To make friends, join a club. To join a club, find an activity fair.
Vox reporter Allie Volpe is always looking for new developments in the ongoing quest to build stronger friendships and, hopefully, end the loneliness epidemic. This piece introduces a new option: the activity fair. It’s very college “welcome week” coded, but instead serves an entire city, and offers residents a one-stop shop to find a new club to join, a new hobby to try, and, ultimately, other like-minded people. I love that these fairs are generally being organized by “real people” who saw the need for something like this and then made it happen.
AI is ruining children’s books
What I love about Alex Abad-Santos’s story about the latest frontier in slopification is that he makes the point that AI books aren’t just disrespectful to writers and artists — they are disrespectful to kids. A book is such a meaningful gift to give a child: It’s a piece of art, a practical or moral lesson, an expression of self, all created with care by a group of people who understand the emotional and intellectual development of little ones. Why on Earth would we try to outsource that to a machine?
When did getting prescriptions start feeling like online shopping?
Speaking of one-stop shops, Dylan Scott dug into the new crop of telehealth services that promise to solve one core “problem” (hair loss, menopause, weight, erectile dysfunction, etc.), generally via a predetermined outcome (a specific prescription). While the convenience is incredibly appealing, especially for the millions of Americans who are experiencing the doctor shortage firsthand, there is something that gets lost when you cut out primary care physicians and the traditional clinical experience. This piece is a good reminder to pause and question whether such a transactional approach to healthcare is the best idea in a given situation.
A simple way to lower everyone’s property taxes
Marina Bolotnikova's story is less about property taxes than it is the ongoing debate about how to solve the housing crisis and sky-high rents affecting several cities. Increasingly, the evidence points to building more housing, and putting it in already-dense areas. It might seem counterintuitive, but doing it this way means essential infrastructure (like roads and sewer lines) is actually a lot cheaper to build and to maintain.
