← Feed

Posts

• View post

  Since there’s been a resurgence lately of the “mastodon is mostly just for folks who use Linux” thing … … i’m now curious about my community here (i’m offering intentionally crude and ungranular options in this poll) “I use Linux …” (Please boost!)

• View post

  this point -- by @pluralistic@mamot.fr -- is basically all anyone needs to know about the endless openai's-agents-hacked-into-hugging-face discourse https://pluralistic.net/2026/09/12/god-in-the-box/ the whole post is worth reading, go check it out!

• View post

  do you rewatch TV shows? or reread books? rewatch movies, obsessively play the same video game? there's a term for that: "volitional reconsumption" ... and the psychology behind why we find it so pleasant is really interesting item #6 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free to read/subscribe to here: https://buttondown.com/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-48-the-mouthpad-volitional-reconsumption/

• View post

  here, @pluralistic@mamot.fr perfectly distils the mechanics of why, to beat back enshittification ... ... we need true competition which, as Cory has pointed out for years now, why we need antitrust enforcement https://pluralistic.net/2026/08/25/gammamax/#felony-contempt-of-business-model

• View post

  I was reading a piece about Lindsey Graham and it mentioned him appearing 63 times on "Meet the Press" ... ... and I realized I've never in my entire life sat down to watch "Meet the Press". What's ... what's it like?

• View post

  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/

• View post

  Excellent @jasonkoebler@mastodon.social piece in @404mediaco@mastodon.social 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)

• View post

  Doom running on ... ... an array of *e coli* cells (to be clear, the e coli is just the display, not the computation necessary to run the game lol) item #3 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free to read and subscribe to here: https://buttondown.com/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-46-curse-tablets-a-robot-cellist-and-why/

• View post

  behold "The Listening Museum" ... ... which has samples of the sounds of 36 famous clicky keyboards you can pick a model, type away, and hear the glorious noise item #2 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free here: https://buttondown.com/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-46-curse-tablets-a-robot-cellist-and-why/

• View post

  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)

• View post

  okay people 😀 it's your lucky day 🍀 it's time for "the opposite of doomscrolling" 🌞 the latest edition of my newsletter "The Linkfest" has dropped 📬 free to read and subscribe to here: https://buttondown.com/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-46-curse-tablets-a-robot-cellist-and-why/ this issue includes: 🪴 Iphone-case terrarium 🌩️ "Weathergotchi" 🦠 running Doom on e coli cells 🔭 telescope ranchers 🐧 chart of polyamorous penguin relationships 🤖 robot cel...

• View post

  Accenture examined the massive use of AI tokens by its employees and found that a big chunk wasn't coders ... ... it was nontechnical staff using AI to turn PDFs into images and markdown terrific scoop at @404mediaco@mastodon.social: https://www.404media.co/the-tokenpocalypse-is-here-companies-are-scrambling-to-stop-spending-so-much-on-ai/ unpaywalled just in case: https://archive.is/c6DSo

• View post

  Personally I am in the “occasionally” I float between a modern top-of-the-line MacBook Pro, a cheap desktop running windows, and a 13-year-old Thinkpad running Linux

• View post

  back in the beforetimes when I was on Twitter, for years I ran a poetry bot it'd take a huge corpus of lines I'd written -- *very* loosely in emulation of Basho and several lyric poets of antiquity -- and pick three at random, publishing four times a day after I left Twitter in 2022, I turned it off but now I just relaunched the bot ... ... on mastodon! le voila: @clivebot@saturation.social

• View post

  they're sampling the smell of old libraries ... ... so they can preserve it archivally -- and recreate it when needed archival smell-o-vision, more or less item #4 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free here: https://buttondown.com/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-44-microchimerism-sonic-boom-duct-tape/

• View post

  btw, NYC area music folks !!🎶 I've been remiss in flacking my gigs here but hey now! 📣 if you're around today ... ... at 6 pm my band Lipstick Driver is throwing it down at Mama Tried, out in Brooklyn come on by, it will be glorious noise 🎸 , we've written a buncha new songs

• View post

  okay people it's your lucky day 🍀 it's time for "the opposite of doomscrolling" my latest Linkfest newsletter just dropped free to read/subscribe to here: https://buttondown.com/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-44-hallucinopedia-salmon-on-cocaine-and/ this issue includes: 🎈 tin blimp 🧱 famous album covers done in lego 🪈 medieval version of "Take On Me" 🧩 “Uncrossy”, the game 🎶 newborn babies can predict musical rhythm 🌊 $2.1 million to buy...

