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Fantastic charts and maps in this week's bumper edition of The Economist

With the Los Angeles Auto Show underway, what lies ahead for #cars? #thisweekthosebooks has @TomStandage​'s riveting survey of how the automobile shaped our society; Bryan Appleyard CBE's loving look at the significance of the automobile and 3 classic road books open.substack.com/pub/thisweekth…

Exclusive: Buried in the online autumn statement is a bit of news with potentially huge implications for biopharma. The UK is going to try to create a pathway for individually customised medicines! economist.com/britain/2023/1… @mhra Mila's Miracle Genomics England Oxford-Harrington Rare Disease Centre

With the OpenAI clownshow, there's been renewed media attention on the xrisk/"AI safety" nonsense. Personally, I've had a fresh wave of reporters asking me naive questions (+ some contacts from old hands who know how to handle ultra-rich man-children with god complexes). 🧵1/

Differences between a seagull and a crow: promptness, timeliness, precision, and focus

Seeing some qs on what Gemini *is* (beyond the zodiac :). Best way to understand Gemini’s underlying amazing capabilities is to see them in action, take a look ⬇️

Never mind the em-dashes — this is a dangling modifier! A much worse crime!

The claims of AI pitchmen repeatedly turn out to be blatant lies. This has been the case since at least the 18th C.'s Mechanical Turk, a chess-playing automaton (actually a chess player crammed into the base of an puppet that was exhibited as an intelligent robot). 5/

Ten months ago, we launched the Vesuvius Challenge to solve the ancient problem of the Herculaneum Papyri, a library of scrolls that were flash-fried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. Today we are overjoyed to announce that our crazy project has succeeded. After 2000

Yesterday I learned the expression “countermeasure holiday” from Shashank Joshi but this is even crazier

My "Nerd Urban Dictionary" list of fancy words nerds use to prove how smart they are now has more than 200 entries! I'll bet you're guilty of a few of them (I know I am) andersonchris.medium.com/the-nerd-urban…

I was just named Data Journalist of the Year! I won the award for what the judges called "pioneering" work using satellites to cover war. Huge thanks go my colleagues at The Economist who make my work possible. More here thepressawards.com/results-2024

I've finished my ZX Spectrum 48k inspired album of 80s music, so if you've had the exact same childhood as me at the same time as me then you might like this. open.spotify.com/album/1rZiAg6I…

This is amazing, on all levels!

🎉 Congratulations to Georgia Mae Ayling for winning the Rising Star Award! 🏆     Georgia Mae Ayling #GameDevHeroes #GDH2024    🧵(1/4)

Who remembers this moment in Prince of Persia (1989) where a magic mirror suddenly blocks the hero's path (and what happens afterward)? This moment was actually never planned to be in the game. My original vision was a game with lots of traps, but NO enemies... (1/10)

Right now the advantages from AI accrue to workers, not firms. As a result, they can be hard to notice (especially if you don't try to seriously use AI yourself, which is illuminating) These two accounts by coders are instructive: nicholas.carlini.com/writing/2024/h… erikschluntz.com/software/2024/…

New paper: “Lessons for scaling direct air capture from the history of ammonia synthesis.” Led by Cameron Roberts.   TLDR: If high temperature DAC can grow like ammonia it can meet 2050 targets, but…   1/x

The National Gallery in London is renovating its Sainsbury Wing and they’ve just found a secret letter from one of the original donors, sunk into a concrete column, saying that he hates the columns and is glad they’re being demolished. 10/10 unhinged rich man behaviour, no notes