From saturation.social
Clive Thompson (@clive@saturation.social)
3 3
Attached: 1 image Okay people, it's time 🕙 once again ♻️ for "the opposite of doomscrolling" 🌞 My latest "Linkfest" newsletter just dropped 📬 , with the finest cuts of science, culture and technology Free to read and subscribe here!...
14h ago
From saturation.social
Deb Chachra (@debcha@saturation.social)
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Once again, it's time for that festive tradition of listening to holiday music. A lot of it, at once -- digitized and compressed and tweaked and regenerated into what can only be described as the musical essence of the festive spirit: @bwhitman@hachyderm.io's "A Singular Christmas." Listen*...
on Mon, 1PM
From saturation.social
Clive Thompson (@clive@saturation.social)
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As happens usually once a year ... ... my digital to-do list has grown so unruly that I've switched to paper It helps me focus and drill down on what's crucial I usually find that after few weeks of paper I've eliminated enough to-dos that the digital apps become uncluttered enough to be...
on Dec 8
From saturation.social
Mike Rose (@MikeTRose@saturation.social)
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New podcast ep dropping soon (as I finish editing) aftershowpodcast.com
on Dec 7
From saturation.social
Deb Chachra (@debcha@saturation.social)
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Attached: 1 image · Content warning: gun violence: Ecole Polytechnique
on Dec 7
From saturation.social
Clive Thompson (@clive@saturation.social)
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Attached: 1 image Some Concordia University professors set up a Minecraft server, and powered it with solar panels and a battery ... ... then added GUI text that shows players data on the energy ecosystem: Battery level, solar panel output, and how much energy the server is requiring at any...
on Dec 7
From saturation.social
Clive Thompson (@clive@saturation.social)
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Since there’s been a resurgence lately of the “mastodon is mostly just for folks who use Linux” thing … … i’m now curious about my community here (i’m offering intentionally crude and ungranular options in this poll) “I use Linux …” (Please boost!) [ ] Every day [ ] Occasionally [ ] Never
on Dec 1
From saturation.social
Clive Thompson (@clive@saturation.social)
0 0
Remember all the right wing folks were fulminating about collusion between social media and the government? you know, the horrors of the "twitter files"? how it's *incredibly dangerous* for social-media executives to be in close communication with the federal government? the primrose path to...
on Nov 28
From saturation.social
Deb Chachra (@debcha@saturation.social)
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Attached: 1 image I made a quilted winter cover for the AC in my living room (in lieu of taking it out), and also a very silly joke.
on Nov 28
From saturation.social
Clive Thompson (@clive@saturation.social)
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Attached: 1 image In 1945, the US War Department realized that its soldiers stationed in Europe fighting the Nazis probably needed a good pamphlet explaining what fascism was, and how it occurs ... ... so they wrote one and in it, they noted that America was not at all immune to this So they...
on Nov 20
From saturation.social
Clive Thompson (@clive@saturation.social)
0 1
An excellent layperson's breakdown of how Bluesky works, beneath the hood ... ... specifically, what's decentralized about it (content storage, for now) and what, for now, isn't (the part that queries for updates in users' posts, and then assembles it into a...
on Nov 18
From saturation.social
Clive Thompson (@clive@saturation.social)
0 0
Attached: 1 image A wall clock that displays your ping rate: https://github.com/turingbirds/ping-clock
on Nov 17
From saturation.social
Clive Thompson (@clive@saturation.social)
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When I was a kid in the 70s people use to worry a lot about quicksand and spontaneous human combustion seriously, this stuff came up media and, like, *everyday conversations* what the hell was up with that? the quicksand stuff -- it came up in movies a lot -- was, as I've read, kind of a...
on Nov 16
From saturation.social
Clive Thompson (@clive@saturation.social)
0 0
Attached: 1 image An excellent and precise essay about the huge and grim dangers of the cabinet leaders Trump is picking It's by Timothy Snyder -- the author of "On Tyranny" and a historian of authoritarianism -- and he points out how Trump is targeting the absolute core competencies of a...
