Robin Sloan writes about the personalized, AI-written, promo emails he’s been getting recently (I have too). “The form is subtler than a one-sized-fits-all promo blast, but it sucks way worse, because it’s fundamentally dishonest.”
What Would J.R.R. Tolkien Think of Palantir?
Palantir, the data analysis defense contractor co-founded by Peter Thiel, was named after the magical seeing stones from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books. This video compares the ethos of the company with that of Tolkien.
The palantiri of The Lord of the Rings ar...
Results Age
Meet the Sad Wives of AI . “Princess Diana...
Meet the Sad Wives of AI. “Princess Diana famously said there were three people in her marriage. For the sad wives of AI, the third is a chatbot.”
07.05.2026
Song Exploder
• Hrishikesh Hirway
Key Change: Emma Straub
My guest today is the bestselling author Emma Straub. Her books include 'This Time Tomorrow,' 'Modern Lovers,' 'The Vacationers,' and more. And with her husband, Michael Fusco, she co-owns the beautiful Brooklyn bookstore Books Are Magic.
I'm so thrilled to...
Just dropped: Foo Fighters’ Tiny Desk Concert ....
Just dropped: Foo Fighters’ Tiny Desk Concert. The setlist includes Learn to Fly, My Hero, and Everlong.
Stop-Motion Lego Dr. Strangelove
Two sequences from Dr. Strangelove done in Lego: Muffley’s call to Kissoff on the hotline in the war room and Dr. Strangelove’s increasingly erratic presentation of his plan to preserve humanity in a mine shaft.
This is really well done. (via bb)
[This is a vintage post originally from Oct 2012.]
Tags: Dr. Strangelove · Lego · movies · stop motion · timeless posts · video
Quoting Boris Mann
“11 AI agents” is meaningless as a phrase.
If I said “I have 11 spreadsheets” or “I have 11 browser tabs” to do my work, it means about the same thing.
Tags: ai-agents, ai, agent-definitions
Longreads
• Brendan Fitzgerald
The Chinese Whiz Kids of Silicon Valley
"Chinese-born tech workers have fueled Silicon Valley for decades. In the AI era, they’re superstars."
Work Chronicles
• Work Chronicles
(comic) Plan B, anyone?
Adam Serwer : “Violence serves an authoritarian...
Adam Serwer: “Violence serves an authoritarian agenda.”
A map of the regions of the US , as voted on by Reddit...
A map of the regions of the US, as voted on by Reddit users. I think this seems mostly correct? One funny artifact: Washington state got some votes for “Northeast”, probably because ppl confused it with D.C. or with “Northwest”.
Colossal
• Kate Mothes
Ornamental Carpets Release Wild Animals in Debbie Lawson’s Provocative Sculptures
The British artist draws on the lineage of nature motifs in art, especially wildlife.
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 Ornamental Carpets Release Wild Animals in Debbie Lawson’s Provocative Sculptures appeared first on Colossal.
Longreads
• Cheri Lucas Rowlands
Reality Check
"AI-generated images have left us questioning what is real. But the godfather of digital forensics, Hany Farid, is not giving up."
CSP Allow-list Experiment
Tool: CSP Allow-list Experiment
An experiment that shows that you can load an app in a CSP-protected sandboxed iframe (see previous note) and have a custom fetch() that intercepts CSP errors and passes them up to the parent window... which can then prompt the user to add that domain to an allow-list and then refresh the page.
I built this one with GPT-5.5 xhigh running in the Codex desktop app.
Tags: content-security-policy, iframes, security
The Atlas Obscura Podcast
• SiriusXM Podcasts & Atlas Obscura
A Syrian Seed Library, Under Siege
When armed fighters captured his workplace during Syria’s civil war, Ali Shehadeh decided to pay them a visit. He was determined to save his life’s work: a massive collection of seeds.
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Daring Fireball
• John Gruber
★ Nextpad++
Windows Notepad is, more or less, the Windows peer to MacOS’s TextEdit — the built-in system text editor. For years, it was really basic — so much more basic than TextEdit that it engendered no affection. You don’t see paeans to Notepad in The New Yorker. Recently though, Mi...
Daring Fireball
• John Gruber
Nextpad++
Windows Notepad is, more or less, the Windows peer to MacOS’s TextEdit — the built-in system text editor. For years, it was really basic — more basic than TextEdit. Recently Microsoft has started beefing it up, though, culminating last year when they added fucking Markdown s...
datasette 1.0a29
Release: datasette 1.0a29
New TokenRestrictions.abbreviated(datasette) utility method for creating "_r" dictionaries. #2695
Table headers and column options are now visible even if a table contains zero rows. #2701
Fixed bug with display of column actions dialog ...