Reading List

The most recent articles from a list of feeds I subscribe to.

This counterintuitive advice about kids and phones makes a lot of sense

If you’re a parent, you’ve probably grappled with the question of when your kid should get a smartphone. There’s a nationwide movement, Wait Until 8th, that argues that devices should be kept out of kids’ hands until they’re deep into middle school. Some families manage to hold out even longer. Andrew Przybylski, a professor of […]

Exclusive: RFK Jr. and the White House buried a major study on alcohol and cancer. Here’s what it shows.

Most Americans still don’t know that alcohol can cause cancer — and the alcohol industry is working hard to make sure it stays that way.  For the past three years, the industry, aided by its allies in Congress and later the Trump administration, has sought to discredit and eventually bury a major analysis that offers new […]

I study AI cheating. Here’s what the data actually says.

For anyone scrolling quickly through their news feeds, it is easy to believe that all students are now using AI to cheat in school. Whether in the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times, the words “cheat” and “AI” seem to appear together with alarming frequency. The typical story is similar to a recent […]

The US strike on a Venezuelan drug boat, briefly explained

This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here. Welcome to The Logoff: The Trump administration is promising to “wage combat” against drug cartels following a strike targeting an alleged Venezuelan drug boat.  What happened? On Tuesday, the […]

Why the Ukraine war is so hard to end

At the height of the Iraq war, bloggers coined the term “Friedman unit” in reference to the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s habit of claiming that the next six months would be critical in determining the outcome of the conflict.  Everything has sped up quite a bit in our post-Twitter era, so perhaps it’s […]