on Nov 15
From saturation.social
Clive Thompson (@clive@saturation.social)
0 1
Man, maybe I’m just old school but I am really not digging the now-unfortunately-well-established trend of people on Instagram putting music behind their photo posts I just wanna look at some, like, pictures but scrolling down my feed is now like sitting in an old car where someone won’t...
on Nov 9
From saturation.social
Clive Thompson (@clive@saturation.social)
0 0
Amidst the wretched news from election day, he's one ray of light Ballot measures to protect and strengthen the environment won, 5 times out of 6, around the country: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/07112024/state-climate-initiatives-fare-well-across-country/ The imminent demise of climate...
on Nov 7
From saturation.social
Renee DiResta (@Noupside@saturation.social)
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Attached: 1 image Read my book to understand why “The Elon Musk of Squirrels” is a headline: invisiblerulers.com
on Nov 5
From saturation.social
Renee DiResta (@Noupside@saturation.social)
0 0
Attached: 1 image The academic debate ab whether memes *really* shape political discourse can be put to rest with “The Elon Musk of Squirrels.” Every week of this campaign we’ve seen the power of influencers & the role they play in propaganda. Elites are picking this up from the extremely...
on Nov 5
From saturation.social
Deb Chachra (@debcha@saturation.social)
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USians: one of my favorite movies of the last decade or so, 2014’s PREDESTINATION, is now on Netflix. I saw it completely cold on an airplane (although it turned out I knew the source material) and was 🤯: “how have I not heard of this?!” Ethan Hawke is great but Sarah Snook is *astonishing*. The...
on Nov 4
From saturation.social
Clive Thompson (@clive@saturation.social)
0 0
More evidence -- this time with audio tapes from the original experiment -- showing that the Stanford Prison Experiment was rigged to encourage terrible behavior by the guards In Medium: https://gen.medium.com/the-lifespan-of-a-lie-d869212b1f62 Unpaywalled: https://archive.is/K7gMN Talking...
on Nov 1
From saturation.social
Clive Thompson (@clive@saturation.social)
0 0
Attached: 1 image Behold the work of Darya Kawa Mirza, a self-taught Kurdish photographer who produces astonishingly detailed pictures of the moon ... ... by zooming in close on individual tiny craters, taking over 80,000 shots of those, then compositing them together into individual,...
on Nov 1
From saturation.social
Clive Thompson (@clive@saturation.social)
0 0
Attached: 1 image A good synthesis, by Nilay Patel at The Verge, of one of the core things at stake in next week's election ... ... to wit, which candidate is interested in solving collective-action problems, and which one doesn't even know what they are, or care? Indeed, as Patel points out,...
on Oct 30
From saturation.social
Clive Thompson (@clive@saturation.social)
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Attached: 1 image Behold a custom-made 21-segment LED that uses a font design from 1898 Item #14 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free to read and subscribe to here: https://buttondown.com/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-25-the-third-thumb-prairie-strips-and/
on Oct 25
From saturation.social
Clive Thompson (@clive@saturation.social)
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It turns out that the major AI search engines, when asked about IQ scores around the world … … have been citing the racist, deeply flawed data-set of white supremacist Richard Lynn — which offers preposterously low scores for countries like Kenya and Sierra Leone These numbers are often...
on Oct 25
From saturation.social
Clive Thompson (@clive@saturation.social)
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Mastodon hive-mind! I require your assistance I'm wondering -- what was the first American song written about the problems of becoming famous as a singer/performer? Of the hassles of fame, of life on the road, etc? When did this become a subject matter of songwriters and performers? Please...
on Oct 22
From saturation.social
Clive Thompson (@clive@saturation.social)
0 0
Okay folks, my latest "Linkfest" newsletter just dropped 📬 ... ... in which I comb the endless Plutonian beaches of the Internet, looking for the best in science 🔬 , culture 🎭 and technology 💾 ... ... JUST FOR YOU 🌞 Free to read and subscribe here:...
