In this week’s Top 5 we have lessons from apartheid, clever Claude, feeling bodies anew, the power of wax, and free mining.
The New Yorker
Posted inEditor's Pick
What Is Claude? Anthropic Doesn’t Know, Either
“Researchers at the company are trying to understand their A.I. system’s mind—examining its neurons, running it through psychology experiments, and putting it on the therapy couch.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Babies Kept in a Mysterious Los Angeles Mansion
“A wealthy couple obtained dozens of children through surrogates. Did they want a family, or something else?”
Posted inReading List
Seeing is Believing: A Reading List on Making Meaning from Data
Eight stories on the power and beauty of visual communication.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Deepfaking Orson Welles’s Mangled Masterpiece
“Will an A.I. restoration of ‘The Magnificent Ambersons’ right a historic wrong or desecrate a classic?”
Posted inTop 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
In this edition: Bezos, paper, scissors; feast or famine; one reason to stay here; any way you slice it; the real Winter Olympics, and more.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Living in Tracy Chapman’s House
“Fresh out of college, we were a bunch of misfits, in a chaotic, run-down communal home, desperately trying to figure out who we were meant to be.”
Posted inCuration
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
In this edition: inside a cyberscam compound, behind bars but ahead of the times, up into the beyond, away from home, and under the night sky.
Posted inUncategorized
Disappeared to a Foreign Prison
“The Trump administration is deporting people to countries they have no ties to, where many are being detained indefinitely or forcibly returned to the places they fled.”
Posted inReading List
‘Actually Really Sacred’: A George Saunders Reading List
Nine essays and interviews from literature’s favorite laureate of compassion.