Welcome back to Tidings, our new weekly newsletter rounding up intriguing links shared by the Seabird community. For more daily links and to share your own recommendations, join us on the Seabird link-sharing app, available for both Apple and Android. Create an account with code "WaitIsOver". On to this week's recommended reads...
Is it worth taking a moment out of your day to save a drowning ant? A thoughtful essay considers how to assess our moral obligations to other potentially conscious entities, from ants to AI.
Aeon | Jeff Sebo and Andreas L Mogensen
"We talk endlessly about the 'missing middle.' But the real catastrophe was the 'banished bottom'—the deliberate destruction of the cheapest rung of the housing ladder." On America's intentional destruction of single-room occupancy units, historically the most affordable entry into housing.
City of Yes | Ryan Puzycki
47 years after his father cycled through Cold War Europe, a journalist recreates the journey through an increasingly globalized continent from Vienna to Albania to Greece.
New Lines Magazine | Phineas Rueckert
With low speed limits, narrowed streets, and strict enforcement, the European capital has achieved an entire year without a single traffic-related fatality.
Politico | Aitor Hernández-Morales
Finland has thus far declined to participate in the Aufguss WM, the world championships of theatrical sauna ceremony and towel tricks. But in other countries, the flair-filled approach to sauna is having a moment.
The Walrus | Sarah Everts
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In 1963, Sandra gave up her newborn son for adoption. In 2022, they finally reconnected and shared their stories. But they never reunited, as he became the 17th person executed by the state of Florida in this year alone.
The Intercept | Liliana Segura
"I won’t write about cytarabine. I won’t find out if we were able to harness the power of the oceans, or if we let them boil and turn into a garbage dump. My son knows that I am a writer and that I write about our planet. Since I’ve been sick, I remind him a lot, so that he will know that I was not just a sick person."
The New Yorker | Tatiana Schlossberg
A visit to the remote fairy tale island Ærø to meet Danish author Solvej Balle, author of On the Calculation of Volume, an internationally acclaimed novel taking place in a perpetual November 18th.
The New York Times Magazine | Dennis Zhou
Unalived. Pew pews. Seggs. A guide to "algospeak," the weird euphemisms influencers use to avoid suppression on social media. But is there evidence that any of it actually matters or are they imagining patterns in opaque algorithms?
BBC | Thomas Germain
How do you trick an AI to get past its safety guardrails? Try prompting it with "adversarial poetry" rather than straightforward text.
PC Gamer | Lincoln Carpenter
By purchasing a mystery pallet of returned goods, you might end up with treasure, or perhaps just a mountain of polyester.
Wirecutter | Annemarie Conte
As foxhunting falls out of favor in England, "clean-boot" hunters set their bloodhounds after new prey: human trailrunners. No one gets hurt and everyone has fun, especially the dogs.
The Guardian | Matthew Weaver and Christian Sinibaldi
Finally, in bird science: Researchers take a big step toward solving the mystery of how pigeons sense magnetic fields.
Nature | Davide Castelvecchi
That's it for this week! The links in our newsletter were all shared first on Seabird, our minimalist app designed simply for recommending links online. Learn more about us here and join us on the app to discover and share articles like these every day. Your recommendations may appear in a future edition of Tidings.
