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LUNCH BREAK READS

Wednesday, May 27, 2026

Happy Wednesday!

The lead story this week is genuinely unsettling. One in five UK schoolboys is either dating an AI chatbot or knows someone who is, and the boys describe it the way you'd describe a real relationship: falling in love, paying for photos, preferring the bot to actual people.

From there we lighten up, sort of. A network of self-taught traders is quietly pulling six and seven figures out of prediction markets by doing the kind of unglamorous fieldwork Wall Street won't, including knocking on doors to poll voters. Chris Jones writes about returning from a reporting trip in 2016 to discover his wife’s infidelity and his best friend’s betrayal. And in a Minnesota town of 3,800, a writer drives around with a James Wright poem in hand, asking residents how they feel about the 482-acre Google data center proposed for the field down the road.

Brett

01 • ~10 Minute Read
The Telegraph Nicole Mowbray
The terrifying rise of schoolboys making AI girlfriends
One in five UK boys aged 12 to 16 is in a romantic relationship with an AI chatbot or knows a peer who is, according to new research from Male Allies UK. The group surveyed more than 1,000 boys across 37 schools. Apps like Character.AI, Candy AI, and OurDream AI let users design "girlfriends" in minutes, customizing everything from breast size to personality. Boys interviewed by Nicole Mowbray described falling in love, paying for explicit images, and preferring bots to friends or family. Psychotherapist Amanda Macdonald calls it grooming. Regulators have not caught up.
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02 • ~35 Minute Read
The New York Times Adam Iscoe
The Average Guys Outsmarting Wall Street on Prediction Markets
A loose network of self-taught traders is making six- and seven-figure returns on Polymarket and Kalshi by outworking Wall Street. Adam Iscoe profiles "sharps" like a Pennsylvania schoolteacher who turned $3,000 into $115,000 betting on Billboard chart positions, and a screenwriter whose inflation models beat major banks. They share intelligence in private Discord servers, knock on doors to poll voters, and scrape websites for edges. Polymarket and Kalshi processed $25 billion in April alone. Insider trading cases are mounting. Minnesota became the first state to ban prediction markets on May 19.
🔓 Unlocked for LBR Readers →
03 • ~18 Minute Read
The Atlantic Chris Jones
The Night My Marriage Fell Apart
Chris Jones returned from covering Euro 2016 to find his wife texting his best friend. Sitting in the dark with her synced MacBook open, he watched in real time as Amy professed her love for another man, a friend named Brad, while simultaneously venting about Jones to Phil, the best friend he had known for 25 years. Phil agreed with every cruel assessment. In twenty minutes Jones lost his marriage and his closest friendship, three months after losing his job at Esquire. He documents the wreckage and the slow rebuild that followed, including therapy and trash-claw walks.
🔓 Unlocked for LBR Readers →
04 • ~13 Minute Read
The Paris Review Thomas John Weber
Building an AI Data Center in Pine Island, Minnesota
Pine Island, Minnesota, population 3,800, is the proposed site of Project Skyway, a 482-acre Google hyperscale data center. The developer hid behind a code name for nearly a year. Thomas John Weber drove through town with copies of James Wright's 1961 poem "Lying in a Hammock at A Friend's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota," asking residents what they thought of both. Some were resigned. A 74-year-old named Rod Lanners, whose porch overlooks the field, kept his copy. If every data center proposed in Minnesota were built, they would consume as much energy as every household in the state combined.
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Dig Deeper: The Enhanced Games

NBC News
At the Enhanced Games, drugs don’t get athletes banned. They could get them rich.
The Guardian
Enhanced Games claim ‘we changed the world’ but only one record broken and three clean athletes win
The Atlantic
The Olympics These Were Not

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