Ir.lv: From one microphone to Europe: LNSO’s 100-year story The Latvian National Symphony Orchestra is marking its centenary. Its predecessor, the Riga Radiophone Orchestra, began daily broadcasts on September 5, 1926 with just 14 musicians, exactly as many as its single microphone could pick up. The piece also traces the station’s own origins: parliament allocated 140,000 lats for […]
links: 01.09.2026
Sveriges Radio: TikTok and Meta paid by racist account to promote posts A Sveriges Radio P3 News investigation found that openly Nazi and far-right accounts operate freely on TikTok despite violating both EU law and the platform’s own rules. Reporters found the accounts behind them were able to buy paid ads from both TikTok and Meta. TikTok’s Nordic […]
links: 03.08.2026
The New York Times: What Are Companies Getting for All That A.I. Spending? The New York Times reports on a new field of economics — “tokenomics” — that studies what companies are actually paying for AI use and what they’re getting for it. There’s still no standard way to compare cost and value, so some firms are inventing […]
links: 30.07.2026
TechCrunch: Microsoft logs $3.2B from Anthropic investment, but OpenAI was a mixed bag TechCrunch reports that Microsoft booked a $3.2 billion gain on its Anthropic investments for the quarter, while writing down its OpenAI stake by about $600 million over the same period. A single quarter of Anthropic gains nearly matched a full year of OpenAI gains, which […]
links: 28.07.2026
TechCrunch: Satya Nadella says companies that trust one AI for everything may not survive TechCrunch writes that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is warning businesses not to entrust all their AI work to a single model provider. He advises companies to keep their data and usage records so they could one day train a model of their own, and […]
Why I’m Not Planning to Send My Son to Football
It all started at the television. At this World Cup I watched Norway handle Iraq, and what struck me wasn’t the tactics but the physical mismatch. The Norwegians looked bigger, taller, heavier. And a thought appeared. See, Latvian hockey figured out long ago that player size is an essential ingredient of winning. Exactly the same with Latvian basketball. […]
links: 04.07.2026
PBS News: Lured by Russia, African soldiers end up on deadly front lines of Ukraine war A PBS News segment on men from African countries whom Russia lures into its war against Ukraine with promises of jobs, hefty bonuses and citizenship. Ukrainian authorities estimate that Russia has recruited 27,000 foreign nationals from 130 countries since 2022. African soldiers […]
links: 02.07.2026
PBS News: Defying Pope Leo XIV, traditionalists go ahead with bishop consecrations in Switzerland PBS News reports that the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X, in open defiance of Pope Leo XIV, consecrated four bishops without papal consent in Écône, Switzerland — an act that under church law brings automatic excommunication for both the new bishops and the […]
links: 01.07.2026
Politico: Europeans embrace EU amid growing gloom about world, survey finds A Politico piece reports on a new Eurobarometer survey: although Europeans have grown more pessimistic about the world’s future (58% view it with anxiety), faith in the European Union is high — 74% think EU membership has benefited their country, and 59% are optimistic about the EU’s […]
links: 28.06.2026
NPR: What you ate in 1776 depended on who you were NPR, marking the 250th anniversary of the United States, describes how in 1776 food was a marker of social standing: wealthy upper-class families and the country’s founders emulated European — especially French and English — cuisine and even imported food from there, while the table of the […]