Radiolab
• WNYC Studios
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
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
Showcasing stories from William Finnegan, Meghan Flaherty, Kulsoom Ijaz, Amy Weiss-Meyer, and Dan Werb.
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.
The Atlas Obscura Podcast
• SiriusXM Podcasts & Atlas Obscura
A hospital and rehab center for birds in Manhattan started with a woman who just wanted to do all she could to help an injured goose. Decades later, it has become an institution.
READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/wild-bird-fund
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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
A love letter to the rocket that everyone is too chicken to build
Daring Fireball
• John Gruber
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
Daring Fireball
• John Gruber
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
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
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, 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…
Daring Fireball
• John Gruber
nbcnews.com/tech/apple/apple-openai-lawsuit-suit-trade-product-hardware-email-sam-altman-rcna587376
This video from Kurzgesagt is a great little primer on how the human brain stores memories.
Memory is one of the strangest abilities you possess. Your brain uses an incredibly complex biological system to preserve moments from your past that no longer exist, allowing you to revisit experiences from years ago. But memories are not always recordings of reality. In fact, every time a memory comes under the spotlight of your attention, it can melt and change a tiny bit.
What exactly is a memory, how is a moment in time stored inside your brain, and why does remembering something slowly rewrite the story of your life?
Tags: brains · neuroscience · science · video
