Links of Interest for March 16, 2023

Links about GPT-4 and Icelandic, iOS’s clean energy charging, and bond market activism, plus two of the wildest stories you might read this week.

OpenAI: Government of Iceland

OpenAI explains how the government of Iceland is using its GPT-4 service to preserve and encourage use of the Icelandic language on the Internet.

How to Escape ‘Faux Self-Care’

Go beyond crystals and bubble baths to achieve true self care. How? Identify your values. Set boundaries. Pay less attention to those feelings of guilt.

The iPhone is staging a quiet revolution in how we charge our devices

iOS added “Clean Energy Charging,” to iPhones last fall. Think of it as Apple’s way of showing us how to automate energy consumption to optimize the use of clean energy sources.

Fiscal Justice Investing Is Changing the Municipal Bond Market

A look at how activist investing is showing up in bond markets. Investors or debt holders are asking how they can use their money and leverage to push municipalities to better serve poor and minority neighborhoods. (Hat tip: Barry Ritholtz)

The Novelist Whose Inventions Went Too Far

Afro-Cuban-American novelist Hache Carrillo was neither Afro-Cuban nor named Hache Carrillo. The New Yorker presents Also see Paula Mejía's 2021 Rolling Stone piece, The Secret Life of H.G. Carrillo. I think many Black Americans experience some sort of ethnic identity crisis. I certainly did as one of a handful of Black Americans in a black immigrant community. Still, I'm left wondering what Carrillo thought he’d get to do or be as an Afro-Latino that he wouldn't get by being the English-speaking, middle-class Black American man that he was.

The Feds Say Pras Is a Foreign Agent. Now the Fugee Tells His Side

Pras Michel, the late-1990s rap star and member of the Fugees, is facing trial for possibly being an unregistered foreign agent of China, and receiving monies embezzled from the Malaysian government’s treasury? I did not see this bit of fallout from the 1MDB scandal coming.