Jesús Fernández-Villaverde and Patrick Norrick, "TERRA INCOGNITA: THE ECONOMICS OF A SHRINKING WORLD"

As of 2026, humanity is likely below replacement fertility. That has never happened before, not in wars or pandemics. But the real surprise is that the fall has been concentrated in low- and middleincome countries and among poorer and less educated women. We fit a single-factor model to 236 countries since 1950: the common component peaked in 1978, and what drives fertility down today are country-specific trends, 219 of them negative and not one leveling off. None of the commonly cited mechanisms can account for this pattern, so we offer a conjecture: modernity itself, which makes a third child expensive and childlessness cheap. Children come in integers, so it takes very little to move a cohort’s fertility rate from 1.8 to 1.3. And nothing in an economy pushes fertility back to 2.1. We close with the main economic consequences, in particular slow growth.

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Cloos, Norelli et al, "Is this machine playing?"

Weplaced a modern AI coding assistant in an unintended role: as the mind of a body on an unknown digital island. With only a minimal instruction mentioning no specific task, reward, or activity, the machine started animating its virtual body. Across thirty-hour runs, the embodied AI agent climbed hills, stacked blocks into towers, drew mandalas, arXiv:2610.07130v1 [cs.AI] 5 Oct 2026 reinterpreted sports, ran experiments on the physics of its world, and learned techniques that later expanded what it could accomplish. Theseactivities recurred across thirteen agents but diverged into distinct histories. We examine whether this behavior satisfies classical criteria for play and ask whether play can become a mode of machine development.

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flOw game, by USC Game Innovation Lab

flOw is Jenova Chen's MFA thesis game from 2006 about piloting an aquatic organism through a surreal biosphere where players consume other organisms, evolve, and advance their organisms to the abyss. (This version was created in Adobe Flash, so we now have to run it through the Ruffle Emulator here on Itch.io in order to make it available. Because of that, some bugs may exist!)

As part of Jenova Chen's thesis research, flOw inherits an embedded design of active DDA (dynamic difficulty adjustment), players with differing skill levels can intuitively customize their experiences in the zone and enjoy the game at their own pace.

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"AI Agents Can Now Navigate and Complete LMS Tasks"

Abstract: Autonomous artificial intelligence (AI) agents can now log into a learning management
system, read course materials, and complete unproctored, asynchronous assessed work end-to-end
with no student involvement. We document that capability and trace its consequences for assessment
validity. Three demonstrations on a live undergraduate course supply the evidence: two quiz
completions, one in approximately 12 minutes, one in under 5, and a third in which the agent
fabricated credible personal reflection for a discussion board. The wider public record includes at least
15 documented agent runs across three platforms and seven tools. We apply Kane's argument-based
validity framework: agent completion removes the attribution on which every inference in Kane's chain
depends. Everything downstream, from course grades to the evidence chains behind program review
and accreditation, rests on support that is no longer there. The failure concerns validity rather than
integrity: an institution can punish misconduct and still lack grounds for the scores it reports. Collective
accreditor guidance addresses institutional uses of AI in evaluation and does not yet reach the agentic
case. Audience data from the underlying conference session show attendees already recognizing both
the vulnerability and the gap in institutional guidance. Polled attendees most often named online
quizzes as agent-completable, with discussion-based work close behind. Majorities in both listings
were working without settled written guidance. The response defended here is design rather than
detection: four principles for verified human presence, low-effort changes faculty can adopt now, and
the assurance levers assessment professionals already operate.

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Arcade games from Trump White House

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Game that reduces dementia risk may clear amyloid from men's brains | New Scientist

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Benedict, Mary Ellen; McClough, David; and Hoag, John (2024) "STILL WAITING FOR THE SHOE TO DROP? AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF PRIVATE COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY FINANCIAL STRESS,"

This study uses the 2010, 2017, and 2018 data of the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System to estimate which institutional factors increase the probability that a private, nonprofit, higher education institution will face financial stress. The study first estimates enrollment and net tuition with a reduced form market model. Those estimates, endowment dollars, and college rankings are used to identify institutions that are financially stressed. Our assessment indicates that approximately 11.5 percent of the sample institutions are stressed, suggesting that the earlier predictions of a 25-50 percent reduction are overestimated, at least for private-nonprofit institutions. The study next employs a probit model to identify those institutional characteristics that contribute to financial stress. Our results demonstrate that some common tactics to relieve such stress, such as online delivery, putting emphasis on admissions without consideration of graduation rates, or being in a more renowned athletic association, may not be helpful in reducing financial stress.

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