Mixed Signals

Jessica Tarlov on Being Fox News' Democrat, Getting Yelled At on TV, & Pete Hegseth | Semafor Media

I think there's a huge chasm obviously between people who consume the five through clips and those who actually watch the full hour and see what the dynamic looks like in the back half of the show when we're talking about dating trends and AI robot dogs versus you know what Steven Miller is doing to innocent people who are just day laborers showing up at Home Depot.

TED

How AI Is Breaking the Internet (and What to Do About It) | Matthew Prince | TED

What is it with OpenAI? 750 times harder. What is it with Anthropic? 32,000 times harder. The answer engines are giving the answers and people aren't following the footnotes.

TED

Why Big Tech Is Incompatible with Democracy | Bruno Giussani | TED

We think we control them, but actually is they who hypnotize us and domesticate us. And we are increasingly surrounded by machines that under the cover of optimization and practicality diminish our ability to understand reality and to act upon it.

Book of the Day

Journalist Jodi Kantor and happiness expert Arthur Brooks on how to find purpose

Any technology that is a substitute for in-real-life socialization is going to hurt your happiness. And so, in our efforts to solve every problem and distract ourselves from encroaching misery in our lives, enter the smartphone, which has made it possible for us to solve the problem of human boredom, which by the way eliminates the right hemisphere of the brain and helps us find meaning through mind wandering. We literally need to be bored.

Hidden Brain

You Are Not Ordinary

Most of us have had the experience of being in a new place and noticing things we'd never seen before — a gorgeous mural on the side of a building, a family of ducks in a pond, the way light filters through leaves. But over time, as a place becomes familiar, we stop seeing it. We go on autopilot. The same thing can happen with people.

Hidden Brain

How to Combat Pain

When you feel pain, a signal travels from the injured part of your body up through your nervous system. But the brain decides how much attention to pay to that signal. If the brain is occupied elsewhere — by a competing task or distraction — it can turn down the volume on pain.

TED

The Case for Making Art in a Crisis | Yiyun Kang | TED

We're drowning in information but starving for meaning. The chain of understanding is broken, leaving our crisis so cold and abstract. We have lost the connection and the ability to care.

It's Been a Minute

Has the internet killed social etiquette? | It's Been a Minute

Our screens have become this dashboard or this interface in a way where we flatten the human experience.

Hidden Brain

Waking Up Your Spiritual Brain: Part 1

People who have more spiritual experiences also tend to have more activity in a particular brain network — a network that also lights up during other activities that draw our attention away from ourselves and toward other people, other beings, the wider world.

TED

I Let DaddyGPT Parent My Kids. Here’s What I Learned | Stephen Remedios | TED

But daddy, DaddyGPT is never busy. And in that moment, I realized I had just been outparented by my own algorithm.

Pivot

Is Trump Using the WHCD Shooting as an “Opportunity” to Push His Agenda? | Pivot

The biggest psychological tax cut in history would be if we elected a technocrat who maybe checked in once a month but wasn't in your face every day and dominating the table conversation at dinner.

How to Be a Better Human

How to Confront Your Inner Critic (W/ Anu Gupta) | How to Be a Better Human | TED

I realized people aren't seeing me. I don't want to live in a world where we live in ideas of one another. I want to live in a world where we live in the presence of one another, the real people.

TED

3 Habits to Practice Curiosity — and Escape Your Phone | Nayeema Raza | TED

When we are together physically, we are each alone on our phones. But when we're in our phones, that's when we can be together.

TED

A Different Way to Measure Success in Health Care | Andrew Bastawrous | TED

The greatest gift I could give her was not her sight but to have her be truly seen.

It's Been a Minute

Is tech making us too obsessed with our bodies? | It's Been A Minute

Even if you're not paying attention to how your body is feeling, you're paying attention to those metrics.