on Oct 8
From saturation.social
Clive Thompson (@clive@saturation.social)
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I was a kid when this movie came out and can testify yeah it was *quite* a thing to behold https://www.fatherly.com/entertainment/watership-down-retrospective-kids-and-family
on Oct 7
From saturation.social
Deb Chachra (@debcha@saturation.social)
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FREAKING FINALLY "Buttons are back, baby!! This piece has been 15 years in the making, more or less." @mimsical@mastodon.social in the WSJ on the resurgance of physical buttons for interfaces. "Fundamentally, the problem with touch-based interfaces is that they aren’t touch-based at all,...
on Sep 30
From saturation.social
Clive Thompson (@clive@saturation.social)
0 0
Attached: 1 image People, people! 📢 Some new Euripides just dropped 🎭 They found 97 lines from his two tragedies "Ino" and "Polyidus" Previously, we'd only known about those plays by reputation -- i.e. summaries written at the time and after But some of the lines are pure fire 🔥 Item #5...
on Sep 29
From saturation.social
Clive Thompson (@clive@saturation.social)
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Attached: 1 image Behold a gallery of incredibly funky old Swedish packaging Item #4 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free to read and subscribe here: https://buttondown.com/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-24-secret-cars-new-euripides-and-the/
on Sep 27
From saturation.social
Clive Thompson (@clive@saturation.social)
0 0
"Within the next several months, Nevada plans to launch a generative AI system powered by Google that will analyze transcripts of unemployment appeals hearings and issue recommendations to human referees about whether or not claimants should receive benefits." If we're talking about relying on...
on Sep 11
From saturation.social
Clive Thompson (@clive@saturation.social)
0 0
PEOPLE! It's time for ⏰ ... ... "the opposite of doomscrolling" 🌞 ... ... or, the next edition of my Linkfest newsletter, in which I patiently boil the entire Internet to produce a delicious reduction of its most essential items on science, culture, and technology 🔭 Free to read and...
on Sep 9
From saturation.social
Clive Thompson (@clive@saturation.social)
0 1
hoo boy https://apnews.com/article/ai-writes-police-reports-axon-body-cameras-chatgpt-a24d1502b53faae4be0dac069243f418
on Aug 26
From saturation.social
Renee DiResta (@Noupside@saturation.social)
0 0
Anyone familiar with longstanding antivax tropes will recognize all this immediately. “Package inserts”, in antivax land, supposedly reveal all of the terrible side effects and evil ingredients. Doctors are keeping this from you because they are BOUGHT!!! Except all this info is available...
on Aug 23
From saturation.social
Clive Thompson (@clive@saturation.social)
0 0
Attached: 2 images So, KOSA having passed in the Senate -- and now awaiting House approval -- it's evermore worth grappling with the morass this legislation may well plunge us into here's a terrific summary by @mmasnick@mastodon.social -- seriously worth reading, clear and simple and precise:...
on Jul 31
From saturation.social
Clive Thompson (@clive@saturation.social)
0 1
The suburbs considered as ... ... the Backrooms: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2022/1/13/american-suburbs-are-a-horror-movie-and-were-the-protagonists A terrific essay in which the author -- who lives in the Austin suburbs -- considers why she feels creeped-out and uncertain when walking...
on Jul 26
From saturation.social
Clive Thompson (@clive@saturation.social)
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Attached: 1 image As ever, Adam Serwer nails it: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/07/supreme-court-donald-trump-immunity-decision/678859/ Open link here: https://archive.is/0XBKr
on Jul 2
From saturation.social
Renee DiResta (@Noupside@saturation.social)
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Attached: 1 image 📣 SOME PERSONAL NEWS: 1 month from today, my book is out! 🎉 🏢 It’s about propaganda, influence, influencers, & institutions. 🪡It explains why people increasingly live in bespoke realities. 🤑 It breaks down how paranoid cranks run smear campaigns for clout, money, &...
