>interchange w28y25
Curiosities for 07 -> 13 July 2025
'It Makes Sense to Someone, Somewhere'
Meet the members of the Dull Men’s Club: ‘Some of them would bore the ears off you’.
“Posts that contain bitmoji-avatar-things are far too exciting, and will probably get deleted,” warn the rules of the Dull Men’s Club (Australian branch).
And remember:
Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), An Ideal Husband, 1893, Act I
Top 5
01. ‘It’s terrifying’: WhatsApp AI helper mistakenly shares user’s number.
The AI explained vaguely it was generated “based on patterns” and promised to “strive to do better in the future” by admitting when it didn’t know an answer.
AI responses show it really is becoming like us.
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02. Is the decline of reading poisoning our politics?
But not all reading is created equal. The mind can skim over the surface of a sentence and swiftly decode its literal meaning. But deep reading — sustained engagement with a longform text — is a distinct endeavor.
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03. U.S.-China AI race reshapes AI norms without global input.
Everybody wants to be in the race rather than taking a step back and critically thinking about what claims are actually true versus not, and whether or not the path that we’re taking is actually good for innovation. I do believe that it’s a race to the bottom.
What is the hype? What’s reality?
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04. A ripe target for identity thieves: Prisoners on death row.
“They open a bank account, they ask for a credit line. They pay the credit line on time. Then they increase the limit, continue to pay. At some point, they disappear with $50,000, $100,000 or more. It’s a time-consuming operation, but the payoff is quite high at the end.”
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05. The Business of Betting on Catastrophe.
If there’s no pandemic, investors get their principal money back, in addition to interest. In a world where the risk of pandemic outbreak is ever-present, making risk the thing that investors buy is, at the very least, interesting.
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Tangents
Breeding for ‘Cuteness’ Is Making Dogs and Cats Look More Alike.
How the BIC Cristal Ballpoint Pen Became the Most Successful Product in History.
Quote
The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.
Horace Walpole (1717 - 1797)
Best for the week ahead!
-Tim