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Millions of homes now have guests who never leave. With names like Cortana, Siri, and Alexa, these always-listening, all-knowing, just about always female-voiced assistants have become like members of the family. They're selling like crazy, they're interacting with your children (maybe more than you are), and a new suite of artificially intelligent assistant bots are being built into baby monitors so they can have an influence on your kids right from the start. WaPo's Michael S. Rosenwald wonders if anyone is focused on how millions of kids are being shaped by know-it-all voice assistants. I'm pretty sure my kids hacked our Echo because last time I asked Alexa a question, she just rolled her eyes.
+ Gizmodo: Alexa now offers medical advice, because your hypochondria wasn't bad enough.
"Let's start with the moment I realized I was already a loser, which was just after I was more or less told that I was destined to become one." That's how Billy Blagg first reacted to being assigned to do a story about the risks of having few friends, or very limited contact with the ones you do have. And we're not talking about Facebook friends, Twitter followers, or even remarkably satisfied subscribers. We're talking about real-life human interaction. In the spirit of full disclosure, this is something I've never been a huge fan of, but it turns out that it could be a matter of life and death. "Study after study started showing that those who were more socially isolated were much more likely to die during a given period than their socially connected neighbors, even after you corrected for age, gender, and lifestyle choices like exercising and eating right. Loneliness has been linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke and the progression of Alzheimer's." From The Boston Globe: The biggest threat facing middle-age men isn't smoking or obesity. It's loneliness. (Inspired by this story, some old friends and I just made plans to get together for a weekly smoke at The Cheesecake Factory.)
"Many of Google's direct answers are correct. Ask Google if vaccines cause autism, and it will tell you they do not. Ask it if jet fuel melts steel beams, and it will pull an answer from a Popular Mechanics article debunking the famous 9/11 conspiracy theory. But it's easy to find examples of Google grabbing quick answers from shady places." We talk a lot about fake news, but fake search results might be a bigger problem. The Outline on why Google's featured snippets are worse than fake news.
+ "Obama's planning a coup? Women are evil? Several presidents were in the KKK? Republicans are Nazis?" Danny Sullivan (who knows search as as well as anyone) explains how the problem is directly tied to Google's migration from being a search engine to being a place that provides one true answer. "It's a problem because sometimes these answers are terribly wrong."
+ BuzzFeed: "Welcome to the corner of the internet that's hell-bent on convincing you that GMOs are poisonous, vaccines cause autism, and climate change is a government-sponsored hoax. The message is traveling far and wide." Inside the anti-science forces of the Internet. (We always thought the internet would bring us together and make facts and truth more accessible. How's that going so far?)
Studying the DNA extracted from Neanderthal dental plaque has given researchers new insights on their lifestyles and eating habits. While it's true that many Neanderthals enjoyed the occasional slab of woolly rhino, it's also true that some were vegetarians. "When people talk about the Paleo diet, that's not paleo, that's just non-carb. The true paleo diet is eating whatever's out there in the environment." (That's a diet I think I could stick with...)
+ And yes, Neanderthals and humans participated in some serious make-out sessions.
"I just think, Are you kidding me? Look, you're a human, I'm a human. We're breathing the same air. We have the same problems. We're trying to get through our day. Who the f*ck are you to throw a log in the road of somebody who has a different set of difficulties in life?" David Letterman talks to NY Mag through an increasingly enormous, somewhat foreboding, and completely ZZ-topian beard. (Warning, this interview is gonna make you miss him.) In Conversation: David Letterman.
"They offer 'energy healing' to help treat multiple sclerosis, acupuncture for infertility, and homeopathic bee venom for fibromyalgia. A public forum hosted by the University of Florida's hospital even promises to explain how herbal therapy can reverse Alzheimer's. (It can't.)" Why are top hospitals offering unproven therapies that even their own doctors don't believe in? From Stat: Medicine with a side of mysticism.
+ Outside: "This May, the world's first cannabis-infused gym will open in San Francisco, where members will be encouraged to integrate the plant into their pre- and post-workout regimen." (If smoking weed is part of working out, then I've gotten into the best shape of my life during the Trump era...)
You know how we can fit more and more data on smaller and smaller devices? Well, that trend looks to continue, especially given this development. IBM announced it has managed to successfully store data on a single atom for the first time. (It all sounds great until someone misplaces the Internet.)
"Maybe decades ago you could aim your songs at a mass market, but music does not really have one of those anymore. Artists have to figure out whom they're speaking to and where they're speaking from. The rest of us do the same. For better or worse, it's all identity now." In a collection of essays paired with music, the NYT Magazine shares 25 Songs That Tell Us Where Music Is Going. (Nothing is as unnerving as aging into a demographic where getting music recommendations from the NYT doesn't seem like a half bad idea.)
+ McSweeney's: I have traveled here from the present to warn you about global warming.
+ ElRubiusOMG, Smosh, VanossGaming, Fernanfloo, Jacksepticeye ... I'd never heard any of these names before. And you probably haven't either. But your kids probably have. These are the 18 most popular YouTube stars in the world.
+ You can hear the difference between hot and cold water.
+ 19 Famous Things Invented in Canada.
This is a weekly best-of version of the NextDraft newsletter. For daily updates and to get the NextDraft app, go here. (Original story reprinted with permission from NextDraft.)
