The New York Times: Kenyans Did College Students’ Homework for Years. Then A.I. Arrived. Thousands of Kenyans once made a living writing college essays for cheating overseas students, but the industry has all but collapsed since ChatGPT launched in 2022. Teresios Bundi wrote more than 2,500 essays over 12 years and built a business employing dozens of writers, […]
links: 02.09.2026
SBS News: The ‘harmful’ online rabbit hole finding teens within minutes Australian activist Chanel Contos is telling the National Press Club that major social platforms’ algorithmic feeds expose young people to misogynistic content. Teen boys are shown content that blames women and glorifies male dominance within 25 minutes of signing up, and Contos is calling on the government […]
links: 27.07.2026
Le Monde: Searching for Ingmar Bergman’s soul on Sweden’s Fårö island Le Monde writes about Fårö, the Baltic island where Ingmar Bergman shot six of his films and spent the last years of his life. On his 60th birthday he gathered all nine of his children there for the first time; most of them did not share a […]
links: 03.07.2026
The Athletic: There are 99 French-born players at this World Cup. Welcome to the beating heart of global football The Athletic reports that 99 players at this year’s World Cup were born in France — more than in any other country (the Netherlands is a distant second with 67) — and many of them represent other national teams: […]
links: 29.06.2026
The New York Times: The Generational Force Hollowing Out the Economy A New York Times opinion piece argues that the vast artificial-intelligence buildout — already more than a trillion dollars a year — is not propping up the US economy, as is commonly assumed, but on the contrary is strangling it: data centres are soaking up so much […]
links: 23.06.2026
The New York Times: X-Ray Specs for the World’s Oldest, Sealed Letters A team of historians, scientists and engineers has built a portable X-ray scanner that can read 4,000-year-old letters without breaking open the clay envelopes they were sealed in. More than half a million cuneiform artefacts have been found across the Middle East, but many went unstudied […]
links: 21.06.2026
LSM: Turning all of Pārdaugava into one big Victory Square? An interview with researcher Skaidrīte Lasmane Skaidrīte Lasmane — an emeritus professor, philosopher and historian at the University of Latvia — discusses the history of Riga’s Victory Square (Uzvaras laukums) and the grandiose construction planned under Kārlis Ulmanis, which was deliberately turned into a nationwide volunteer effort, a […]
links: 20.06.2026
PBS / PolitiFact: Comparing the mood of America’s 250th anniversary with its 200th in 1976 As the US approaches its 250th anniversary, historians compare the national mood with the bicentennial of 1976 and see eerie parallels — international conflict, high inflation and gas prices, culture wars and low presidential approval. The key difference: society is far more polarised […]
links: 19.06.2026
Wired: How the Peter Thiel-Linked Dialog Club Secretly Ranks Its Members WIRED has obtained internal data from Dialog, the private club co-founded by Peter Thiel — dossiers on nearly 200 prominent people, complete with home addresses, private phone numbers, dates of birth and even food allergies. It turns out the club secretly grades its members by wealth and […]
links: 14.06.2026
LSM: President Čakste’s daughter who feigned insanity in Siberia for her children’s sake. The story of Maiga Šīrone’s self-sacrifice Pianist Maiga Šīrone, a daughter of Latvia’s first president Jānis Čakste, was deported to Siberia with her two children in 1941. Realising that her children could only be sent home if she herself were declared legally incapacitated, she deliberately […]