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I vaguely recall first trying some version of Eliza back in the 1990s. I never found it all that impressive nor understood its stature in the AI literature. It’s better than a bunch of if/then statements but not by much. There’s some natural language grammar parsing that is ...

The Eliza Archaeology Project: ELIZA is the original and highly influential chatbot that launched the genre of human-computer interactions using text-based agents. It was created at MIT in the 1960s as part of Project MAC by it’s [sic] designer and programmer, Joseph Wei...

The End of Reading Is Here. “The decline of reading will bring about changes of the same magnitude. It will affect our innermost thoughts, our society’s politics and culture, and how we tell the history of our civilization.”

"When an alligator kills someone in America, it can make international headlines. What happens to the thousands of gators that people deem 'nuisances' does not."

David Epstein, author of the recent Inside the Box (a book about the value of constraints), did a fascinating video on “anticipatory skill” and “chunking” and how players like Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo (who can accurately head the ball even in the dark) use them t...

Inventing ELIZA: How the First Chatbot Shaped the Future of AI. “This book presents the rediscovered original source code of ELIZA alongside previously unseen scripts…, revealing a far more sophisticated system than previously documented.”

British political news: Nigel Farage is facing competition for his parliamentary seat from “a man with a ‌trash can on his head, better known as Count Binface”. From the country that brought you Boaty McBoatface…

"Masha Polska, 15, was an avid dancer who had been dreaming of a star turn in the group waltz. That was not to be."

This year, photographers in 160 countries submitted more than 108,000 images.

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 Atmospheric Scenes and Layered Interpretations Top the 2026 Hasselblad Masters Contest appeared first on Colossal.

Dr. Drang, in a post replete with examples of icons of popular apps from the original Macintosh, in their one-bit glory: You can see that Apple liked the idea of app icons being a tilted rectangle with some image inside the rectangle to indicate what the app did. The han...

Users expect apps and agents to reach the tools they already work in. Every integration that gets you there is a different OAuth flow, a different token lifecycle, weeks of infrastructure before you write a line of product code.

WorkOS Pipes handles it with one API call. Pre-built connectors for GitHub, Slack, Salesforce, Google Drive, and more. Pipes handles OAuth, token refresh, and credential storage. You call the real provider API with a fresh token, every time.

Connect to 100+ providers →

Link: workos.com/pipes?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium…

Metric is a band from Canada that was formed in 1998. They’ve won four Juno Awards, including Group of the Year. Rolling Stone included them in their list of the 50 Greatest Canadian Artists of All Time. In April 2026, Metric released their 10th album, Romanticize the Dive. And for this episode, I spoke to Emily Haines and Jimmy Shaw about how they made the opening song on that album, “Victim of Luck.”

For more info, visit songexploder.net/metric.

City’s Beautification Initiative Hamstrung By Commitment To Local Artists. “I’m pretty sure when the mayor promised residents a revitalized arts district, he didn’t mean a couple of wonky fish sculptures haphazardly nailed to a tree…” Bwhahaha.

"Netflix’s new adaptation of the beloved book series will probably leave out some of the most fascinating details from the author’s life—from Pa Ingalls’s ineptitude to the serial killers that stalked Kansas during her childhood."

"It felt like a stabbing. It felt like a burning. It felt like a dull ache, then a sharp one, then it radiated all the way down."

The author of Any Person Is the Only Self and recent Guggenheim fellow talks about the worst time of day, the value of wasting an hour, and chilaquiles.

We head south of Miami to hear the story of a family that took a gamble on a humble roadside stand that blossomed into a fruit emporium and community staple. 

This episode is part of our ongoing coverage of the soccer world championship. In each episode, we take you beyond the stadium, and to a nearby wonder that’s off the beaten track.

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"Johnny Knoxville and his band of merry pranksters got me through one of the worst weeks of my life."

In this video I discuss the 2nd movement of the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 Op. 15 from 1858. This is insanely beautiful and you need to hear it!

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