TouchStone Reads - September 25th, 2026

We often set aside articles that are longer, deserve a re-read, are broader in scope…or just for fun - for weekend reading. Below are some from this week - pour yourself a hot cup of coffee & enjoy... 

• Obama Gives Deep Take On AI Threat, Recursive Self-Improvement, & His Suggested Approach (YouTube)
• I Don’t Want to Read What You Didn’t Write. A pattern I see is that people use AI to build something new, then they use AI to retrospectively summarize what they have already built into a design document.(Colin Breck)
• Video of the day: Jimmy Kimmel’s Interview with James Talarico That the FCC Doesn’t Want You To See (YouTube)
• “There is no such thing as a ‘sense of humor’ in the Criminal Code”: Russian stand-up comedians on surviving war and censorship (The Insider)
• Video of the day: The Greatest Scam of Our Childhood 8 CDs for a Penny! (YouTube)
• Scottish guy who stumbled into a job making BlackBerrys that turned into a fascinating 15-year run. (Chuck Howitt)
• Truck driver builds real-life model of NYC - swipe right for photos (AP News)
• Why your appearance differs in photos and mirrors. (Popular Science)
• The Diesel Shock Is a Core Inflation Shock. Diesel is an intermediate input embedded in the delivered cost of nearly every physical good (Apollo)
• Polling Has Become a Playground for Grifters, Liars, and Frauds: I’m a pollster and this is getting ridiculous. (The Argument)
• The Eiffel Tower is turning into a movie theater (Nice News)
• Home price growth has already begun to cool again (Source – Calculated Risk)

• Joining the dots between big AI (Source – Financial Times) 

• From a Savings Glut to a Savings Shortage (Source – Apollo) 

What are you reading or listening to?