Most people do not realize when a personal message they receive was written by AI, study finds When people know someone used AI to write a message, they see the person as lazy or insincere.

We found a clear “AI disclosure penalty.” When people knew a message was AI-generated, they rated the sender much more negatively – “lazy,” “lack of effort” – than when they believed that the same text was written by a person – “genuine,” “thoughtful.” theconversation.com/most-people-...

Japan scraps ban on lethal weapons exports in major shift of pacifist policy Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said that "no single country can now protect its own peace and security alone."

Moving beyond pacifism : Japan’s government has scrapped restrictions on overseas arms sales in a major shift from policies introduced after World War II
www.cnbc.com/2026/04/21/j...

AI and Libraries: Why Librarians May Become Arbiters of Reality | Jane Friedman Librarians are managing AI’s real-world effects, making them publishing’s early warning system on reliability, trust, and the limits of AI literacy.

The trust that librarians have maintained over decades, even as institutional trust has declined in our society, gives them something AI systems don’t have: credibility with the people they serve janefriedman.com/ai-and-libra...

FBI Director Kash Patel sues the Atlantic claiming false reporting about drinking, absences FBI Director Kash Patel filed a defamation lawsuit against the Atlantic and its reporter Sarah Fitzpatrick following the publication of an article on Friday alleging the director had a ​drinking probl...

FBI Director Kash Patel filed a defamation lawsuit against the Atlantic and its reporter Sarah Fitzpatrick following the publication of an article on Friday alleging the director had a drinking problem that could pose a threat to national security. www.reuters.com/world/fbi-di...

Very excited that my new book Beyond Common Ground will be out this fall! TL;DR: What if society could move past traditional "gray infrastructure" approaches, like seawalls and prisons, to address problems such as climate change, terrorism, and crime?
www.amazon.com/Beyond-Commo...

Robots Are Quietly Building the Future of Renewable Energy | OilPrice.com Automation and robotics are rapidly transforming renewable energy development by accelerating construction, reducing costs, and addressing critical labor shortages.

Maximo robots, operated by humans, can install solar panels at a much faster rate than human teams, fitting 24 photovoltaic modules per hour per person on average, while the machines that assemble the solar panels take around one minute per panel to do so oilprice.com/Energy/Energ...

Price of power: The future of American nuclear built over a troubled past Piketon residents felt like they were doing their part, enriching uranium to help win the Cold War, but that in the end, America allowed their community to be poisoned. Now some fear plans for data ce...

Nuclear industry fallout: Despite the discharge restrictions, it is clear that enough radionuclides and chemicals have been released to create legacy environmental contamination www.cleveland.com/news/2026/04...

New #article from Stanley et al: Investigating Vaccine Buyer's Remorse: Post-Vaccination Regret in COVID19 Social Media
TL;DR: vaccine buyer’s remorse appears in only < 2%, disproportionately concentrated in vaccine-skeptic
influencer communities
www.semanticscholar.org/reader/11b38...

The Killer Robots Are Coming. The Battlefield Will Never Look the Same.

Ukraine is using unmanned ground vehicles armed with bombs, guns or rockets to carry out attacks and keep its soldiers out of harm’s way.

www.nytimes.com/2026/04/20/w...

New #article from Fathinnisa et al: The Influence of Adaptive Capacity and Participatory Governance on Community Preparedness for Flood Disasters
TL;DR: community readiness more influenced by adaptive capacity and governance than by physical actions alone
www.researchgate.net/publication/...

New #article from Sarkki et al: Adapting in polycrisis: Ensuring access to land as a polysolution for Arctic reindeer herding
TL;DR: Access to land thus functions as a practical “polysolution”
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Epstein Craved Harvard Connections. Many There Were Eager to Help.

Mr. Epstein offered the scientists something more than funding for research. He fueled egos and provided a heady taste of high life www.nytimes.com/2026/04/20/u...

Live: Tsunami alert issued after powerful quake off Japan's northern coast Officials warn of possible tsunami waves up to 3 metres and urge immediate evacuation from coastal areas after a magnitude-7.7 earthquake strikes off the island of Honshu. Follow live.

Breaking: magnitude-7.7 earthquake has struck off the east coast of Honshu, Japan, the country's meteorological agency (JMA) says. It warned of a tsunami as high as 3 metres in Iwate, Aomori and Hokkaido prefectures www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04...

Very proud of the work that we've done: Building a connected and resilient Australia by measuring our invisible infrastructure
TL;DR: brings social systems into disaster planning by making social capital + infrastructure measurable and actionable.
www.researchgate.net/publication/...

