Prime Numbers

Solved a 2000-Year-old Problem with Raw Intelligence
https://youtu.be/GDHAjzhjf8s
 
PRIMES is in P
https://annals.math.princeton.edu/2004/160-2/p12 

Trust AI?

What If We Can Never Trust A.I.?
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/open-questions/what-if-we-can-never-trust-ai
Like humans, the technology will never be perfect. The question is what imperfections we’re willing to tolerate. 

AI is Making Us Dumber

A.I. Is Giving Us Answers Right Away. That’s Making Us Dumber. By Anne-Laure Le Cunff
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/08/opinion/ai-google-gemini-search-questions.html
By shortening the time between asking a question and getting an answer, these tools are actually undermining curiosity — and paradoxically threatening our ability to understand the world. 

Economic Impact of Shifting Weather Patterns

Hot weather could reshape the global economy
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/06/24/how-hot-weather-could-reshape-the-global-economy/ 

Importance of Basic Science Research

The Science that Turned Lizard Venom into GLP-1s is Under Attack
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/20/opinion/glp1-research-science-funding.html 

Cognition in the Age of AI

Cognition for Sale
https://www.project-syndicate.org/onpoint/what-ai-cannot-replace-by-sami-mahroum-2026-06
AI is doing what no previous technology could, turning tacit human knowledge into a product that can be extracted, priced, and distributed at scale. Yet the same technology that democratizes cognitive labor may also weaken the human capacities on which complex societies depend. 

Inside the great professionalization
https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2026/06/inside-the-great-deprofessionalisation
AI is taking the humanity out of our jobs.

AI Tackles an Erdos Problem

A Famous Math Problem Stumped Humans for 80 Years. AI Just Cracked It.
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-math-solves-erdos-problem-openai-c4029e84
The math world is losing its mind over the new solution to an Erdős problem. This is what AI found, how we missed it—and why it matters. 

China's Tech Supremacy Goal

China’s Long March to Technological Supremacy
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/china-science-technology-outflanking-the-us-and-europe-by-johan-rockstrom-and-inga-strumke-2026-05
China’s R&D prowess was visible in research output, patents, PhDs, and critical technologies for years, long before crystallizing into commercial products that Western investors, commentators, and policymakers noticed. And now it’s happening again.

How China Achieved Innovation Without Freedom
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/smart-authoritarianism-enabled-china-to-become-an-innovation-leader-by-jennifer-lind-2025-11
Though China remains a one-party state that disappears dissidents and censors ideas, it has vaulted past Japan, Germany, and France to become the world’s tenth most-innovative economy. It owes this achievement – which was long considered impossible – to a pioneering strategy of "smart authoritarianism." 

Obsession with the Future

Do We Think Too Much About the Future?
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/open-questions/do-we-think-too-much-about-the-future
For most of history, people didn’t try predicting it. Maybe that was wise. 

Get A.I. Out of Schools?

What Will It Take to Get A.I. Out of Schools?
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/progress-report/what-will-it-take-to-get-ai-out-of-schools
The tech world assumes that A.I.-aided education is necessary and inevitable. A growing number of parents, educators, and cognitive scientists say the opposite. 

China's Economy - Past, Present, and the Future

The Consensus on China’s Economy Is Strong—and Wrong
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/china-export-model-does-not-come-at-the-expense-of-chinese-consumers-by-arvind-subramanian-2026-05
Calling on China to change its globally distortionary development strategy may well be warranted. But critics cannot question Chinese mercantilism on the grounds that it penalizes China's consumers, whose standard of living has risen faster than anywhere else in history. 

Can China Grow from Within?
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/china-15th-five-year-plan-measures-to-increase-domestic-consumption-by-keyu-jin-2026-04
At a time of intensifying geopolitical volatility, China’s embrace of a consumption-led model is not only about rebalancing growth, but also about anchoring it more firmly at home. Domestic demand offers insulation from external shocks, and along with developed capital markets, it can go a long way toward strengthening autonomy.
 
Telling the Truth About China’s Success
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/china-did-not-cheat-its-way-to-prosperity-by-yanis-varoufakis-2026-04
With the Persian Gulf in flames, de-escalation of the cold war between the United States and China must become the world’s top priority. To that end, it is essential to explode a powerful myth: the idea that China has cheated its way to prosperity. 

