Radiolab
• WNYC Studios
Neither Confirm Nor Deny
Quoting Kimi K3
Is there something I can actually help you with today?
— Kimi K3, after refusing to leak its system prompt
Tags: kimi, ai-personality, generative-ai, ai, llms
Colossal
• Kate Mothes
‘Voices in the Mirror’ Honors the Legacy of Pioneering Photographer Gordon Parks
The exhibition also celebrates the 20th anniversary of The Gordon Parks Foundation.
Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article ‘Voices in the Mirror’ Honors the Legacy of Pioneering Photographer Gordon Parks appeared first on Colossal.
Longreads
• Longreads
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
🎬 Motel Hell

This review may contain spoilers. Tap or click to view.
That was actually pretty funny. But where did all the "zombies" go at the end??? I think this had more potential, especially the ending. But I also wish they had more utilised "Ivan and the Terribles". Nonetheless, this was worth a watch.
Next event: The Haunted on July 24, 2026, 20:00 at Turock, Essen.
Trump accuses China of 'sinister election meddling'
Spot birds not golf
Suggestion for hyperscalers feeling pressure over data center water use:
Buy up a few exclusive country clubs, convert the golf courses into public parks, pay for guides and binoculars to get the previous members into birdwatching - help them embrace a more sustainable hobby!
Google used 10.9 billion gallons in 2025, so about 30 million gallons per day.
The Coachella Valley has 120 golf courses each using ~800 acre-feet per year, which is ~750,000 gallons per day.
So Google buying up 40 of those courses (1/3) should do the trick.
Tags: ai-energy-usage, ai
Mars For The Rest of Us
• Maciej Cegłowski
More Bounce to the Ounce!
A love letter to the rocket that everyone is too chicken to build
Daring Fireball
• John Gruber
European Commission Adds Exemptions for Watches and Earbuds to Portable Battery Removal Rules
Firefox in WebAssembly
Mermaid to ASCII art (mermaid-ascii)
Tool: Mermaid to ASCII art (mermaid-ascii)
After building the Mermaid to ASCII tool based on Grok Build's Rust code I learned that there's an older, more fully-featured Go library called AlexanderGrooff/mermaid-ascii that implements a similar pattern, so I had Claude Fable 5 compile that one to WebAssembly as well so I could compare the two.
This one includes support for colors!

Tags: go, tools, webassembly, mermaid
Daring Fireball
• John Gruber
Quiche Browser Now Defaults to No-AI Web Search Results
Daring Fireball
• John Gruber
Dithering: ‘Apple Sues OpenAI’
Tuesday’s episode of Dithering was a good one, especially for the DF audience, so we’ve moved it outside the paywall and made it free-to-listen on the web. (We don’t (yet?) have an RSS feed that you can put in your podcast player for these occasional free episodes, alas.) I have a slightly different take on Apple’s lawsuit against OpenAI than I’ve seen expressed elsewhere.
If you don’t subscribe to Dithering, you probably should. Two episodes per week, 15 minutes per episode. Not a minute less, not a minute more. $7/month or $70/year — or, get it included with the Stratechery Plus bundle.
Link: dithering.passport.online/member/episode/apple-sues-open-ai
Why Paul McCartney Won't Be On My Channel
In this episode I discuss why neither Paul McCartney nor The Rolling Stones will be on my channel. Check Out The Lefsetz Letter Here: https://lefsetz.com/wordpress/ My Beato Club supporters: Justin Scott Terence Mark Jason Murray Lucienne Kilpatrick Alexander Young Jason Wagner Todd Ladner Rob Kline Nicholas Long Tim Benson Leonardo Martins da Costa Rodrigues Eddie Perez David Solomon MICHAEL JOYCE Stephen Stubbs colin stead Jonathan Wentworth-Linton Patrick Payne MATTHEW KARIS Matthew Barouch Shaun Samuels Danny Kurywchak Gregory Reedy Sean Coleman Alexander Verbitskiy CL Turner Jason Pappafotis John Fulford Margaret Carno Robert C David M Combs Eric Flatt Reto Spoerli Herr Moritz Adam Monte St. Johns Jon Beezley Peter DeVault Eric Nabstedt Eric Beggs Rich Germano Brian Bloom Peter Pillitteri Piush Dahal Toby Guidry
Kimi K3, and what we can still learn from the pelican benchmark
What Training My Chaotic Dog Taught Me About Power,...
What Training My Chaotic Dog Taught Me About Power, Control — and Human Beings. “As any parent of a toddler knows, being morally liable for something that is incapable of moral liability is a fraught and stressful business.”
Daring Fireball
• John Gruber
OpenAI Takes a Second Crack at a Response to Apple’s Trade Secret Theft Lawsuit
OpenAI, in a statement to Bloomberg this week:
“While we take these allegations seriously, we’re not aware of any evidence that this complaint has merit. We believe in fair competition and allowing people the freedom to work wherever they choose, and we’re focused on building innovative technology that empowers people everywhere.”
“We’re not aware of any evidence that this complaint has merit” is very different from, say, “This complaint has no merit.” Again, a curious response.
Link: bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-14/openai-says-it-s-not…
Building a World Map With Only 500 Bytes .
Daring Fireball
• John Gruber
Lawyer for Apple Mixed Up Two OpenAI Employees’ Names, Sent One Email to the Wrong Guy, Back in February
nbcnews.com/tech/apple/apple-openai-lawsuit-suit-trade-product-hardware-email-sam-altman-rcna587376

