Awesome thread alert https://mastodon.social/@histoftech/117046971227596193

so, the muzak at this ramen restaurant is batshit

it's chill, jazzy/classical/EZ-listening piano-only versions of pop songs

they did a slow, easygoing version of ... "All Star" by smashmouth

then "hit me one more time", also sloowww and smoooth

now it's "come as you are" by nirvana

this has been going on for an hour

is this ... AI generated easy-listening piano?

or did some poor sod have to actually *play* all this?

"Fable" is a fun quick game with a lovely premise:

you start off with a closeup of an animal ...

... and it slowly zooms out

you try to guess it as soon as you can

item #4 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free here: https://buttondown.com/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-47-a-decoy-font-reverse-minesweeper-and/

behold the anti-AI "decoy font"

it's layered

one layer (the fuzzy dark one one back) is for the human ...

... the layer in front (the thin lines) is what the LLMs tend to focus on, if trained on text scraped in the decoy font

mind you, it's not *super* human legible lol ... and I, a *meat human*, tend to focus on the thin-line robot layer myself 😅

but it's a fun concept

item #2 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free to read/subscribe here: https://buttondown.com/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-47-a-decoy-font-reverse-minesweeper-and/

why do scriptwriters hate geologists??

an analysis of found that "geologists die at an alarming rate in the movies"

about one third get killed before the credits roll

item #9 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free here: https://buttondown.com/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-46-curse-tablets-a-robot-cellist-and-why/

Excellent @nprofile1q... piece in @nprofile1q... about the cultural shift in real-world and online flyers ...

... as people start posting AI-generated ones that all have the same bland creepy look

https://www.404media.co/we-are-living-in-a-chatgpt-flyer-pandemic/

(unpaywalled just in case: https://archive.is/pNTQh)

the penguins in a japanese zoo have *very* complex romantic lives

poly groupings, broken hearts, lots of side-eye and drams

so the zoo made a chart of it

item #5 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free here: https://buttondown.com/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-46-curse-tablets-a-robot-cellist-and-why/

the ancient greeks and romans wrote "curse tablets" ...

... to try and give their enemies bad luck

one cursed a prominent lawyer:

“I bind the tongue and soul and speech that he is practicing, and his hands and feet and eyes and mouth. All of these I bind, I hide, I bury, I nail down.”

Item #8 in my latest Linkfest newsletter, free free to read/subscribe to here: https://buttondown.com/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-46-curse-tablets-a-robot-cellist-and-why/

what could possibly go wrong

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/07/01/science/spudcells-synthetic-cell.html?unlocked_article_code=1.uVA.3u_u.U4--YC2GN8OJ&smid=url-share

(gift link)

These sentences that pivot around activists creating, reading and distributing political zines ...

... are a straightforward attack on free speech ...

... and seem pretty clearly designed to intimidate others from creating, distributing or reading politically challenging lit

it's a huge mess

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jun/24/prairieland-texas-ice-protests-zines

more here ...

https://archive.is/VRfej

"the world has moved on"

here, @nprofile1q... neatly and quickly distils the reasons the "enshittocene" has arrived ...

... and what to do about it

"I told her that I don’t think you can solve this as a consumer, because this isn’t a *market* problem, it’s a *political* problem, and shopping isn’t politics"

https://pluralistic.net/2026/06/11/lapsarianism/#nostalgia-is-a-toxic-impulse

Researchers have found that it seems very easy to poison the output of "deep research" AI tools ...

... by poisoning the inputs: Go to Reddit, Wikipedia, Medium (or other "user-generated sites" and write a couple of short lines promoting your product or your idea ...

... and deep-research AI is liable to pick it up and start parroting it

Excellent story on this by @nprofile1q... https://www.404media.co/it-is-trivially-easy-to-use-reddit-to-manipulate-ai-search-research-suggests/

unpaywalled just in case: https://archive.is/OqOXX

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