Daily Picks

Saturday, 19 September 2026

9 new posts

A fan-tailed warbler (Zitting cisticola) in Bhigwan, Maharashtra, India.

Tisha Mukherjee · Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0

The Atlantic · Health
Science & HealthThe Atlantic · Health

Sea lions are dying by the thousands in Chile. Humans may be nextWhy a Sea-Lion Epidemic Is a Bad Sign for Humans

TL;DR

The animals that live alongside us in cities are delivering wild viruses to our doorstep, and the mass death of Chile's sea lions was an early warning.

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Where’s Your Ed At
Business & ProductWhere’s Your Ed AtEd Zitron

The world's richest companies are borrowing to buy GPUsPremium: The Hater's Guide To AI Debt (Part 1)

TL;DR

AI data centers cost far more than they earn, so tech giants and a new crop of companies are leaning on debt — just as interest rates and chip prices climb together.

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Uncharted Territories
Society & IdeasUncharted TerritoriesTomas Pueyo

Japan is crowded because one plot of land fed three harvests¿Por qué Japón está tan poblado a pesar de tener tan poco territorio?

TL;DR

Japan's population density is not luck or volcanoes: it is rice, double cropping, long unification and an island's shortage of wars stacked on top of each other.

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Conversable Economist
Economics & PolicyConversable Economistconversableeconomist

Africans use 14 gigajoules a year. Who exactly is going carbon neutral?Energy and Carbon Emissions: Some Global Ground Truths

TL;DR

The world still runs on fossil fuels, and whether emissions fall depends on Asia-Pacific and low-income countries, not on how much Europe and America cut at home.

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One Useful Thing
TechOne Useful ThingEthan Mollick

The models can already do the work, and almost nobody is askingThe Overhang

TL;DR

All the anxiety is aimed at the next generation of models, yet the ones already here can cover weeks of human labour, and that gap is where the opportunity sits.

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ChinaTalk
TechChinaTalkIrene Zhang

A DeepSeek researcher: coasting gets you killed tooHow Chinese AI Radicalizes

TL;DR

Chinese AI researchers are not passively absorbing official narratives about US AI safety talk — they are radicalizing into their own version of it.

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Nautilus
Science & HealthNautilusJake Currie

A crater on the Moon that comes once a centuryThe Moon has a New Once-in-a-Century Crater

TL;DR

In 2024 an object the size of a six-story building hit the Moon, leaving a once-in-a-century crater and proving the lunar surface is far from static.

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硅谷居士
Investing硅谷居士

The Fed hiked rates. Why did stocks rally the next day?美联储加息,美股为什么没有大跌?

TL;DR

Whether the market rises or falls on a rate decision depends on whether the move was already expected, not on whether hiking is good or bad.

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404 Media
Science & Health404 MediaBecky Ferreira

A buried mountain range under Antarctica may have fed the first animals‘Supermountains’ Buried Under Antarctica Fueled Explosion of Life, Scientists Discover

TL;DR

The most violent mountain-building episode in Earth's history dumped nutrients into the ocean, and that is what fueled the sudden appearance of complex life.

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