#85 February 2026 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

A bunch of things I’ve found on my digital strolls in the past month (which I added to my Tumblr) for your eyes / ears / brain to spend time on (as no longer active on Twitter or on LinkedIn much).

READ

“The Beatles wrote 227 songs, but only 34 hit the Top 10. Do you think they would put out a song that they didn’t believe could be a hit? Mozart wrote over 600 songs, but only about 50 of them are widely played. Do you think he purposefully wrote duds? Of course not. Both the Beatles and Mozart made work that interested them, and occasionally those works resonated with other people.”
How to Make a Living as an Artist

“Audacious has reached new heights — with more than $1 billion committed by the Audacious community at the end of 2025 to provide the flexible, long-term funding to launch and scale these bold ideas. Audacious has also launched a reinvestment pilot program, providing a secondary funding round to previous grantees that demonstrated significant results after their initial five years of funding. The Audacious donor community has committed nearly $50 million in total follow-on funding to three selected organizations to scale their work and sustain their impact. This pilot demonstrates a commitment to flexible, long-term funding — and to the value of providing a longer runway for organizations creating transformational change.”
The Audacious Project reveals its 2025 cohort and $1B catalyzing change | TED Blog

“According to the patent, the model “may be used for simulating the user when the user is absent from the social networking system,” including cases where the person is on a long break or deceased. The filing notes that the impact is “much more severe and permanent” if the user has died and cannot return to the platform. The technology appears designed with Meta’s own platforms like Facebook and Instagram in mind. By analyzing “user-specific” data, the system could reconstruct a digital persona that continues interacting on the platform as if the person were still active.”
Meta patents AI that takes over a dead person’s account to keep posting and chatting – Dexerto

“For example, last week I visited the website for a cancer support group. According to Disconnect, when I clicked a button on a form that said I was a cancer patient or a survivor, the website sent TikTok my email address along with those details. A women’s health company sent TikTok data when I looked at fertility tests. A mental health organisation pinged TikTok when I indicated I’m looking for a crisis counsellor. Websites that use pixels send data about every single visitor, so it doesn’t matter if you don’t have a TikTok account.”
TikTok is tracking you, even if you don’t use the app. Here’s how to stop it

“I think the best way to get a handle on the risks of AI is to ask the following question: suppose a literal “country of geniuses” were to materialize somewhere in the world in ~2027. Imagine, say, 50 million people, all of whom are much more capable than any Nobel Prize winner, statesman, or technologist. The analogy is not perfect, because these geniuses could have an extremely wide range of motivations and behavior, from completely pliant and obedient, to strange and alien in their motivations. But sticking with the analogy for now, suppose you were the national security advisor of a major state, responsible for assessing and responding to the situation. Imagine, further, that because AI systems can operate hundreds of times faster than humans, this “country” is operating with a time advantage relative to all other countries: for every cognitive action we can take, this country can take ten.”
Dario Amodei — The Adolescence of Technology

WATCH

EXPLORE

Check out the Trustbuilding Awards from IofC International, aiming “to recognize, encourage and raise the profile of the outstanding individuals/ organizations, promote youth efforts in building trust and thus raise the standards of ‘trustbuilders’ around the world.” — deadline 12 April 2026.

If you have a mechanical pencil the ‘clean-out rod’ usually lives in the underside of the built-in eraser, check out the How to Clear a Mechanical Pencil Lead Jam | JetPens guide for more info.

Intertapes is a stunning homage to found cassette tapes (search via format, map, list or just select one from the catalog and press play to hear—you can also submit your own), superb.

Draw a horse and see it frolic with others via gradient.horse (make sure you click a horse for a surprise as well as see non-horses option via the question mark pop-up).

For those using wordpress.org check out the Internet Archive Wayback Machine Link Fixer plugin to solve those dead link issues now and into the future.

Listen to the inaugural #1 Beginnings + Podcast With Natasha Zimmerman | February 2026 – fireside.rs (my new venture).

Trawl through and download to use over 250 monophonic ringtones from the late ’90s / early 2000s via Tone3310.

A free custom night sky poster make (with 4k print-ready download option) via Free Star Map Generator.

All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.