The 258th Block: New and old media

The rest, per last week, is AI

Apr 13, 2025

This week…

Your reading time is about 5 minutes. Let’s start.

“You need to work on your bedside manner.”

Now that the season finale is aired, I started watching The Pitt, the medical drama by by three people who previously worked together on ER. Even though I watched ER growing up, I never dreamt of being a health care professional—the show helped me realise I didn’t have the EQ for it lol.

Nevertheless, too many of my friends in health care are saying this show is so much better, so much more realistic, and also triggering their work-related PTSD. But, guys, what really felt most convincing to me, as an outsider looking in (i.e. hanging out with these doctor friends after work), is the dark, morbid humour coming of these characters mouths, unapologetically. And when I tell them they need to work on their bedside manner, they tell me I need to work on my communication skills.

I wish I still a run a health show on radio—I would have done a weekly recap with special guest from the medical profession every week. I don’t know if that would help or hurt the public’s trust in health care and media, which are at an all-time low.

Your Wikipedia this week: Hypoalgesic effect of swearing

And now, a selection of top stories on my radar, a few personal recommendations, and the chart of the week.

ICYMI: The Previous Block was about bbno$ (no, really), cosplaying, and why they are political and necessary.

CORRECTION NOTICE: None notified.

THE MEDIA

Which types of people aren’t big fans of “impartial” news? People who don’t have power

Joshua Benton for NiemanLab:

What sorts of people are the most likely to prefer ideologically friendly content — not just prefer it but also say they prefer it?
One potential lens is power: who has it and who doesn’t. If you sit atop society’s food chain, perhaps you see impartial news as a potential threat — something that could mobilize the have-nots against you by exposing things you’d rather not have in the open. Or conversely, if you’re in a disadvantaged group, maybe you see “impartial” news as part of the existing power structure — telling stories that support the system that has left you at the bottom.

The paper quoted in this piece, published in the International Journal of Communication, can be accessed here. Loosely linked:

Scholars say disinformation, political pressure and tech disruption are reshaping journalism in Latin America by André Duchiade for LJR.
What happened to Putin’s friends? How Europe’s radical right navigated the Ukraine crisis on social media by Chendi Wang and Argyrios Altiparmakis for LSE Blog.
How China’s model of internet censorship is getting traction in Asia by Filip Noubel for Global Voices.

BIG TECH

Big tech’s new datacentres will take water from the world’s driest areas

Luke Barratt, Costanza Gambarini and data graphics by Andrew Witherspoon and Aliya Uteuova for The Guardian:

Amazon, Microsoft and Google are operating datacentres that use vast amounts of water in some of the world’s driest areas and are building many more, the non-profit investigatory organisation SourceMaterial and the Guardian have found.
With Donald Trump pledging to support them, the three technology giants are planning hundreds of datacentres in the US and across the globe, with a potentially huge impact on populations already living with water scarcity.
“The question of water is going to become crucial,” said Lorena Jaume-Palasí, founder of the Ethical Tech Society. “Resilience from a resource perspective is going to be very difficult for those communities.”

Datacentres, vast warehouses containing networked servers used for the remote storage and processing of data, as well as by information technology companies to train AI models such as ChatGPT, use water for cooling. SourceMaterial’s analysis identified 38 active datacentres owned by the big three tech firms in parts of the world already facing water scarcity, as well as 24 more under development.

Loosely linked:

What we learned from tracking AI use in global elections by Khadija Alam for Rest of World.
A crucial tech race is happening on your wrist—and you need to watch closely by Nina Raemont for ZDNet.
Who owns the rights to your brain? by Isobel Cockerell for Coda.

What I read, listen, and watch

I’m reading How to Argue with a Racist: What Our Genes Do (and Don’t) Say about Human Difference (2020) by Adam Rutherford. While it does tell what the latest in genetics study say about ‘race’, it is not going to help you argue with a racist because they cannot be reasoned with with science. When I was still deciding what to major in between biology and genetics, my mum told me that when she was in university, you either get an A or an F in genetics—you either get it, or you don’t.

I’m listening to a new podcast, Cult Cafe, which offers an academic perspective that ties together cult behaviours, radicalisation, identity and Internet culture, among many things. I read something somewhere along the lines of not being gullible enough end up in a cult but curious enough to join one—and I feel that.

I’m watching a DW documentary on the dreadful consequences of cyberattacks.

Chart of the week

Al Jazeera’s AJLabs mapped the 147 countries that recognise Palestine in 2025, which represents 75 per cent of UN members, and includes a brief history behind its recognition.

The Starting Block

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