things

“Fast Car” is not a relic of its time but tragically timeless.

AIxDESIGN LIBRARY is a “library of books on the topics of technology, AI, society, and design.” Nice site.

“Real people sometimes pay to access content, or donate to support a nonprofit publisher, or watch an ad. Those things can be annoying but pay for the content to be produced in the first place. If we strip them away, there’s no writing, information, or expression for the app to summarize. A world where everyone uses an app like this is a death spiral to an information desert.”

- Stripping the web of its humanity

It’s lava like a live volcano
Might wild out like Lyle Alzado

Wax Raps on Bicycle

An “indoor waterfall and garden/forest at Singapore’s Jewel Changi Airport.” via What’s Your Favorite Airport Amenity?

Lit Tapes:

Playlists compiled from songs referenced in books.

Listen to music, audio books, and podcasts on a purpose-built device with a tried-and-true form factor, a familiar user interface, and no interest in your data.

(via Tangara)

“I used to listen to your podcast”:

I get it.

It’s fine. I take no offense. In fact, that’s part of the magic of podcasts! There’s an ebb and flow to them.

by Matt Schu

“AI is good at making scary images. Even if the prompt lacks all hints of horror kitsch, you need to get ready to see or feel something disturbing when you look at AI images. It’s like a spell. Part of the scariness comes from the cancer-like pattern that reproduces the same ornament without considering its meaning and consequence.”

- AI Art is The New Stock Image

Source: @technicallymims on threads.net

Hundreds of people arm themselves with vegetables in Piornal, Spain, each year to pelt an evil figure of legend.

Turnips at the ready: Jarramplas festival

“Triple Seven” by Photographer Anne Lass

“A set can tell us what a character cannot. There is no screen time for lengthy exposition about every detail that is Gwen Stacy, but through Set Decoration we can get hints of the events and details of her life that shaped her.”

From Patrick O’Keefe‘s dive into production design. 

Atari Pong Sinclair Hat

It’s 2024 and FiiO is making a portable cassette player with all-analog features

via ArtStation by Maojin.Lee

via Bjorn Steinbekk

“Life is a never-ending succession of NFL teams adding ping pong tables w/stories about how they’re finally coming together as a family and enjoying each other’s company, and NFL teams removing ping pong tables w/stories about how they’re finally taking football seriously.”

- Dan Steinberg

Baugespanne is the practice of visualizing “… future urban developments in scale 1:1 by an inflated balloon-structure.” Filing under the word of the day.

Recommended dosage of work: “to get the mental wellbeing benefits of paid work, the most “effective dose” is only around one day a week – as anything more makes little difference.” Not an Onion article.

A blog doesn’t need to be profound: it just needs to be a place to post some text you want to share.

Ramana Sivaranjan on his 20 year old blog A Funkaoshi Production

We can engage with people outside the rule-bound linear progression of offline relationships, and discover information about another person, miles and years from the person they were when they were posted it. Try responding to a post on a message board dated a while ago, maybe 10 years or more. That person might have lived in five cities between then and now, and fallen in and out of love three times, but the person they once were remains a notational snapshot trace, as if it were yesterday, offering thoughts on gardens, allergies, movies, or recipe ingredients.

From Lurking: How a Person Became a User by Joanne McNeil. I’m only through the Introduction of this book and I’m already all 👀!

Deepening a relationship. Visiting a sick friend. Serving at a soup kitchen. Andreessen’s “techno-optimist” mindset is confounded by acts of love. They don’t make money, they don’t supercharge a market, and perhaps most heretically, they’re typically low-tech or even involve no technology at all. What is a techno-optimist supposed to do with this “love” idea, this thing that keeps people out of markets and off the internet? It literally doesn’t compute.

Marc Andreessen is right – love doesn’t scale

the Dolphins hired McDaniel, and in came a philosophy that’s unusual in this business — albeit less and less in the rest of society. Miami’s rise comes amid a cultural reexamination of leadership, people management and parenting, a growing belief that successful, confident people should be neither brutalized nor micromanaged. That it’s possible to be good at your job and be happy.

From Mike McDaniel Needs a Reboot (gift link). Even if you’re not into football, it’s really interesting to see how a non-traditional coach is succeeding in the NFL.