Surviving Extreme Temperatures: The Quest to Understand the Body's Limits Climate change is exposing vulnerable populations to increasingly dangerous temperatures. With an estimated 47,000 heat-related deaths in Europe in 2023 alone, researchers project an additional 2.3 million heat deaths this century due to climate change. This crisis intensifies the need to understand how our bodies react to extreme heat and cold. While basic thermoregulation is understood, significant gaps remain in our knowledge of how the body responds to deadly conditions. Researchers worldwide are re-evaluating the thresholds between uncomfortable and fatal temperatures, which will change our understanding of human limits and survival strategies in a changing world. Whales Are Dying: Debunking the Wind Turbine Conspiracy Recent whale deaths have sparked political controversy, with three active mortality events in the Atlantic. Claims by Republican lawmakers, conservative think tanks, and Donald Trump attribute these deaths to offshore wind farms. However, this ignores the historical reality of whale strandings long before wind turbines existed. The scientific consensus is clear: there is no evidence linking wind farms to the recent increase in whale deaths. The issue is part of MIT Technology Review’s series “The New Conspiracy Age,” examining how conspiracy theories are reshaping science and technology. The State of AI: Energy is King, and the US is Falling Behind Energy, not money, is becoming the primary barrier to AI progress, particularly in the US. The country's massive data centers are struggling to come online due to insufficient power supply and infrastructure. After a decade of efficiency improvements offsetting increased demand, electricity demand is now rising sharply due to billions of daily queries to AI models. Efficiency gains are no longer keeping pace. To realize AI's potential without skyrocketing electricity prices, the US must learn from other countries, like China, on achieving energy abundance. The State of AI, a collaboration between the Financial Times & MIT Technology Review, explores how AI is reshaping global power. Must-Reads

How China narrowed its AI divide with the US (WSJ $)
Anthropic is due to turn a profit much faster than OpenAI (WSJ $)
The EU is setting up a new intelligence sharing unit (FT $)
Trump officials are poised to suggest oil drilling off the coast of California (WP $)
America’s cyber defenses are poor (The Verge)
China is on track to hit its peak CO2 emissions target early (The Guardian)
OpenAI cannot use song lyrics without a license (Reuters)
A small Michigan town is fighting a proposed AI data center (404 Media)
AI models can’t tell the time (IEEE Spectrum)
ChatGPT is giving daters the ick (The Guardian)