on Jul 1
From saturation.social
Clive Thompson (@clive@saturation.social)
0 0
Attached: 1 image Navy SEALs have disproportionately been dying by suicide … .. with a similar pattern: Each seemed healthy until their early 40s, when — abruptly — a host of severe mental health issues arose One wife suspected brain damage, and had her husband’s brain quickly frozen She...
on Jun 30
From saturation.social
Renee DiResta (@Noupside@saturation.social)
0 0
Attached: 3 images My Wikipedia bio got locked down, so the next front is brigading Amazon. This Twitter Files superfan explicitly called for 1-⭐️ reviews - and his followers delivered. Some left bad reviews, others upvoted them 80+ times. “Dunk on DiResta" — her allies at Langley are...
on Jun 26
From saturation.social
Clive Thompson (@clive@saturation.social)
0 0
"I like to tell people that everything an LLM says is actually a hallucination. Some of the hallucinations just happen to be true because of the statistics of language and the way we use language." A good conversation on LLMs by Melanie Mitchell (above) and Alison Gopnik:...
on Jun 25
From saturation.social
Deb Chachra (@debcha@saturation.social)
0 1
Attached: 1 image I am super-excited that I get to talk all things infrastructure with the incredible AUSTIN KLEON at his local bookstore in Austin, TX. If you’re in the area, join us at BookPeople next Thursday! I will bring stickers and all my favourite Texas infrastructure stories. Details...
on Jun 25
From saturation.social
Clive Thompson (@clive@saturation.social)
0 0
Attached: 1 image Behold "Pnogstrom", a fun and wild new updating of Pong mesmerizing I thought I'd play it for a few minutes, didn't stop for half an hour Item #1 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter: https://buttondown.email/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-21-wooden-satellites-post-binary-fonts/
on Jun 24
From saturation.social
Renee DiResta (@Noupside@saturation.social)
0 0
Here’s the book THEY don’t want you to read. If you did read it, please do leave a review. https://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Rulers-People-Turn-Reality/dp/1541703375?dplnkId=d9180d52-51e6-48ab-9536-8e27fd2827e6&nodl=1
on Jun 24
From saturation.social
Renee DiResta (@Noupside@saturation.social)
0 0
Last week was the 1st disclosure from OpenAI confirming that state-linked actors were using their tools for influence operations —something that’s always been a question of when, not if, if it would happen. But we also got a disclosure from Meta, incl some of the same ops — bc after you create...
on Jun 23
From saturation.social
Clive Thompson (@clive@saturation.social)
0 0
Attached: 1 image NASA is developing a time zone for the moon damn, I’m going to want a watch I can wear down here on earth that runs on LUNAR TIME I’ll keep showing up fractionally late or fractionally early for events, then shrugging and apologizing while pointing to my watch: “sorry, lunar...
on Jun 9
From saturation.social
Renee DiResta (@Noupside@saturation.social)
0 1
“A SPECTER IS HAUNTING right-wing dissident Substackers—the specter of Renée DiResta.” My book is reviewed in The Bulwark today — and it’s a very entertaining read! 😊 https://www.thebulwark.com/p/influencers-bullshitters-losing-shared-reality
on Jun 9
From saturation.social
Clive Thompson (@clive@saturation.social)
0 1
Attached: 1 image Here’s a deeply reported piece by Eli Salsow in the New York Times, in which he spends time with a county election clerk in a small Nevada town with 620 voters:...
on Jun 6
From saturation.social
Clive Thompson (@clive@saturation.social)
0 0
so great https://boingboing.net/2024/06/04/giant-venomous-flying-spiders-headed-for-new-york.html
on Jun 5
From saturation.social
Renee DiResta (@Noupside@saturation.social)
0 0
I feel like I hit some age, maybe 35, where forever after every minor cold has turned into some kind of long-lasting infection. My kids are better in two days, and I suffer for two weeks.
on Jun 2