Why the right wants to ban this innovation before you get to try it
I’m one of two people on Vox’s staff deeply obsessed with factory farming and the future of meat. That’s why I was thrilled to feature a new voice in our coverage of this vitally important beat this week — the brilliant Eric Levitz, senior correspondent on policy and politics, explaining why conspiracy-addled Republicans are on a bizarre crusade against the technology that is our best hope for ending the mass torture of animals for food.
What will happen to the US when Harvard can’t be Harvard
There’s a cliché criticism often lobbed at media coverage of higher ed: Elite schools make up a tiny share of student enrollment, yet they’re wildly overrepresented in the stories that news outlets tell about universities. There’s an important truth to that — but also, there's good reason that top schools dominate in the American imagination. As my Future Perfect colleague Bryan Walsh explains, our Harvards, Princetons, and MITs — and the top students they attract from around the world — are a big reason why the US leads the world in science and innovation. If the Trump administration follows through on its threats to punish these schools, we’ll all be worse off for it.
🎧 You're using “Machiavellian” wrong
“Everyone is totally misreading Machiavelli” was not on the list of things I thought I needed to learn this year, but I was delighted by this new interview on The Gray Area about how complex, ambiguous, multivocal, and prone to misinterpretation this man really was. Buried in the episode is also a fascinating point about what we lose when everything we read now is mediated by AI.
Google as you know it is slowly dying
This fun piece by senior technology correspondent Adam Clark Estes explains everything I wanted to know about how AI is upending search. I use generative AI just as much as the next person, so I’m certainly not moralizing here when I say that the chatbots are appreciably cutting into traditional search — and therefore into traffic on reputable news sources like Vox as well — and that feels bad, fam.
This is the future kids want
Whatever else is going on for you right now, this piece by Vox’s senior correspondent Anna North is guaranteed to inject some joy into your day.
