billion has been wiped off the market value of America's banks so far this month. / The Economist

New Zealand and the UK become the next countries to ban TikTok from government phones. Meanwhile, the FBI and DOJ are investigating Bytedance employees' use of TikTok to spy on journalists. / Quartz, Forbes

What it's like to search for friends in the remains of Meta's metaverse: "Think I'll chill out in the pool for a while." / New York Magazine

James Greig: Our culture is awash with adult babies electing to be infantilized. / Dazed

"Algorithmically incompressible." Reconsidering the work of Ted Chiang in light of recent developments in artificial intelligence. / Tasteful Rude

A man gives $100 to GPT-4 and tells it to make as much money as possible—with him as its human liaison. / Twitter

See also: "At some point it will be quite easy, if one wanted, to cause a great deal of harm with those models." / The Verge

Europe gets its first wild river national park in Albania. Europe's oldest map features a tiny Bronze Age kingdom. / Clean Lines,  Atlas Obscura

See also: How to draw towns and cities for fantasy maps. / The Kid Should See This

"Films need to be seen in their own countries." A survey of an archive of African cinema. / The Financial Times

Illinois looks to become the first state to ban book-banning. / Book Riot

South Park's recent episode about Big Toilet Paper—and its war on Japanese toilets—isn't so far-fetched. / Heated

Lots of great discussions in this week's matches over at the Tournament of Books, presented by Field Notes—dive in and see! / The Tournament of Books