The Shocking Speed of China’s Scientific Rise
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/2026/03/china-science-superpower/686564/
 
The Rise of the Chinese Platform State
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/china-innovation-model-could-give-it-an-advantage-in-ai-race-by-s-alex-yang-and-angela-huyue-zhang-2026-03

Can you Concentrate?

There’s a Good Reason Why You Can’t Concentrate
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/27/opinion/technology-mental-fitness-cognitive.html 

Weather Is Getting Wilder

The Weather Is Getting Wilder, and Some See a Dire Signal in the Data
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/19/climate/the-weather-is-getting-wilder-and-some-see-a-dire-signal-in-the-data.html
Several of the Earth’s systems are changing faster than predicted as global temperatures rise, scientists say.  

Digital Devices in Classrooms

Digital devices are dumbing us down, multiple studies indicate
https://www.ft.com/content/dcd93593-11a3-439a-ab00-577db850cbb4
Some academics are beginning to reach for paper again, but it is not always possible to eliminate phones and laptops. 

Health Science

Super-Agers’ Brains Have a Special Ability, New Study Suggests
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/25/well/mind/super-agers-brain-neurons.html
The findings may help explain why this group has such exceptional memory.
 
Why Some People Thrive on Four Hours of Sleep
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/why-some-people-thrive-on-four-hours-of-sleep 

AI Hypotheticals and Stock Market Reaction

Viral Doomsday Report Lays Bare Wall Street’s Deep Anxiety About AI Future
https://www.wsj.com/finance/stocks/global-stocks-markets-dow-news-02-23-2026-06a32080
Citrini Research’s thought experiment rattled investors already wary of tech disruptions. The Dow industrials fell 822 points.

Taleb, Citrini Fuel AI Scare Trade as IBM Drops Most in 25 Years
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/software-payments-shares-tumble-citrini-162303649.html

 
THE 2028 GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE CRISIS
https://substack.com/home/post/p-188821754
A Thought Exercise in Financial History, from the Future. 

Anthropic launches new enterprise offerings, raising the heat on software companies
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/anthropic-launches-new-enterprise-offerings-raising-the-heat-on-software-companies-143054933.html

Policy bazooka could fend off jobless AI world
https://www.reuters.com/commentary/breakingviews/global-markets-breakingviews-2026-02-24/

Alternative Viewpoint: Ignore the AI Hysteria
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/ignore-the-ai-hysteria-b64eac84

Related:

Big Tech will only partly dissolve AI water risk
https://www.reuters.com/commentary/breakingviews/big-tech-will-only-partly-dissolve-ai-water-risk-2026-02-23/

Tech and the Human Brain

How technology is reshaping our minds

Competing demands on our attention are undermining our ability to focus.
https://www.ft.com/content/b56fcaba-b36d-44f1-affa-24a049a66638
FT’s Tej Parikh notes:
Technology is designed to create efficiency. It allows us to search, retrieve and analyze data faster, freeing us for higher thinking.
But humans have an inbuilt evolutionary tendency to conserve cognitive energy and seek out dopamine hits. Market economies optimize for this. As mental friction is engineered away, the tools we need for deeper cognition risk atrophying. For example, sustained concentration helps strengthen attention, tackling long texts deepens comprehension and forming arguments without prompts builds originality. 

How the smartphone took over the minds of an entire generation
https://www.afr.com/technology/how-the-smartphone-took-over-the-minds-of-an-entire-generation-20260220-p5o453
The tech revolution that started in 2000 has fundamentally disrupted our social cohesion and cultural foundations, and it’s only getting worse.

Human Intuition Still Matters

Why Human Intuition Is Still Science’s Greatest Tool in the Age Of AI
https://www.noemamag.com/why-human-intuition-is-still-sciences-greatest-tool-in-the-age-of-ai/
Our sense for aesthetics, meaning and embodiment give us a vital advantage over our technological creations. 

Understanding Claude

What Is Claude? Anthropic Doesn’t Know, Either
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/02/16/what-is-claude-anthropic-doesnt-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. 

What is a Mind?

What Counts as a Mind?
https://www.noemamag.com/what-counts-as-a-mind/
From chatbots to climbing beans, new research challenges our deepest assumptions about intelligence and consciousness.