📚 J'S Highlights

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A batch of the best highlights from what J's read, .

Beyond video, there is AI music; one band, Velvet Sundown, had its AI-generated folk song “Dust on the Wind” climb to the top of Spotify’s Viral 50 charts, despite the fact that the band members [don’t actually exist](https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/2025/07/08/velvet-sundown-artificial-intelligence-spotify/).

Making cash off ‘AI slop’: The surreal business of AI video

Drew Harwell & Gerrit De Vynck & Shira Ovide & Chris Velazco & Dan Lamothe & Tara & Alex Horton & Nick Mourtoupalas & Eric Lau & Hannah Dormido

Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign leveraged CA’s harvested data to profile and microtarget users, part of a shockingly sophisticated digital strategy. Trump’s most fervent base was, of course, the American evangelical movement who saw Trump as a critically important actor to help bring about their millenarian end-times theory. When the Trump administration moved the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, it was an enormous validation for those who believe the Rapture is near. Trump was the evangelicals' agent; technology became their medium.

Emily F. Gorcenski

Norman Packard

Human interest stories seem pretty dehumanizing for their subjects, who have one aspect of their life magnified, commodified, and circulated for the amusement of people who otherwise don’t care. If human interest stories weren’t made with humans, we could possibly enjoy them with less guilt. But that assumes that inflicting the trauma of attention on actual people isn’t part of what we enjoy in the first place.

Have You Heard the Word

Rob Horning

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A batch of the best highlights from what J's read, .

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