Morning Edition

The Futurist

Tuesday, May 26, 2026
AI & Technology Markets & Crypto Ideas Worth Keeping
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01

AI & Technology

404 Media

An Incomplete List of Successful Anti-Data Center Legislation

Communities across America are successfully fighting data centers in their backyards. Nobody wants to live next to noisy computer warehouses, and local governments are listening.

CoinDesk

At $322 billion, the stablecoin market value exceeds the FX reserves of 95 nations

Digital dollars have quietly grown into a monetary force larger than most countries' foreign exchange reserves. The stablecoin market now represents a significant piece of global financial infrastructure.

Simon Willison

Notes on Pope Leo XIV's encyclical on AI

The Vatican dropped a major AI ethics document this morning titled "Magnifica Humanitas." Willison calls it some of the clearest writing on AI ethics integration he's seen.

a16z

Why Physical AI Is the Next Big Opportunity

AI is moving from software into the physical world through automation in construction and electronics design. The conversation explores how code and simulation can model real-world systems at scale.

404 Media

How Deepfakes Tore a High School Apart

Five teen girls at Pennsylvania's Radnor Township High School were targeted with AI-generated child sexual abuse material. The case has become a national reference point for how schools and police handle deepfake crimes against children.

02

X / Twitter Signal

Built a gamified habit tracker app with AI that became one of his best productivity tools. It's fully personalized and shows how AI can create deeply personal utility beyond the standard chatbot paradigm.

OpenAI filed its S-1 for a possible fall IPO after filing on May 22, though Sam Altman reportedly distinguishes between filing and actually going public. The timing suggests the company is positioning for market conditions rather than immediate need.

Notes the limitation that many hard math problems we have lying around are Erdős problems. While impressive for AI systems to solve, these problems don't necessarily translate to broader mathematical reasoning capabilities we need for real-world applications.

03

The Thread

The infrastructure wars are heating up on multiple fronts. While AI companies race to build massive data centers, local communities are pushing back hard — and winning. The 404 Media compilation of successful anti-data center legislation shows this isn't just NIMBY sentiment, but organized resistance to the physical footprint of digital acceleration. Meanwhile, the Vatican's new AI encyclical represents something unprecedented: religious authority weighing in on technical limitations as moral imperatives. When the Pope essentially canonizes specific AI constraints, it's not just spiritual guidance — it's geopolitical positioning around global AI governance.
"I cannot believe I'm saying this, but getting the literal Pope to canonize your product's specific technical limitations as a spiritual treatise is the single greatest act of vendor lobbying I have ever seen."
The stablecoin milestone — $322 billion exceeding 95 nations' foreign exchange reserves — signals we're past the experimental phase of digital money. This is monetary infrastructure at nation-state scale, operating parallel to traditional banking. Combined with the physical AI breakthroughs moving computation into construction and manufacturing, we're watching the digital-physical divide collapse in real time. The question isn't whether AI transforms everything — it's whether communities get a say in how that transformation lands in their neighborhoods.