So if you want to spot AI writing, look for bland, pretentious prose lavished with Latinate words—at least for now. With every update, our study shows, AI writing is becoming more similar to human prose. Pangram successfully detected AI-generated copy, but may struggle in future. LLMs are trained on human writing and learn from human feedback, notes Tommie Juzek of Florida State University, picking up things people find impressive and dropping things they do not. Bots learn fast, too. Take ChatGPT: until very recently it used an em-dash in almost every sentence. When your correspondent asked an older model whether it thought AI overused the dash, it said: “Ha—great question!” Ask the bot the same thing today and it soberly says “they’re best used sparingly.” Only a ghost could shapeshift so quickly. ■ This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com/culture/2026/07/30/how-to-spot-ai-writing
How Tom Holland became the world’s highest- grossing young actor Lessons from his prodigious early success Jul 30th 2026 MOST ACTORS are lucky if they ever get to star in a summer blockbuster. This year Tom Holland is in two: “The Odyssey”, in which he plays Telemachus, the hero’s son; and “Spider-Man: Brand New Day”, the seventh feature film in which he plays the Web-Slinger. It is rare to find a Hollywood actor that bankable. It is rarer still to find one as young as Mr Holland, whose films have grossed almost $12bn: more than those of any other actor aged 30 or under. What lessons can aspiring actors learn from his early success? There are four.
First, start young—ideally really young. Mr Holland, who is British, made his debut in the West End when he was 12 and soon had a leading role. His first live-action film, “The Impossible”, came out when he was 16. Since then, he has appeared in at least one film a year, on average. Second, get out of worthy little indie films and into a blockbuster franchise as soon as possible. Mr Holland was just 19 when he made his first appearance as Spider-Man in “Captain America: Civil War”. (He looked much younger: Tony Stark, another character, refers to him as “Spider-Boy” and his costume as “a onesie”.) Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield, Mr Holland’s predecessors as Spider- Man, were 26 and 29 when they first donned the red-and-blue suit. They managed only a handful of films, whereas Mr Holland’s youthfulness has prolonged his tenure and put him in the phenomenally high-grossing Avengers films in addition to the main Spider-Man ones. Third, if your goal is money rather than awards, it is better to be boring and reliable than interesting and potentially great. Mr Holland’s second-closest rival is Timothée Chalamet. His films, including the “Dune” franchise, may have grossed less—$3.2bn—but his reputation as a thespian is far greater. Mr Chalamet, who is known for his slouchy intensity, has received three
acting Oscar nominations to Mr Holland’s zero. The reliable, steady Mr Holland, by contrast, is at no risk of scene-stealing. He is an Everyman. His blandness is easier clay for directors to mould. Mr Holland’s closest rival is Zendaya, whose films have grossed $6bn to date. She is his co-star in “The Odyssey” and the Spider-Man series; she is also his wife. Therein lies the last lesson, and one relevant to non-actors, too: marry well. ■ This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com/culture/2026/07/27/how-tom-holland-became-the-worlds- highest-grossing-young-actor
The terrifying threat of a genetically engineered plague Annie Jacobsen imagines the repercussions of a leak from a Russian laboratory Jul 30th 2026 YOU HAVE been infected with a “demon germ”, but you do not feel monstrously bad just yet. In fact, you feel euphoric. The bacterium multiplying inside your lungs has been modified with an endorphin gene to trigger a neurochemical high—which encourages you to socialise, and thereby spread the pathogen about. Soon the ecstasy gives way to a fever and splitting headache. You start coughing up bloody sputum: evidence of rotting lungs and the onset of sepsis. Antibiotics help at first, but then activate virus genes engineered into
the bacterium. That virus attacks your nervous system. You suffer tremors and seizures and soon you die. In “Biological War: A Scenario” Annie Jacobsen, a journalist and the author of several books on war and military affairs, lays out what would happen if a genetically modified bioweapon were unleashed. She reprises the format of her previous book, which offered a minute-by-minute account of a hypothetical nuclear attack on America. The result is a tale just as energetic, detailed and disturbing. In this imagined scenario, there is an explosion at an infectious-disease research facility in Siberia, where scientists genetically alter bacteria and viruses in ways that can make them more virulent, transmissible and resistant to antibiotics. In the blast, a scientist is infected with a modified pneumonic plague. Within minutes, American analysts are poring over intelligence indicating a potential lab leak. The American president is briefed but has few options. “By the time a pathogen escapes from a lab and gets seeded in the population”, Ms Jacobsen writes, “it is almost certainly already too late.” Russian officials obfuscate and blame contaminated marmot meat from a wet market for an outbreak of “atypical pneumonia-like illness” (one of many passages that will remind readers of covid-19). As the disease spreads, the faults in America’s biodefences are exposed. Detection technologies fail. Just 100 isolation beds exist in a country of more than 340m people. Crucial data are not shared across agencies. An outbreak of plague among California’s homeless population, for instance, is incorrectly treated as an overdose event, and not reported to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. The effects of the plague on its victims are described in stomach-churning detail. Soon emergency services are overrun. Social media stoke panic; the internet is shut off. Martial law is imposed. There is violent unrest. Cabinet officials are taken to remote locations to ensure continuity of government—or what is left of it. “What makes biological warfare so sinister isn’t just its ability to deliver mass casualties and deaths,” Ms Jacobsen writes, “but its capacity to create unbridled chaos.”
