The Top 5: The Apocalypse, Democracy Promotion, and Slime Mold
& catch-up on Wear We Are
Welcome to your weekly edition of the Top 5 articles we’ve read this week. Each week, we read dozens of articles in the hope we find essays and reporting that speak to big ideas, trends, future looks, and incredible human stories. We hope you enjoy our list, and do always let us know if you have a suggestion or a recommendation! Please also consider becoming a paid subscriber if this is one of those newsletters you open up all the time or look forward to each week. We also greatly encourage gift subscriptions!
The Top 5 articles for your week:
“ChatGPT Is a BlurryJPEG of the Web” (The New Yorker)
Because Ted Chiang has one of the more incisive analyses of the latest developments in AI.
Sometimes it’s only in the process of writing that you discover your original ideas. Some might say that the output of large language models doesn’t look all that different from a human writer’s first draft, but, again, I think this is a superficial resemblance. Your first draft isn’t an unoriginal idea expressed clearly; it’s an original idea expressed poorly, and it is accompanied by your amorphous dissatisfaction, your awareness of the distance between what it says and what you want it to say. That’s what directs you during rewriting, and that’s one of the things lacking when you start with text generated by an A.I
Apocalypse nature hikes (Commonplace Book)
Because we’ll always read Alissa Wilkinson and she ties together some recents movies she’s reviewed, the train derailment in Ohio, and images of apocalypse in this short essay.
“How Democracy Can Win” (Foreign Affairs)
Because USAID Administrator, Samantha Power, proposes how democracy promotion needs to pivot.
For the last three decades, advocates of democracy have focused too narrowly on defending rights and freedoms, neglecting the pain and dangers of economic hardship and inequality. We have also failed to contend with the risks associated with new digital technologies, including surveillance technologies, that autocratic governments have learned to exploit to their advantage. It is time to coalesce around a new agenda for aiding the cause of global freedom, one that addresses the economic grievances that populists have so effectively exploited, that defangs so-called digital authoritarianism, and that reorients traditional democracy assistance to grapple with modern challenges.
“How Climate Change Is Making Tampons (and Lots of Other Stuff) More Expensive” (NYT)
Because, as one expert argues, “Climate change is a secret driver of inflation.”
“Creatures That Don’t Conform” (Emergence Magazine)
Because this is a beautiful piece about, of all things, slime mold.
My eyes were starting to learn slime mold. My ways of seeing were altering, thanks to my new friends who were showing me what to look for. What was once invisible was quickly becoming apparent. It challenged my sense of perception. How little and how limited was my vision! How vast was the unknown world.
ICYMI on Wear We Are
Episode 54: What To Do When The News Is Alarming & Weird
Episode 53: Collin Hansen's New Book on Tim Keller
The Morning Five: February 13, 2023
The Morning Five: February 14, 2023