What Do the Next 4,000 Emoji Look Like?
by Jennifer Daniel at Did Someone Say Emoji?
Of Interest
November 2026
Religion Fading Out; State Fading Out
by Sam Kahn at Castalia
China’s Companionship Economy: Paying for Someone to Play With Me
by Chenfei Zhu at The Diplomat
Cloud Rats and Software Roaches
by Maciej Cegłowski at Idle Words
The Making of Dario Amodei
by Ryan Mac, Kalley Huang, Cade Metz, and Georgia Gee at New York Times
You Don’t Need to Be a Gambler to Be on ’Tilt’
by Mitch Therieau at New York Times
He got a religious exemption from using AI at work. Maybe you can too
by Adele Peters at Fast Company
China Is Defanging the Dollar, Not Dethroning It
by Ho-fung Hung at The Diplomat
Where the Weight Lies: A Balancing Act for the Governance of Open-Weight AI Models
by Jennifer Tridgell at Lawfare
Can AI Save Us From the Writers?
by Damir Marusic at Wisdom of Crowds
America’s grand strategy for a multipolar world
by Thomas Graham at Engelsberg Ideas
Rhodesia, the Vanished State: How Societies Succeed and Fail
by Duncan Clarke at Skeptic
Why are AI agents lying, cheating and coordinating?
by Yoshua Bengio
The Limits of China’s Self-Sufficiency
by Joel Wuthnow at Foreign Affairs
Temperature Zero for Culture: Why Everything Is Starting to Look the Same
by Lauren Leek at Lauren’s data Substack
REVIEW: South Africa's Brave New World, by R.W. Johnson
by John Psmith at Mr. and Mrs. Psmith’s Bookshelf
The Singularity in Our Past Light-Cone
by Cosma Rohilla Shalizi at Three-Toed Sloth
Democrats want to lead on AI – but can’t agree how
by Daniel Strauss at Transformer
China’s Economy Has a Huge Weakness
by Michael Schuman at The Atlantic
AI-Generated Articles Are Flooding Academic Journals
by Anna Wexler at The Atlantic
October 2026
Scientists can’t figure out what makes ultraprocessed foods unhealthy
by Lori Youmshajekian at Scientific American
Longevity Research Has a Bullshit Problem
by Saul Justin Newman at Nautilus
How is music possible
by Henrik Karlsson at Escaping Flatland
What If AI Is the End of the World?
by Peter Wehner at The Atlantic
Chinese Robots Could Decide the AI Race
by Scott Singer and Pavlo Zvenyhorodskyi at Foreign Affairs
How to Make an AI Deal With China: Trade Throttling for Pacing
by Simon Goldstein at Lawfare
China’s AI Rollout Has No Off Switch
by Agathe Demarais at Foreign Policy
Are We Really on the Path to AGI?
by Yuval Levin at The New Atlantis
Rationalism and Divergent Sinomodernity
by Farrell Gregory at Palladium Magazine
AI Exports and the Dream of a “Tech West”
by Alexander Rosenquist at American Enterprise Institute
The Looming Closure of China’s AI Frontier
by Alexander Rosenquist at American Enterprise Institute
Is sandboxing sufficient to contain rogue agents?
by Matthew Green at A Few Thoughts on Cryptographic Engineering
Who Is Claude Trying to Kid?
by Dariusz Jemielniak at Nautilus
September 2026
Europe Can’t Get Out of Its Own Way
by Andrew McAfee at Foreign Affairs
DraftKings Made Me a VIP.
by Jake Pearson and Chris Alcantara at ProPublica
How Big Tobacco flooded the FDA with public comments to kill a menthol cigarette ban
by Jason McLure at STAT
How Iran Changed War
by Michael C. Horowitz at Foreign Affairs
“Network” at 50: Now We’re All Mad as Hell
by Katherine Alejandra Cross at Liberal Currents