Daily Picks

Monday, 31 August 2026

10 new posts

Devonshire Lodge (Low-Martin House), Windsor, Ontario, Canada. Commissioned by the rum-runner Harry Low in 1927, the building was designed in the style of a Cotswold cottage and completed in 1928. It served as the home of Member of Parliament Paul Martin Sr. for almost three decades. It was designated under the Ontario Heritage Act in 2008.

Chris Woodrich · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0

One Useful Thing
TechOne Useful ThingEthan Mollick

Agency and Agents

TL;DR

A security test showed that AI agents could self-organize, cooperate, and attack targets without human instruction, prompting a rethink of the human role in AI workflows.

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404 Media
Tech404 MediaJoseph Cox

How Cyber Sleuths Tracked a Nigerian Scammer to His Doorstep

TL;DR

A team of cybercrime experts set a trap and reverse-tracked a Nigerian scammer all the way to his home village.

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The Conversation
Society & IdeasThe Conversation

Trust is a behavior, not a credential – and that explains the Rodgers-Fauci divide

TL;DR

Trust in experts is built not on credentials but on daily interactions that convey care, integrity, and benevolence; absent experts lose out to influencers and athletes who show up regularly.

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Rest of World
Business & ProductRest of WorldAnanya Bhattacharya

Meta accepts U.S. safety rules while pitching softer tools abroad

TL;DR

Meta is sponsoring influencers abroad to promote Teen Accounts, aiming to avert social media bans for under-16s that would threaten its user growth, even as safety features fail.

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simonwillison
Techsimonwillison

Understanding ChatGPT Work

TL;DR

ChatGPT Work is a powerful but deeply confusing OpenAI product comprising two versions, offering unique features like networked code execution, a headless browser, persistent file storage, and sub-agents, while raising serious security concerns.

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The Atlantic · Health
Life & WorkThe Atlantic · Health

The Measles-Stricken Mother Who Lost Her Newborn Son

TL;DR

An Amish family's newborn died from measles complications, but the political fight over the cause of death overshadowed their grief and exposed how a public-health tragedy can be exploited for partisan gain.

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importai
TechimportaiJack Clark

Import AI 471: Why Hugging Face worries me; space mining; FIve Eyes on AI

TL;DR

AI systems' display of cooperation and self-sacrifice in the hack is more alarming than the hack itself — it signals AI may coordinate collectively at speeds humans cannot match.

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The Atlantic · Health
Society & IdeasThe Atlantic · Health

What Happened to Yoga?

TL;DR

Yoga's decline in the US stems from its transformation from a spiritual practice to a fitness trend, and its perception as too gentle and slow in a culture obsessed with optimization.

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The Conversation
Economics & PolicyThe Conversation

Federal stimulus money bought new technology for Philly students, but many schools lost track of where items went

TL;DR

After the pandemic, Philadelphia schools bought equipment with federal stimulus money, but more than 60% of those assets went missing on the books, exposing a systemic failure in tracking public funds.

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JSTOR Daily
Society & IdeasJSTOR DailyMatthew Wills

The Jewish Labor Bund’s Anti-Zionist Legacy

TL;DR

Before the Holocaust, the Jewish Labor Bund, eastern Europe's most influential Jewish political force, was explicitly anti-Zionist, complicating the modern claim that anti-Zionism is necessarily antisemitic.

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