Proof Without Content
Moltbook is the most interesting place on the internet right now
The hottest project in AI right now is Clawdbot, renamed to Moltbot, renamed to OpenClaw. It's an open source implementation of the digital personal assistant pattern, built by Peter Steinberger to integrate with the messaging system of your choice. It's two months old, has ...
Iran says it's ready for talks with US
US President Donald Trump is again threatening military strikes on Iran, saying he has sent a ‘huge armada’ to the Middle East while signalling he is open to negotiations. Meanwhile, Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi has been holding talks in Turkey, where President Re...
This guy built an autonomous flying umbrella (powered...
This guy built an autonomous flying umbrella (powered by drones) that automagically follows you around in the rain. (A possible counter to a personal raincloud?)
Spurious Correlations
For his Spurious Correlations project, Tyler Vigen compares data sets that are the very definition of “correlation is not causation”. For instance, the number of Walmart stores worldwide correlates very strongly with the current distance between the Earth & Saturn. Or Google searches for “avocado toast” closely tracks biomass power generated in the Philippines.
Tags: infoviz · Tyler Vigen
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Minnesota community leaders are calling for an...
Minnesota community leaders are calling for an “ICE Out” general strike and protests on Friday, January 30. “No work. No school. No shopping. Stop funding ICE.” KDO will be participating.
A huge collection of graphic design archives and...
“There isn’t a lot of reliable information...
“There isn’t a lot of reliable information out there about how to buy a gas mask, especially for the specific purpose of living under state repression. But hopefully after reading this guide you’ll feel equipped to make an educated decision.”
Prettifying Graffiti
For a project called Tag Clouds, street artist Mathieu Tremblin paints over graffiti tags and makes them more legible.
The result looks like when Word says that the Hardkaze and Aerosol fonts are used in the document you’re trying to open but are missing from your computer and you click OK to replace them with whatever’s available. I think the font above is Arial, which is perfect. I also like this faux-watermark piece he did:
[This is a vintage post originally from Jul 2016.]
Tags: art · graffiti · Mathieu Tremblin · timeless posts
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“AI skeptics need to update their priors: Plenty of...
“AI skeptics need to update their priors: Plenty of cause for concern, plenty of room to hit these companies for unethical behavior, resource demands, etc, but we are so, so far past the era of ‘stochastic parrots’”.
Vimeo was recently acquired by a private equity firm and...
Vimeo was recently acquired by a private equity firm and you know what comes next: Vimeo Lays Off ‘Most’ of Its Staff, Allegedly Includes ‘the Entire Video Team’.
Your Friends Are Still Acting Like Everything is Normal...
Your Friends Are Still Acting Like Everything is Normal in America. What Do You Do? “The first obligation we all have is an epistemic one: It’s to know what kind of reality we are actually inhabiting.” (gift link)
Defund Science, Distort Culture, Mock Education....
Defund Science, Distort Culture, Mock Education. “We have a very focused and intense effort across the board to set America back a generation, at least, for education, health, research, climate policy.”
Thing I did not know I was looking for (but totally was):...
Thing I did not know I was looking for (but totally was): a deep dive into ASCII rendering. Super interesting!
Vintage Tourist Maps of Japan
The gang at Present & Correct found a cache of pre-war tourist maps of Japan while rummaging around in Tokyo’s Jinbōchō used book district. They photographed them for a new self-published book called Paper Trails.
Tags: books · design · Japan · maps · Paper Trails
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The Copyrightability of Fonts Revisited by Matthew...
The Copyrightability of Fonts Revisited by Matthew Butterick, a type designer & copyright litigator. “If a court were asked to directly consider the copyrightability of an ordinary digital font, it would likely rule in the negative.”
Clint Smith visits the National Memorial for Peace and...
Clint Smith visits the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. “The goal of the sites is to force visitors to confront the violence of the past without the counterweight of a more uplifting narrative to assuage their distress.”
Bruce Springstein wrote & recorded a song about...
Bruce Springstein wrote & recorded a song about Minnesota’s battle against tyranny: Streets Of Minneapolis. “Our city’s heart and soul persists / Through broken glass and bloody tears / On the streets of Minneapolis.”
David Lynch Went to the First Beatles Concert in the US (1964)
In one of his final on-camera interviews, David Lynch recounts going to the very first Beatles concert in the US in 1964.
I ended up going to this concert. I didn’t really have any idea that it was the first concert. I didn’t have any idea how big this event was. And it w...
Why do RSS readers look like email clients? “When...
Why do RSS readers look like email clients? “When we applied that same visual language to RSS (the unread counts, the bold text for new items, the sense of a backlog accumulating) we imported the anxiety without the cause.”