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IT’S A DAY of rest, and you may be in the mood for a quiet corner and a comfy chair.
We’ve hand-picked some of the week’s best reads for you to savour.
Since Rosie O’Donnell fled the US following Trump’s re-election, she has built a new life in Ireland with her 12-year-old Clay. She’s loving life in Dublin, but still gets triggered by Trump – the person she cannot stop thinking about.
(The Washington Post, approx 17 minutes reading time)
“At O’Reilly’s, the local pub, O’Donnell walks in and asks the bartender, whom she now knows, for a Smithwicks. He teases her for a second about the red ale that’s typically low in alcohol content: “You got your grandpa here with you?” On one visit, she says, she ended up talking all night to a young couple, even holding their baby. They were deep into the conversation before letting on that they knew who she was.
“You’re big fans, and you didn’t tell me for two hours?” she says with a laugh.”
Have you noticed AI generated text has a specific style which often exposes its origins? AI has been spotted in countless emails, novels, school essays, articles and speeches by now. But what gives it away?
(The New York Times, approx 26 minutes reading time)
“In the quiet hum of our digital era, a new literary voice is sounding. You can find this signature style everywhere — from the pages of best-selling novels to the columns of local newspapers, and even the copy on takeout menus. And yet the author is not a human being, but a ghost — a whisper woven from the algorithm, a construct of code. A.I.-generated writing, once the distant echo of science-fiction daydreams, is now all around us — neatly packaged, fleetingly appreciated and endlessly recycled. It’s not just a flood — it’s a groundswell. Yet there’s something unsettling about this voice. Every sentence sings, yes, but honestly? It sings a little flat. It doesn’t open up the tapestry of human experience — it reads like it was written by a shut-in with Wi-Fi and a thesaurus. Not sensory, not real, just … there. And as A.I. writing becomes more ubiquitous, it only underscores the question — what does it mean for creativity, authenticity or simply being human when so many people prefer to delve into the bizarre prose of the machine?“
Inside a Texas nurse’s quest to document the life and death of the 14,555 women killed by a man in America.
(The Atavist Magazine, approx 50 minutes reading time)
“On the dark, humid morning of August 30, 2014, Christina Morris walked into the shadows of a parking garage outside an upscale housing development in Plano, Texas. Morris, who was 23, had been visiting friends from high school in an improvised reunion that stretched long past midnight. When she was ready to leave, the streets outside were mostly empty, so Enrique Arochi, an acquaintance, offered to escort her to her car. Grainy security-camera footage caught them from behind, walking so close together their shoulders almost touched. It was the last time Morris was ever seen alive.“
A once-extinct antelope is now alive and well thanks to a captive breeding programme. Conservationists hope it could help slow the spread of the Sahara Desert.
(BBC, approx 11 minutes reading time)
“This 400-acre estate, Marwell Hall, was inhabited by monks and aristocratic families for hundreds of years (and is rumoured to be haunted by one of Henry VIII’s wives). In 1969, it was bought by John Knowles, a wealthy chicken farmer who assembled the country’s first zoological collection specifically devised to breed endangered animals. Oryx – whose numbers had plunged from around one million to fewer than – were one of the first animals he bought.”
A government-backed campaign has led to firings, suspensions, investigations and other action against more than 600 people following Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Republican officials have endorsed the punishments, saying that those who glorify violence should be removed from positions of trust.
(The New Yorker, approx 25 minutes reading time)
“When Lauren Vaughn, a kindergarten assistant in South Carolina, saw reports that right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk had been shot at an event in Utah, she opened Facebook and typed out a quote from Kirk himself… A few days later, Vaughn lost her job. She was one of more than 600 Americans fired, suspended, placed under investigation or disciplined by employers for comments about Kirk’s September 10 assassination, according to a Reuters review of court records, public statements, local media reports and interviews with two dozen people who were fired or otherwise disciplined.”
Netflix proposed to buy Warner Bros this week, causing panic in the industry. The proposed merger is the latest in a long line of takeovers in the film business.
(The New Yorker, approx 11 minutes reading time)
“The proposed merger is only the latest of many takeovers, ranging from propitious to preposterous, that have marked the film business for more than half a century, with movie studios traded from hand to hand like baseball cards. The studio now called Sony was originally Columbia Pictures, founded in 1924, which Coca-Cola bought in 1982 and sold, seven years later, to the Japanese electronics titan. M-G-M was purchased by the financier Kirk Kerkorian in 1969, and in the nineteen-eighties he passed it, or parts of it, back and forth with the media mogul Ted Turner like a hot potato, until it landed with Sony, in 2005. Today, it’s owned by a subsidiary of Amazon. As for Warner Bros., it merged in 1990 with Time Inc., and, in 2001, the new entity was at the center of a deal that has been called “the worst in history”: AOL’s merger with Time Warner. In 2014, Rupert Murdoch failed in a bid for Time Warner; then A. T. & T. acquired it, in 2018, and the media company has been in its present form since only 2022, when Warner Media, formerly owned by A. T. & T., merged with Discovery, Inc.”
Americans are using the internet to get rid of children they adopted from overseas. This is happening in plain sight but with no oversight. This is the child exchange network.
(Reuters, approx 30 minutes reading time)
“Kiel, Wisconsin – Todd and Melissa Puchalla struggled for more than two years to raise Quita, the troubled teenager they’d adopted from Liberia. When they decided to give her up, they found new parents to take her in less than two days – by posting an ad on the Internet.
Nicole and Calvin Eason, an Illinois couple in their 30s, saw the ad and a picture of the smiling 16-year-old. They were eager to take Quita, even though the ad warned that she had been diagnosed with severe health and behavioral problems. In emails, Nicole Eason assured Melissa Puchalla that she could handle the girl.“
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