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Longform links: instant fakes

Chimera readability score 58 out of 100, Graduate reading level.

Thursdays are all about longform links on Abnormal Returns. Wherever possible, free links for premium sites are used. You can check out last week’s linkfest including a look at why China is focused on robotics.
Quote of the Day
"(F)akes, counterfeits and frauds that would have taken considerable effort to create just a few years ago can now be churned out pretty much instantly."
(Justin Elliott)
Books
- Mary Childs talks with Liaquat Ahamed, author of "1873: The Rothschilds, the First Great Depression, and the Making of the Modern World." (youtube.com)
- Five insights from Michael Pollack's new book, "Sidewalk Nation: The Life and Law of America’s Most Overlooked Resource." (nextbigideaclub.com)
- An excerpt from "The World: A Family History of Humanity," by Simon Sebag. (theatlantic.com)
- An excerpt from "Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist" by Christof Koch. (thereader.mitpress.mit.edu)
- David Epstein talks with Austin Kleon, author of "Don’t Call It Art: 10 Ways to Create Like a Kid Again." (davidepstein.substack.com)
Technology
- Just how close are we to getting humanoid robots? (newyorker.com)
- Why we need to distinguish between people and bots online. (noemamag.com)
- Inventing the bar code was straightforward. Implementing was a lot harder. (quartr.com)
- Spinning up fake websites, and the like, is now trivial and can easily trip up Google. (propublica.org)
Defense
- Why a tungsten mine is reopening in Australia. (bloomberg.com)
- JP Morgan ($JPM) wants to be a defense industry player. (wsj.com)
Crime and punishment
- How Scotland successfully targeted high levels of violence. (bbc.com)
- The state of Florida is executing prisoners at a rapid rate. (propublica.org)
Science
- How our understanding of continental drift came to be. (worksinprogress.co)
- Five insights from Ijeoma Uchegbu's new book, "Chain Reaction: How Chemistry Shapes Us and Our World." (nextbigideaclub.com)

Sentinel — Human

Confidence

This text exhibits high structural organization typical of editorial content, presenting curated links and quotes, suggesting human curation rather than purely synthetic generation.

Signals Detected
low severity: Moderate sentence length variance; structured list format not uniform.
low severity: Highly focused curation style; lacks the excessive hedging or synthetic passion often found in pure LLM outputs.
low severity: Follows a predictable newsletter/link aggregation template, which is common human content structure for engagement.
Human Indicators
The text demonstrates a deliberate curatorial focus and the blending of disparate, high-interest topics (history, finance, tech, crime) into a cohesive list, suggesting an editorial human intent rather than random generation.
The juxtaposition of academic references and current events is handled in a way that aligns with human content strategy aimed at driving clicks/engagement.