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Daring Fireball Valid
Text • John Gruber

‘The Insider’

letterboxd.com/film/the-insider/

All this Sturm und Drang surrounding 60 Minutes has me thinking about a re-watch of The Insider, Michael Mann’s great 1999 movie. Letterboxd’s synopsis: “A research chemist comes under personal and professional attack when he decides to appear in a 60 Minutes exposé on Big Tobacco.” It’s a great movie, and feels apt AF at the moment. Here’s the original segment on 60 Minutes, which ran an entire half hour.

What’s going on today is like if — instead of getting shady, threatening, and litigious — the tobacco companies had just purchased CBS, purged the staff at 60 Minutes, and hired a bunch of pro-cigarette stooges to replace them.

Link: letterboxd.com/film/the-insider/

Daring Fireball Valid
Text • John Gruber

‘Microsoft and OpenAI Broke Up — Now They’re Ready to Fight’

theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/942242/microsoft-build-ai-agents-openai-competition?view_token=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpZCI6IjdiRHFjMlJadmgiLCJwIjoiL2FpLWFydGlmaWNpYWwtaW50ZWxsaWdlbmNlLzk0MjI0Mi9taWNyb3NvZnQtYnVpbGQtYWktYWdlbnRzLW9wZW5haS1jb21wZXRpdGlvbiIsImV4cCI6MTc4MTAzNjQ2OSwiaWF0IjoxNzgwNjA0NDY5fQ.jP0KO9OVCO-fGkk1Utt0NIEn97JWaI8zs0zhjf2V2MQ

Hayden Field and Tom Warren, writing for The Verge (gift link): This year’s Build had the vibe of a freshly single divorcée posting a thirst trap on Instagram. “It’s always fun to be at developer conferences in times of great change,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said ons...

kottke.org Valid
Text • Jason Kottke

Chipotlai Max is an AI agent that runs on “stolen...

Chipotlai Max is an AI agent that runs on “stolen compute” from Chipotle’s AI chat bot. They are looking to borrow from bots from Ikea, Expedia, Home Depot, and others.

Marques Brownlee Updates instantly via WebSub
Video

Apple Products That DON'T Exist

yet

kottke.org Valid
Text • Jason Kottke

The Life and Death of Sports Fans

Team Spirit is a wonderful short film for ESPN by Errol Morris about the funerals of die-hard sports fans.

I love the Steelers fan laid out in a recliner under a Steelers blanket in front of a television with a Steelers game on as if “he just fell asleep watching the game”.

[This is a vintage post originally from Aug 2012.]

Tags: Errol Morris · sports · timeless posts · video

Daring Fireball Valid
Text • John Gruber

Lingon and Lingon Pro 10

peterborgapps.com/lingon/

Peter Borg: Lingon makes scheduling apps, scripts, shortcuts, and commands feel simple. Create a task in minutes, run it on a schedule, and stay in control. Lingon helps you run whatever you want whenever you want without living in Terminal. Schedule apps, scripts, shor...

Colossal Valid
Text • Grace Ebert

Don’t Feed the Ducks! A Zany Animation Predicts the Absurd Outcomes of Ignoring the Rules

Don’t Feed the Ducks! A Zany Animation Predicts the Absurd Outcomes of Ignoring the RulesHow many people actually heed the warnings about not feeding ducks waddling around public parks?

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 Don’t Feed the Ducks! A Zany Animation Predicts the Absurd Outcomes of Ignoring the Rules appeared first on Colossal.

kottke.org Valid
Text • Jason Kottke

The official trailer for season three of Silo . Looks...

The official trailer for season three of Silo. Looks like we finally get some origin story stuff (well, more than a brief scene at least).

kottke.org Valid
Text • Jason Kottke

On this date in 2004, the Killdozer rampage took place ....

On this date in 2004, the Killdozer rampage took place. “The bulldozer effortlessly demolished cars and buildings, including the home of a former mayor, the office of a newspaper that had sided against him in an editorial…”

Daring Fireball Valid
Text • John Gruber

Remember When Chrome Went Bad on MacOS?

chromeisbad.com/

Loren Brichter, back in 2020: Short story: Google Chrome installs an updater called Keystone on your computer, which is bizarrely correlated to massive unexplained CPU usage in WindowServer (a system process)[1], and made my whole computer slow even when Chrome wasn’t ru...

Dan’s Polaroids
Text

04.06.2026

A man holding the camera and a woman and child with sunglasses on.
Visiting “Die Kleine” at the Kunstpalast.

Daring Fireball Valid
Text • John Gruber

Google’s Gemini Mac App Is Native, in a Distinctly Google Way, But Annoyingly Presumptuous

gemini.google/mac/

Two months ago Google launched a new native Mac app for Gemini. I’ve been trying it, on and off, since. It’s ... not bad. Certainly better than Claude’s Electron shitbox. But the Gemini app isn’t all that good, either. I’m sticking with ChatGPT, which remains far and away th...

Colossal Valid
Text • Kate Mothes

Jeanne Vicerial’s Ethereal Sculptures Dot Historic Spaces in Aix-en-Provence in ‘Incarnation’

Jeanne Vicerial’s Ethereal Sculptures Dot Historic Spaces in Aix-en-Provence in ‘Incarnation’The French artist's textile-focused practice taps into history and femininity with precision and reverence.

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 Jeanne Vicerial’s Ethereal Sculptures Dot Historic Spaces in Aix-en-Provence in ‘Incarnation’ appeared first on Colossal.

kottke.org Valid
Text • Jason Kottke

Jamelle Bouie: The cruelty is still the point of the...

Jamelle Bouie: The cruelty is still the point of the Trump regime. “This isn’t a border security policy. It’s cruelty as governance — directed at people this administration has decided don’t deserve dignity.”

Longreads Valid
Text • Peter Rubin

How Three Chess Friends Battled Demons and Saved Two Lives

"A homeless chess hustler, a scholar and an aging recluse found hope in a trashed apartment by Central Park."

Simon Willison's Weblog Supports Webmention
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Quoting Emanuel Maiberg, 404 Media

After this story was published Google's spokesperson reached out and asked us to publish a slightly different version of that statement. The new statement no longer stated that "it's critical that we maintain humans in the loop."

— Emanuel Maiberg, 404 Media, Google Employees Internally Share Memes About How Its AI Sucks

Tags: ai-ethics, journalism, ai, google

kottke.org Valid
Text • Jason Kottke

We Are Manipulating the Weather Every Day

Throughout most of human history, the weather has resisted humanity’s desire to change it. For thousands of years, we have sacrificed children, sung songs and danced, brewed alchemical concoctions, chanted prayers, fired cannons, and made many other futile efforts in the at...

kottke.org Valid
Text • Jason Kottke

As time passes, efforts to document the Tiananmen Square...

As time passes, efforts to document the Tiananmen Square protests intensify. “History cannot only be written by officials. If you don’t have real information, it’s difficult for you to have independent thought.”

kottke.org Valid
Text • Jason Kottke

“ Cameron’s World is a web-collage of text...

“Cameron’s World is a web-collage of text and images excavated from the buried neighbourhoods of archived GeoCities pages (1994–2009).”

Longreads Valid
Text • Brendan Fitzgerald

Art for Our Sakes

"Why should we go on making things?"