Category: RESOURCES

(Wired) – Attachment to smart devices and biometric surveillance leaves Americans more vulnerable to police searches than ever. Left unchecked it will only get worse.

The desire for self-awareness is not new, but these data offer a dif­ferent twist on enlightenment. Millions of Americans live with a smartwatch that reminds them to stand, breathe, and take a few more steps to meet their daily exercise goals. This helpful (and healthful) algorithmic prompt only works, of course, because your smart device is tracking your bodily activity. It literally knows you are breathing, which can be helpful to police if for some reason you stop. The data we produce—from our step count to our DNA—is increasingly coming under surveillance. (Read More)

(AP) – Because of participants’ silence around the ritual, families and authorities have struggled to understand and police a deeply traditional but often abused practice. At least a half-dozen former initiates would not speak to The Associated Press. Meanwhile, hundreds of illegal initiation schools attract people who can’t afford registered ones.

Police and government officials usually announce deaths only when a significant number occur. There are few court cases or autopsies. (Read More)

(The Telegraph) – Mosquitoes typically spread disease, rather than prevent it, but Chinese scientists have proposed using the insects as an unlikely vector to deliver vaccines to bats.

In a study published in Science Advances journal, researchers designed mosquitoes which carry an immunisation for rabies and Nipah viruses within their saliva. This is transferred when bats eat insects, or the insects feed on the bats. (Read More)

(New York Times) – Across the United States, plasma centers are opening in wealthier areas as more people struggle with the high cost of housing, groceries and health care.

Every day, an estimated 215,000 people donate plasma, the yellowish liquid component of blood. Mr. Briseño is among them. He is not jobless or facing eviction, but, like many in the American middle class, he is caught in the vise of rising expenses and wages that aren’t growing fast enough to cover them. So he is turning to a method more commonly associated with the lowest-income Americans. For people like him, an extra $600 or so a month can mean making a mortgage payment or covering increased health-insurance costs. (Read More)

(MIT Technology Review) – Placebo and “knowcebo” effects are a problem. But they can also help people feel better.

Over the last decade, we’ve seen scientific interest in these drugs explode. But most clinical trials of psychedelics have been small and plagued by challenges. And a lot of the trial results have been underwhelming or inconclusive.

Two studies out earlier this week demonstrate just how difficult it is to study these drugs. And to my mind, they also show just how overhyped these substances have become.

To some in the field, the hype is not necessarily a bad thing. Let me explain. (Read More)

(Compact Magazine) – When people see a wheelchair user like me, they evidently assume my disability must be so hard to survive, so painful, and so isolating that even just venturing beyond my front door is an achievement worthy of recognition.

No wonder they think it is compassionate to give us the option to end our lives. Surely, they would like to have this option too in the nightmarish event they ever become disabled. But what is really worth recognizing is that able-bodied fears, rather than disabled realities, are distorting public thinking about “assisted dying.” (Read More)

(The Guardian) – The Scottish parliament has voted against legalising assisted dying after critics and religious groups led a concerted campaign to block the measures.

MSPs voted 69 to 57 to reject the proposals in a late night vote on Tuesday – a larger margin than expected, despite a series of last-minute amendments designed to placate critics of the private member’s bill.

The bill’s defeat followed four days of intensive debate at Holyrood last week about whether disabled and infirm people were properly protected from coercion. In May last year, Holyrood had voted to allow the bill to go forward for scrutiny by 70 votes to 56. (Read More)

(BBC via MSN) – Alberta has proposed a bill that would limit the use of medically assisted dying – also known as voluntary euthanasia – in the Canadian province solely to end-of-life circumstances.

In 2021, Canada expanded access to medically assisted dying, known domestically by the acronym Maid, to people with serious, incurable illnesses or disabilities, even if their death is not reasonably foreseeable.

Canada is also due to expand access next year to people whose only medical condition is mental illness, though that has twice been delayed.

Alberta is the first jurisdiction in Canada to independently propose limits to the practice. (Read More)

(The Atlantic) – When I set out to report on the sports-betting industry—its explosive growth, its sudden cultural ubiquity, and what it’s doing to America—my editors thought I should experience the phenomenon firsthand. Mindful of my religious constraints, they proposed a work-around: The Atlantic would stake me $10,000 to gamble with over the course of the upcoming NFL season. The magazine would cover any losses, and—to ensure my ongoing emotional investment—split any winnings with me, 50–50. Surely God would approve of such an arrangement, my editors reasoned, because I wouldn’t be risking my own hard-earned money.

This spiritual loophole intrigued me. But for the sake of my soul, I decided I’d better consult a higher ecclesiastical authority than The Atlantic’s masthead. (Read More)

(The Atlantic) – Now the top half of her head was shaved and staples ran in a ladder across it. IVs were taped to each arm, and a machine next to her bed was helping her breathe. She couldn’t speak. When she opened her eyes, they rolled.

Her older son was especially alarmed by how quickly she’d declined. He wanted the doctors to come into her room so they could explain what had happened. But one of our older relatives stopped him, saying that we couldn’t afford to make demands, let alone trouble, because “she don’t have a lick of health insurance.”

We knew that the hospital couldn’t deny her care, but we understood the tightrope you walk when you don’t have money. All she could afford to be was grateful. (Read More)

(Wired) – After a series of suicides allegedly linked to AI chatbots, one lawyer is trying to hold companies like OpenAI accountable.

Amaurie’s case is part of a growing number of lawsuits brought by parents who say their children died after interacting with AI chatbots. The defendants include OpenAI, Google, and Character.ai, a company that lets its users create chatbots with customized personalities. (Google is part of the case because it is connected with Character.ai through a $2.7 billion licensing deal.) As AI tools have begun playing a more prominent role in children’s lives—as homework helpers, companions, and confidants—parents and mental health experts have voiced concerns about whether adequate safeguards are in place. These lawsuits, some experts say, represent not only individual tragedies, but they allege systemic product design failures, raising questions about who should be held accountable. (Read More)

(The Atlantic) – OpenAI’s own data show that use of ChatGPT was pretty evenly split between work and personal cases in 2024, but by 2025, 73 percent of conversations with ChatGPT were personal, not for work. (The Atlantic entered a corporate partnership with OpenAI in 2024.)

This is a major transformation, a sudden and dramatic shift in which millions of people are seeking companionship from machines that they formerly could have gotten only from other humans. Yet in some ways, AI companionship is a logical destination for the current direction of human friendship. Social chatbots provide the semblance of a kind of friendship that many people already want, or at least have gotten accustomed to: one that’s on demand, low effort, and completely personalized. “It’s not that AI companions are going to replace friendships per se,” Skyler Wang, a sociologist at McGill University who studies AI and has done work with Meta, told me. Instead, “they reveal what friendships are trending towards.” (Read More)