Daily Picks

Thursday, 10 September 2026

11 new posts

Turnix suscitator (Barred Buttonquail) in Bhigwan, Maharashtra, India.

Tisha Mukherjee · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0

Renaissance Periodization
Science & HealthRenaissance Periodization

The eight-glasses rule traces back to an obituaryHydration myths that don't hold water

TL;DR

There is no universal water target, and the most repeated hydration advice of all time traces back to a misread book passage and an obituary.

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The Conversation
Science & HealthThe Conversation

Too many Americans on antidepressants? The problem isn't the drugs or the patientsAre too many Americans taking antidepressants?

TL;DR

Antidepressants are indeed overprescribed in the U.S., but that reflects systemic flaws in American healthcare rather than doctors' habits or patients' demands.

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Rest of World
TechRest of WorldMahsa Alimardani

Google Earth's AI image feature lasted one dayGoogle Earth’s AI experiment lasted 24 hours. The damage to trust will linger

TL;DR

Putting image generation inside the tool people use to verify facts destroyed trust faster than any fake image could.

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Cal Newport
TechCal NewportStudy Hacks

An Anthropic engineer says they're building a weapon that could end us — and won't stopAnthropic Just Threatened to Kill Billions of People. This Is Not Okay.

TL;DR

Anthropic and OpenAI know they are racing to release a narrow class of unsupervised, heavily armed, long-running AI agents, and because of Silicon Valley's salvationist faith they refuse to stop — which should make the public angry enough to act.

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Noema Magazine
Society & IdeasNoema MagazineAfra Wang

AI Can't Write Bad-Taste Poetry, and That's Its CeilingA New Kind Of Creative Poverty

TL;DR

Large language models are trained to produce only the safest, most agreeable text, while the greatest works tend to come from offenders who were once convicted and banned.

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404 Media
Business & Product404 MediaSamantha Cole

WordPress boss voted into a paid leave by his own boardAutomattic CEO Matt Mullenweg Put on 'Leave of Absence'

TL;DR

Automattic's board voted founder and CEO Matt Mullenweg into a paid leave of absence and handed the interim CEO job to the CFO, while Mullenweg publicly called it a conspiracy behind his back.

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JSTOR Daily
Society & IdeasJSTOR DailyAngelica Frey

Why Link never speaks — and why that makes him the coolest heroWhat’s Queer About The Legend of Zelda?

TL;DR

Zelda looks like a hero-rescues-princess story, but Link's endless childhood, the romance that never happens and his wardrobe keep cracking that heterosexual script open.

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硅谷居士
Investing硅谷居士

China's state banks are absurdly cheap, and nobody is buying为什么超低估值成了中国国有大行的常态?

TL;DR

The rock-bottom valuation of China's state-owned banks is not a market mistake: they must both make money and bail out the state, so their profits can be given away at any time.

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Klement on Investing
Economics & PolicyKlement on InvestingJoachim Klement

Britain isn't short of houses, it's short of building themBuild. More. Houses.

TL;DR

Europe's biggest cities need new housing worth well over two percent of their entire existing stock, and Britain's numbers likely look as bad as Ireland's.

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Nautilus
Science & HealthNautilusElaine Reno

The survival rules from Oregon Trail still hold up todayCould You Survive the Oregon Trail?

TL;DR

The wilderness lessons from that old computer game have barely aged: modern gadgets are a backup, and preparation is what actually keeps you alive.

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Craig Mod
TechCraig ModCraig Mod

AI voice is contaminating everything we write[RODEN] Writing in 2026, Walking Europe

TL;DR

With AI-generated prose leaking into every text box, the only defence left for a writer is to write stranger and more like themselves.

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Other editionsThe past week, and the archive beyond it