gen z discovers the carrie bradshaw effect

Happy Wednesday, July 15th! I’m SO sorry, I’m a day late with the send – yesterday was a wild one! And happy belated Bastille Day 🥖

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Prior to that date, a collaborative CDC program called FoodNet helped federal and state regulators track eight foodborne pathogens. Among them was cyclospora, a heat-loving spherical parasite that’s sickened 1,000 people in an ongoing outbreak in Michigan (the state’s worst), with similar illnesses cropping up in 28 other states. In addition to cyclospora, surveillance of campylobacter, listeria, shigella, vibrio and Yersinia was cut. FoodNet now only regularly monitors two diseases: Salmonella and Shiga toxin-producing E. coli. (HuffPost, 7/10)

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a centrist Democrat, is signing an executive order pausing permitting for hyperscaler data centers for a year, giving the state time to establish a regulatory framework to soften the impact on utility bills, the energy grid, and the environment. (Semafor, 7/14)

Americans’ confidence in U.S. institutions remains historically low, as reflected in their average view of 14 institutions measured each year since 1993. Currently, 27% of Americans express “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in these core institutions, one percentage point above the record-low average in 2023. (Gallup, 7/14)

If plaintiffs can indeed prove that chatbots had done something that would have been illegal had a human done it, judges will be motivated to find the companies liable in some way, said Gabriel Weil, a senior fellow at the Institute for Law & AI, a think tank that studies the legal implications of AI. Existing product liability law may be one route that lawyers take to try to find AI companies liable for harm connected to their tools. But existing law may not be enough to handle the potential scenarios that could arise as AI becomes more capable and independent, Weil said. (WaPo, 7/13 – free version)

The updated AI capabilities are more conversational than older features like Prompted Playlist, which automatically builds playlists based on descriptions. Now, you can ask the Spotify chatbot to “play some songs I haven’t heard before,” and control what’s being played with further instructions like requesting specific artists or asking to make it “more upbeat.” (The Verge, 7/14 – free version)

Scientific research backs up their parenting instincts. A 2025 study of nearly 100,000 people found that short-form video use was consistently associated with poorer cognition and a decline in many aspects of mental health across both younger and older social media users. (Fortune, 7/12)

Threads now increasingly resembles the social message board Reddit, as well as X. Users gravitate to specific communities on the platform, rather than a feed of news, to discuss television episodes, game recaps, celebrity gossip and current events. Among the most popular topics are K-pop, the W.N.B.A., dating, dramedy books and television shows like “Heated Rivalry.” (NYT gift link, 7/5)

But gen Z’s rejection of organised religious institutions is only part of the story: the majority of young Americans today still describe themselves as at least somewhat “spiritual”. In many online spiritual spaces, you’ll find repackaged puritanical ideas around sin: like not having sex before marriage because it causes a “soul tie” or staying abstinent to protect your “divine feminine” energy. What is considered a “moral failing” reflects the culture we exist in. (Dazed, 7/13)

Depending on who you ask, cigarettes never really left. But the attitude toward cigarettes and smokers has shifted. After a period of exile to the cultural fringes — when a cig was something you snuck, or that might have gotten you scolded or side-eyed — cigarettes seem to be creeping back to the aspirational center, among both civilians and celebrities. (WaPo, 7/14 – free version)

The simple sugar erythrulose appears to be produced through chemical reactions on tiny interstellar dust grains, which then rain down on nearby worlds or reach them after being incorporated into comets that eventually clatter into planets. (The Guardian, 7/13)

In one attempt to codify the genre, an English priest and writer named Ronald Knox drafted a “Ten Commandments of Detection” in the late 1920s. His rules for mystery novels included no ghosts, minimal use of twins, no reliance on cheap stereotypes and only one secret passage per novel. (NYT gift link, 7/12)

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That’s all for now – I’ll see you on Friday!