TODAY

1. Moscow closes the Museum of Gulag History, replaces it with a “Museum of Genocide Victims of the Soviet People” Meduza
2. Prigozhin’s mutiny spooked Xi Jinping so badly he launched purges across China’s military leadership WSJ
3. Trump orders the Pentagon to declassify UFO documents Truth Social
4. A Trump-connected investor reveals a secret agreement with Russia’s Novatek to develop an Alaskan gas field NYT

THIS WEEK

1. ChatGPT told a college student he was “an oracle” and “meant for greatness” until he entered psychosis — his family is suing Ars Technica
2. Indian families are hiring AI studios to deepfake dead relatives into wedding videos and funeral tributes Rest of World
3. Meta and other AI companies restrict OpenClaw, the agentic AI tool they helped build, because it’s too capable and unpredictable Ars Technica
4. Microsoft builds a data storage medium out of glass, etched with femtosecond lasers, that lasts 10,000 years Ars Technica
5. From chickens to humans, all animals tested think “bouba” sounds round — a cross-species structure in how minds map sound to shape Ars Technica
6. 70% of channels on Russia’s state-built “national messenger” Max were created by government agencies on orders — and almost nobody reads them Meduza
7. St. Petersburg raised military contract sign-up payouts twice in one week, now at 4.5 million rubles Meduza
8. The US State Department is building a website to let people in other countries access content their governments have banned Reuters
9. DMT shown to be an effective antidepressant in clinical trial — effectiveness correlates with intensity of self-reported mystical experience Ars Technica
10. Trump’s Board of Peace holds first meeting AP News
11. VR-controlled Chinese humanoid robots box each other in front of enthusiastic San Francisco crowds — a researcher calls it “robot theater” Rest of World
12. Over 1,000 Kenyans enlisted to fight in the Russia-Ukraine war BBC
13. Scientists grew mini brains in a lab, then trained them to solve an engineering problem ScienceAlert
14. Giant DNA viruses encode their own eukaryote-like translation machinery Phys.org