New #article from Raipat and Yabe: Social homophily is associated with evacuation destination choice and long-term displacement decisions after the Marshall Fire
TL:DR: behavior and social homophily play a significant role in mobility decisions
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New #article from Huot: Mapping the Social Foundations of Development: Community Networks, Networked Capital, and Youth Participation in Cambodia
TL;DR: social capital is an important constituent element of the enabling environment for economic empowerment
icert.org.in/index.php/20...

USA Mortgage Rates 2026: Average Rates on Outstanding Mortgages
wealthvieu.com/mortgage-rat...

The Supreme Court hands a win to oil and gas companies fighting environmental lawsuits in Louisiana The Supreme Court is handing a win to oil and gas companies fighting lawsuits over coastal land loss and environmental degradation in Louisiana.

Supreme Court handed a win Friday to oil and gas companies fighting lawsuits over coastal land loss and environmental degradation in Louisiana. apnews.com/article/supr...

We Don’t Really Know How A.I. Works. That’s a Problem.

There is also an increasing fear of language models’ engaging in deceptive behavior — labeled “scheming” by a team at OpenAI — in which they pretend to be satisfying a user’s request while secretly pursuing some other objective www.nytimes.com/2026/04/15/m...

Low-Cost Community Solar Keeps Insisting Upon Itself Despite the sharp U-turn in federal energy policy, the community solar movement continues to grow in the US.

Community solar projects provide subscribers with immediate savings on their utility bills and generate power close to where it is used, minimizing the need for costly long-distance transmission infrastructure cleantechnica.com/2026/04/18/l...

After 2 years, ratepayer pain and political fallout from Georgia’s nuclear plant Vogtle Texas built 36 GW of solar and storage in four years, for about $36 billion. Georgia built 2 GW of nuclear in 15 years at the same cost, writes Patty Durand, founder of Georgians for Affordable Energy...

Texas built 36 GW of solar and storage in 4 years, for about $36 billion. Georgia built 2 GW of nuclear in 15 years at the same cost www.utilitydive.com/news/after-2...

As wars throttle gas, Japan is embracing nuclear The country is rapidly moving to restart reactors as artificial intelligence increases electricity demand and foreign wars choke gas supplies.

This week, Japan will open its 16th reactor since the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident — at a nuclear plant run by the same utility that oversaw Daiichi during the #Fukushima meltdown www.politico.com/news/2026/04...

How to Revive the Art of Hanging Out Modern life makes it harder to seek out places to just be, but it’s not impossible.

The importance of social infrastructure: Conti makes the case for finding a “third place”—a no-frills spot for conversation and meeting new people that doesn’t require spending a lot of money www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...

New #article from Raipat et al: Social homophily is associated with evacuation destination choice and long-term displacement decisions after the Marshall Fire
TL;DR: behavioral characteristics and homophily play a role in post-disaster decisions
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Thirty-five years ago, the end of the Cold War drained this hardscrabble coastal manufacturing town of its chief purpose: building America’s submarines. Now the Navy needs the shipyard along the Thames River to rev its engines back into high gear. www.wsj.com/us-news/the-...

New metric shows renewables are 53% cheaper than nuclear power A new metric for assessing total system costs puts a least-cost mix of offshore wind and solar at about €46 ($54.20)/MWh in a future climate-neutral energy system for Denmark. Researchers tell <b>pv ...

New metric for assessing total system costs puts a least-cost mix of offshore wind and solar at about €46 ($54.20)/MWh in a future climate-neutral energy system for Denmark. That is less than half the equivalent cost of nuclear under the same conditions. www.pv-magazine.com/2026/04/17/n...

Diplomatic cables show Iran war is damaging US on multiple fronts across the world The documents show the fallout for the US in Bahrain, Indonesia and Azerbaijan as it struggles to catch up with pro-Iran messaging.

Taken together, the cables paint a picture of countries where the U.S. is losing the population’s trust, and potentially that of their governments. www.politico.com/news/2026/04...

New #article from Azzahra et al: Livelihood Vulnerability and Resilience of Rice Farmers in Flood- and Pest-Affected Areas of West Java
TL;DR: strong social capital among farming households as a critical mitigating factor enhancing resilience
www.researchgate.net/publication/...

New #article from Paudel at al: Village mobility and local resource utilisation are adaptation strategies in Nepal’s Koshi Floodplain
TL;DR: village relocation in response to shifting river courses and a complete reliance on local material for homes
www.apn-gcr.org/bulletin/art...