It is an engrossing, plausible book—though it is surprising, given the subject’s timeliness, that ai barely features in it. The pathogen in Ms Jacobsen’s scenario is a cold-war relic built by Soviet scientists. But AI models, trained on virological and bacteriological information, can turn novices into bioweapons manufacturers. Frontier labs have admitted that AI tools are getting better and better at designing pathogens. Instances of rogue states and terrorist groups using bioweapons are mercifully rare. But with barriers to development falling, new and troubling scenarios are certain to emerge. The tools to engineer such organisms are advancing quickly and governments are struggling to keep up. In America thousands of “high- containment labs”—which study the most dangerous pathogens—are governed by shoddy federal oversight. Federal budget requests for biodefence shrunk by nearly 50% in 2025. Policymakers ought to heed the warnings in this book. Ms Jacobsen quotes Igor Domaradskij, an architect of the Soviet Union’s bioweapons programme. “With the advent of genetic engineering,” he said, “the horrible unpredictability of biological weapons became a reality straight from the pages of a science-fiction novel.” It makes for grim reading. ■ This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com/culture/2026/07/30/the-terrifying-threat-of-a- genetically-engineered-plague
Bold, brash and divisive: inside the Barstool Sports empire Dave Portnoy has created a loyal audience by refusing to please everyone Jul 30th 2026 IT IS A well-trodden path: a young man, frustrated with life as an office drone, decides he wants to be his own boss. When he was in his mid-20s, Dave Portnoy came up with three business ideas: selling used furniture, connecting ambitious high-school athletes with college coaches and setting up a newspaper focused on gambling and sport. He settled on the third option and the first issue of Barstool Sports hit the streets of Boston, where Mr Portnoy lived, in August 2003. Its motto was: “By the common man, for the common man”. It has made its founder uncommonly wealthy. In 2020 Mr Portnoy made $178m when his investors sold Barstool Sports at a valuation of $650m. (By
then it was no longer a newspaper but a digital media brand with podcasts and merchandise.) He has bought the most expensive home ever sold in his home state of Massachusetts: a compound on Nantucket, for $42m. The cover of his boastfully titled book shows him in sunglasses, smoking a cigar in his swimming pool. How did he achieve the American frat boy’s dream? It was not by being generally likeable. Mr Portnoy has paid “an army of homeless drunks” to distribute his newspaper, mocked a “legit cripple” whom he defeated at beer pong and urged a journalist for ESPN, an American sports-television network, to “sex it up and be slutty”. In a blog post, he wrote: “I never condone rape. But if you’re a size six and you’re wearing skinny jeans, you kind of deserve to be raped.” Mr Portnoy has since disavowed that blog post (“I wish I never wrote it”). He says the disabled person whom he beat at beer pong “loved it”. And he claims to have “squashed” the feud with the ESPN journalist. Yet it all points to Barstool’s crude, jockish sense of humour, which many find offensive. Mr Portnoy has a ready, if logically wonky, retort: “If you didn’t like what we said, don’t read it.” Even if Mr Portnoy’s book is not your idea of a pleasurable evening’s reading, he and his brand are worth understanding for the simple fact that they are popular and influential. (Consider that his memoir has been on the New York Times bestseller list since it was published.) Barstool says it attracts 66m monthly unique users; almost half of them are aged between 18 and 34. Much like the digital version of a fraternity’s living room, Barstool blends stories about pizza (a frequent subject for Mr Portnoy), sport, pop culture and pretty girls with in-jokes and profanity. At a time when politicians and podcast hosts alike espouse an unabashed laddishness, Barstool has flourished. It has earned the moniker of “the Bible of bro culture”. Barstool’s multiple revenue streams, popular shows and mix of stalwarts and up-and-comers means it functions more like an old-school tv network or Hollywood studio than the newspaper Mr Portnoy started 23 years ago. Like a network, it attracts talent. Pat McAfee, who hosts a popular sport talk show, and Alex Cooper, whose “Call Her Daddy” podcast is one of the most