Culture
College students are experiencing an increase in loneliness since the pandemic.
People love to judge people for putting their children in daycare, and also for not putting their children in daycare. Maybe we should just let them do what they want.
Actress Hayden Panettierre died at age 36.
Tech
It’s pee.
Americans really do not like datacenters.
Hatred of datacenters has become so ubiquitous that there’s now a TV ad proposing that we use pee to cool them. Somehow this is supposed to make you want to drink beer and sparkling water? And also there’s a Kelce brother in it? IDK.
It turns out Amazon is chomping our rare books.
Stripe said in a letter to investors that the singularity has begun. (I disagree, fwiw.)
OpenAI announced that it’s pacing development temporarily to focus on safeguards.
A research paper found that agents over-predict task time.
Someone at Apple leaked a video of camera-equipped AirPods.
A fourth woman has joined a lawsuit against Grok alleging that it was used by her step-father to generate CSAM based on her childhood photos. In a story about her case, it was noted that xAI left out key details in their NCMEC report and did not respond to investigators’ requests for more information.
The NYT did some fun emoji usage analysis by generational cohort.
Music
People on X and elsewhere lost their minds about a specific Tiny Desk concert video that I’m not going to link to because the disproportionate negative reaction to it is frankly creepy. I have crazy news for you about literally every artist ever: they’re weird! I would almost say that it’s essential to their whole creative deal to be weird. Sometimes they are also not physically attractive in the way you personally prefer. Get over it.