• View post

  Meta is now tracking the mouse clicks, mouse movements and keyboard activity of employees to train AI, bien sur employees are understandly pissed Gift article: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/08/technology/meta-ai-employees-miserable.html?unlocked_article_code=1.g1A.kF8P.ksTGyhSxmbmz

• View post

  Trump pardoned a man who'd been convicted of tax cheating -- he withheld over $10 million from the paychecks of nurses, doctors and other employees, money that was intended to make their tax contributions ... ... and blew it on a $2 million yacht and shopping he was caught, fined $4.4 million and given an 18-month jail term then his mother attended a $1 million Trump dinner ... ... and soon after he was pardoned Full story here: https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/trump-pardon...

• View post

  Behold a seven-segment clock display ... ... that runs pneumatically it alternately sucks in and then releases the segments, so they appear as divots in a rubbery surface very organic! item #6 in my latest Linkfest newsletter, free to read/subscribe to here: https://buttondown.com/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-44-microchimerism-sonic-boom-duct-tape/

• View post

  Super piece by Adam Serwer, who reported on the everyday Minnesotans who are observing and protesting ICE's actions, while delivering food to their neighbors who are afraid to leave their houses His key, bang-on point, is this: All assumptions the White House makes -- about how society works, how culture works, the nature of bravery and identity --- are completely wrong it's why Trump's attack on Minnesota is foundering The piece: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026...

• View post

  someone made a translator it that takes a regular English sentence ... ... and translates it to LinkedIn-speak it's unsettlingly good Item #3 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free to read/subscribe here: https://buttondown.com/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-44-microchimerism-sonic-boom-duct-tape/

• View post

  Bing’s new ChatGPT-infused chatbot is producing some remarkably wrong results: https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/microsoft-chatgpt-bing-becoming-ai-nightmare/ “The chatbot dreamed up fake financial numbers when asked about GAP’s financial performance, created a fictitious 2023 Super Bowl in which the Eagles defeated the Chiefs before the game was even played, and even gave descriptions of deadly mushrooms when asked about what an edible mushroom would look like.”

• View post

  so, this woman was a world-champion Tetris player ... ... and *didn't know it* her husband discovered she regularly got scores higher than anyone on the planet she went to a competition and crushed the world record Item #2 in my latest free Linkfest newsletter: https://buttondown.com/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-44-microchimerism-sonic-boom-duct-tape/

• View post

  hello you lucky people 🍀 it's time ⏰ once again for ... ... "the opposite of doomscrolling" my latest Linkfest newsletter just dropped -- free to read/subscribe to here: https://buttondown.com/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-44-microchimerism-sonic-boom-duct-tape/ This issue includes: 🦠 microchimerism 💬 English-to-LinkedIn translator 🔊 sonic-boom duct tape 🎵 a 25-year fight over a 2-second sample 🌲 mini forests 🏆 the accidental Tetris champion 🎺 Wagner&#...

• View post

  "We're all just content for ICE" ... in which Ryan Broderick of the Garbage Day newsletter describes what he saw during four days of watching ICE in Minnesota: https://www.garbageday.email/p/we-re-all-just-content-for-ice Particularly of note, he points out, is how tightly intertwined are ICE and right-wing influencers and media "I watched as one ICE officer fist-bumped a pro-Trump content creator once he learned he was there to support them" or th...

• View post

  Excellent @emilymbender essay outlining the difference between thinkers who are studying real, present dangers of AI -- like how it's being used to make horrid, GIGO-fueled decisions about people's lives ... ... and the realm of tech folks who ignore that and instead focus on fuzzily-defined, gauzily sci-fi prospects of AI taking over the world, using everything from Bell-Curve-era definitions of IQ to longtermist calculations (i.e. "pulling numbers out of their asses&a...

• View post

  I'd been reading about the surge in prices for computer RAM, but only paying partial attention but *wow* the increases are huge! last july 2025 I built a new PC for myself, with 32 gigs of RAM from Microcenter -- the RAM was $83.22 i just googled the precise SKU info from my receipt, and the same RAM configuration is now $379 https://www.microcenter.com/product/664095/gskill-ripjaws-s5-32gb-(2-x-16gb)-ddr5-6000-pc5-48000-cl36-dual-channel-desktop-memory-kit-f5-6000j3636f16gx2-rs5k-bl...

• View post

  Behold the "challenge coin" that the federal government is handing out to employees who worked on the deportations and detentions around Minneapolis this winter it is both predictable -- the sort of garish video-game conflict imagery in which Trump's administration revels -- and grotesque for people who don't like being called "fascist", their imagery is squarely and risibly in that camp https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/staff-at-minnesota-...

• View post

  hey kids you may want to tune into the NASA livestream for the Artemis 2 mission it's rapidly approaching home and the earth is getting *big* they're set to splashdown at 8:07 pm tonight https://www.youtube.com/live/6RwfNBtepa4