🚨 The global "early warning system" for cybersecurity is breaking down—creating a growing gap between security "haves" and "have-nots." Most people have no idea their digital lives are becoming more vulnerable.
My latest investigation for @techreview:
https://t.co/J3TybStwhE
Meanwhile, just down I-90: the W.E.B. Du Bois Library at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The tallest academic library in the world. Unlike what they do at Harvard or MIT, it is named for a scholar, not a donor.
Consumer goods look similar across the globe. But what happens to this waste after it's thrown away is highly local, manual, and politically contested.
Thanks to @BaltCoGov and @bmoreheritage for the opportunity. Visit your local MRF if you can!
Here's the view from the top of "Recycling Everest."
It's where Baltimore County's collected recyclables end up. I toured their materials recovery facility (MRF, or "murf") yesterday.
From here, each item is given a new life, or sent to its grave.
Today, the US is spoiled by convenience. While Germany and Japan ask people to sort materials at the point of disposal, we've gone all-in on "single-stream," which boosts volumes but also contamination (and requires such elaborate $20M+ sorting facilities).
Mamdani should implement a city wide involuntary trash service program in which all New Yorkers of all classes must work as garbage men/women 1 day each year for some period of their adult life barring reasons deemed acceptable for not having to do so: https://t.co/dmP4kdJrzb
What seems important to know is that you may feel safe in the automated world of self-driving cars & high-rise living but only so long as the programs work. Boosters of the brave new world will never mention its vulnerability. Imagine being trapped 90 floors above ground.
There are a handful of cities left in America where the decline was so rapid and sudden in the 1970s and 1980s that the amazing architecture from the late 19th century is still preserved because it was not economical to tear it down and put up glass and steel boxes in the 90s and early 2000s
Baltimore is one of them
Benoit Denizet-Lewis, interviewed by writer Adrian Brune, discusses his newest book, “You’ve Changed: The Promise and Price of Self-Transformation” (William Morrow, 2026), which sets out to explore the slippery science of becoming someone new.
https://t.co/OcJjleNqqY