Law professor; author (The Black Box Society; New Laws of Robotics). Interested in law & technology, AI, political economy, art, and social theory.
As polling gets worse, expect more "digital twin" proposals...which essentially cede epistemic power to whoever designs the simulation.
Jenny CohnMilei “said he wants to…allow companies run by machines” & has also “announced a ‘social digital twin’ program, which wld use publicly available citizen data to create simulations intended to inform public policy...” (Thiel recently moved to Argentina & OpenAI opened a data center there.) 6/5/26 1/
Worrisome reporting on the concierge trend in medicine: www.thecut.com/article/prim... I proposed regulation of this practice: openyls.law.yale.edu/server/api/c... as part of trilogy of articles on health care inequality.
How a Checkup Became a LuxuryAn increasing number of doctors are leaving in-network clinics for concierge practices. It’s one factor making it harder for people to get care.www.thecut.comThe EU AI Act now requires “providers to disclose when images, audio, video or even text have been generated or substantially modified by AI, using visible labels alongside technical methods such as digital watermarks and embedded metadata.” www.computing.co.uk/news/2026/le...
Tech companies must label AI content from SundayThe EU is introducing new rules requiring companies to clearly identify content created or significantly altered using AI.www.computing.co.uk“Ortberg has changed employee incentives in order to force a shift from “get it out the door” to a “get it right” mentality, empowering workers to halt production if quality issues arise.” www.ft.com/content/229f...
The return of BoeingThe US aviation giant is winning back trust after a near-decade strewn with disasters. Now it needs to make money againwww.ft.com“China is backing strategic businesses, like green tech, while the west props up old sectors with political clout, like agriculture.” www.ft.com/content/8719...
China is smarter about subsidies than everybody elseBeijing is stealing a march on its competitors by targeting strategic sectorswww.ft.com“Federal tax refunds, which bolstered households in spring, are now mostly exhausted. And with households’ savings buffers much lower than in the recent past, consumption will be much weaker through the rest of the year” www.nytimes.com/2026/07/30/b...
U.S. GDP Growth Slowed in Second Quarter of 2026Gross domestic product grew at a slower rate in the second quarter and persistent price pressures are unsettling financial markets.www.nytimes.comThe Trump administration is now attacking the “15 state laws that prohibit the reporting of medical debt on credit report” library.nclc.org/article/what...
What the CFPB’s Recent FCRA Preemption Guidance Gets Wrong | NCLC Digital LibraryThe CFPB has issued an October 28 interpretive rule suggesting that the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) preempts the growing number of state laws limiting medical debt credit reporting. This article ...library.nclc.org“LLM agents bring a step increase in the number of paths an attacker can test, the speed at which failed paths can be replaced, and the volume of evidence defenders must interpret.” huggingface.co/blog/agent-i...
Anatomy of a Frontier Lab Agent Intrusion: A Technical Timeline of the July 2026 IncidentWe’re on a journey to advance and democratize artificial intelligence through open source and open science.huggingface.coWith “personal e-scooters ranging from 15 mph to 50 mph, collisions with cars are more common. Even isolated crashes now produce injury patterns resembling those seen when children were hit by cars. This includes complex fractures, concussions, and even amputations.” www.statnews.com/2026/07/27/e...
E-bikes, e-scooters are a burgeoning pediatric public health emergency“Emergency departments across America report dramatic increases in serious injuries from e-bikes and e-scooters,” write CHOP’s J. Todd R. Lawrence and Madison A. Kesler.www.statnews.com“Of a sample of more than a million accounts on X, 64% could be bots, a finding that requires no stretch of the imagination, given the sheer inanity of interactions on the site.” www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...
How Bots Took Over Our LivesDuring the 2016 election, much of the country was introduced to the concept of internet bots for the first time. Now, just a decade later, it feels like they’re everywhere.www.newyorker.com“Using the interRAI seems like, instead of an assessment tool to determine a person’s level of care that they need, it’s more of a tool to help them cut their budget.” flatwaterfreepress.org/benefits-sla...
Benefits slashed: Nebraska disability switch leaves hundreds desperate for help - Flatwater Free PressA new disability assessment tool has allowed over 700 Nebraskans to access services, according to the state. But hundreds of others have seen their benefits cut and their appeals denied.flatwaterfreepress.org“This is what Nolan draws a parallel with today. Our civilization has failed and lost its values, above all the ability to preserve justice and mercy, and it is perhaps too late to change course.” angelusnews.com/arts-culture...
As a Classics professor, I expected ‘The Odyssey’ to fail. I was wrong.Even when Christopher Nolan departs from Homer, his "Odyssey" remains faithful to the deeper logic of the epic poem.angelusnews.comRussians “are experiencing an epidemic of domestic violence, not least thanks to a law decriminalizing wife-beating that passed the Russian parliament a few years ago.” foreignpolicy.com/2026/07/21/r...
“Meta is currently in the midst of a trial over claims by the attorney general of Tennessee, one of dozens of states that have said the company misled its users about the safety of its platform. In August, Meta will go to trial in federal court in Oakland” www.wsj.com/tech/meta-is...
Meta Is Fighting a Mountain of Social-Media Lawsuits—at Just the Wrong TimeIn the midst of an expensive AI transformation, the company is grappling with litigation that could cost it billions and force painful changes.www.wsj.com“The irony of this project is that its attempt to oppose the politicization of academia is more stridently political than the fields it aims to critique.” www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/...
In the Grip of Politics | Greg AfinogenovAll of us, from academics to fishermen, have now internalized a practice of reading the social world as a field of political or latently political signs. TV watching habits, food choices, clothing, in...www.nplusonemag.com“Meaning in the skies…is now bequeathed by the effluence of human affluence.” 19.bbk.ac.uk/article/id/1...
Storm-Clouds on the Horizon: John Ruskin and the Emergence of Anthropogenic Climate ChangeThis article treats John Ruskin’s lectures on The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century as an experimental foray in cultural climatology, suggesting that Ruskin’s efforts to document, and develop conc...19.bbk.ac.uk“The current amazement that the things we are experiencing are ‘still’ possible in the [21st] century is not philosophical. This amazement is not the beginning of knowledge – unless it is the knowledge that the view of history which gives rise to it is untenable.” logosjournal.com/article/jurg...
Jürgen Habermas’s Image of the United States as a Model of “Modernity”: From Attachment to Melancholy - Logos Journal“it is evident that melancholia too may be the reaction to the loss of a loved object. […] one can recognize that there is a loss of a more ideal kind. The object has not perhaps actually died, but ha...logosjournal.com“The vision is ill-conceived, contradictory, and less a blueprint for scientific renewal than a politicized power grab that fundamentally misunderstands how science works. It treats public research more like a Silicon Valley startup than a public good” www.theverge.com/science/9705...
The tech-broification of American science has officially begunTrump’s ‘Golden Age’ of American science starts with dismantling it, while funneling billions into AI. www.theverge.com“India’s youth are in a bad place. Over four of every five people unemployed in the country are under 30 years of age. Worryingly, joblessness among graduates is nine times higher than among those who cannot read and write.” www.ft.com/content/ac19...
India’s ‘Cockroach’ Gen Z has had enoughThe irreverence of the country’s youth brings to light the contrast between government promises and economic realitywww.ft.comWe must “mass-retrofit buildings to make the air inside them more breathable because smoke can so easily penetrate American homes that indoor monitors sometimes register similar concentrations of particulate matter during toxic air events as outdoor ones.” www.nytimes.com/2026/07/22/o...
Opinion | Nothing Can Prevent the New Wildfires. We Have to Adapt.Suppression is not enough.www.nytimes.com