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: 18.06.2026

Wired: Silicon Valley’s Elite Financial Advisers Say This Era of Wealth Is Different WIRED talks to two wealth advisers serving Silicon Valley’s high-net-worth tech clients about how the new generation of tech millionaires handles its sudden fortune as SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic head toward liquidity events. The very scale of wealth has shifted — the average client is […]

links: 17.06.2026

NYT: The Cloud Has Sound: The Unrelenting and Unseen Cost of A.I. Data Centers The “heartbeat” of the AI economy is a low-frequency vibration produced by the giant cooling fans and diesel generators of data centers. The US already has more than 3,000 of them; some residents living nearby, whose health and homes are being wrecked by the […]

links: 16.06.2026

WIRED: Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth Admits the Company’s AI Reorg Was ‘Atrocious’ Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth, in an internal memo to staff, admitted the company did an “atrocious” job rolling out its new artificial-intelligence division — after WIRED revealed widespread discontent inside the roughly 6,500-strong “Applied AI” unit (one worker called it “a gulag”). Bosworth promised more stability, […]

links: 12.06.2026

WIRED: You Probably Won’t Get Rich Off the SpaceX IPO As part of SpaceX’s IPO the company set aside an unusually large share of stock for retail investors, but experts warn the big gains stay with existing shareholders — employees, institutional funds and Elon Musk. Even if you manage to buy a few shares at $135, the average […]

links 5: 10.02.2024

Meduza: Roskomnadzor has begun investigating Duolingo for “LGBT propaganda” The Kyiv Independent: Russian military increasingly using Starlink terminals on battlefield LSM: “The corncrake has no tractor to drive to the Saeima.” An interview with ornithologist Ķerus @vkerus@mastodon.online NPR: Cheap, plentiful and devastating: The synthetic drug kush is walloping Sierra Leone The Verge: Apple argues against right-to-repair bill that […]