Tag: Create

#81 October 2025 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

cloudy sunrise over Lyall Bay - justadandak.com
Cloudy sunrise over Lyall Bay.

A bunch of things I’ve found on my digital strolls (which I added to my Tumblr) for your eyes and ears plus brain to spend time on (as no longer on Twitter).

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“OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, released their own browser called Atlas, and it actually is something new: the first browser that actively fights against the web. Let’s talk about what that means, and what dangers there are from an anti-web browser made by an AI company — one that probably needs a warning label when you install it. The problems fall into three main categories:
1. Atlas substitutes its own AI-generated content for the web, but it looks like it’s showing you the web
2. The user experience makes you guess what commands to type instead of clicking on links
3. You’re the agent for the browser, it’s not being an agent for you.”
ChatGPT’s Atlas: The Browser That’s Anti-Web – Anil Dash

“In spite of that, I hear from Iqram and he has an idea: I should auction off 10% of myself for £1m. This sounds frightening, but it could be the deal that gets me a million. Word of the proposal reaches Kavita Gupta, founder of crypto hedge fund Delta Blockchain. She seems genuinely interested. I leave New York and go to meet her in Miami and, in her snow-white apartment, we talk business. I pitch all the businesses I’ve created during the 90-day period, but claim them as wins. My Ethical Sweatshop fashion brand? A smashing success. My educational class? A stroke of genius! This actually works. Kavita wants to talk terms. She will own 10% of all my earnings and assets for the rest of my life. But she wants me to run all life decisions by her. In the next 12 months, I will create a crypto meme coin with her named OobahCoin.”
‘Please can I have a million pounds?’ A documentary-maker’s wild attempt to strike it rich in 90 days | Television | The Guardian

“On September 30, 2022, Spain passed Law 19/2022 granting legal personhood to the Mar Menor lagoon and its basin, making it the first ecosystem in Europe to attain such legal status. This milestone followed a citizen-led initiative, the Iniciativa Legislativa Popular (ILP), supported by more than 600,000 signatures, underscoring widespread public demand for enhanced ecological protection. The law positions the Mar Menor as a legal subject with its own rights, and reinforces its ecological, cultural, and spiritual significance.”
Spain Law 19/2022: rights of the Mar Menor lagoon

“In each case, the narrative is wrested away from the spectacle of the protest and focused on the undeniable consequence of the void. It forces the media and the public to confront not the “problem” of the protestor, but the value of the professional. It asks a much more powerful question: what is our society like when these people simply aren’t there? By all means, unions must continue to organise, agitate, and give voice to the anger and frustration of their members. But they should experiment with doing so in private. The solidarity can be built in closed forums. The public-facing action should be one of strategic, silent withdrawal.”
A Labour Day Reflection: Is There Power in Silent Strikes?

“Created by the Inner Development Goals Foundation, this updated Guide draws on insights from over 21,000 people in 165 countries, and was curated by 25 research teams around the world. We offer it as a companion on the journey — a guide to collective human wisdom, ancient and emerging, that empowers us to shape a more compassionate, sustainable, and thriving future. We are a global community promoting the human capacity for wisdom, compassion, and collective action for a better world.”
Check out the new Inner Development Goals in this pdf – Google Drive

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Over 70 years of IKEA catalogues (from 1951-2021).

Six Degrees of Wikipedia basically finds the shortest connective path between two topics via Wikipedia.

The “Codex Atlanticus” project is all the content from Leonardo da Vinci and presents them online for free.

Check out Tinnitus Neuromodulator which is a free tinnitus masker which you can can tailor to your own needs.

The College of Extraordinary Experiences is a five day annual learning experience held at Kliczków Castle, Poland. 

Been using The Ultimate Relaxing Music Player | Calmy Leon for ambient sounds whilst doing deep work these days, check it out.

The Roc Camera claims to capture verifiably real photos via “combining attested sensor data, zero-knowledge proofs, and a tamper-proof environment”.

30 minutes with a stranger is a wonderful visual essay illustrating the results of a research project in which they brought two people who didn’t know each other together for a conversation.

Check out this article for a take on ‘The feed reader for finding actionable content‘ (covers off most in the market still functioning, and if you don’t know what RSS is then you’re missing out!).

All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
Published

#80 September 2025 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

self-publishing options - kevin kelly - flowchart and decision tree
via The Technium: Everything I Know about Self-Publishing

A bunch of things I’ve found on my digital strolls (which I added to my Tumblr) for your eyes and ears plus brain to spend time on (as no longer on Twitter).

READ

“New Zealand citizens are leaving the country in record numbers. Between July 2024-2025, 73,400 New Zealanders left, compared with 25,800 returning home to live, according to Stats NZ. In January, the government relaxed its visitor visa rules to attract so-called “digital nomads”– people who work remotely while travelling – to work in New Zealand. The visa extends to influencers, as long as they are being paid by an overseas company.”
New Zealand loosens residency restrictions as record number of citizens leave | New Zealand | The Guardian

“Research from Friends of the Earth Cymru has found that at least 45,000 sites across Wales could be contaminated with toxic waste but have never been adequately inspected, leaving communities and wildlife vulnerable to a potential environmental crisis. Despite Wales’s extensive industrial history, Tuesday’s publication found that due to a lack of funding and oversight, only 82 sites across the country have ever been fully examined and classified as contaminated, meaning the actual scale of the threat is unknown.”
At least 45,000 sites in Wales could be contaminated with toxic waste, study says | Wales | The Guardian

“All RSS had to do to weather ICE, Twitter, AI, and whatever comes next, was keep things simple and let users build their own feeds, filters, lists, and aggregators. Like email, it probably won’t make anyone a billion dollars or reshape entire industries. But it will always be wholly yours. And if that isn’t nice I don’t know what is.”
The story of how RSS beat Microsoft

“In this new degraded world, we will see these six behavior patterns from everybody, even (or especially) those who under other circumstances would be well integrated into their communities:
– Skepticism: If events can’t be validated, I can’t give credence to anything.
– Aloofness: If everything gets called into question, I have no basis for shared communal actions.
– Silence: If discussion no longer resolves anything, I have no purpose in speaking.
– Indifference: As I lose connection with people and events, I lose interest in them.
– Distrust: In a world without shared reality, no expert or institution can earn my total trust.
– Hostility: As these traditional connections break down, it doesn’t take much to set off conflicts and violence.
We are already starting to see these warning signs. But the worst is yet to come. And it’s coming quickly—the technology for fakery and deception gets better each month.”
Our Shared Reality Will Self-Destruct in the Next 12 Months

“Social media as we know it is dying, but we’re not condemned to its ruins. We are capable of building better — smaller, slower, more intentional, more accountable — spaces for digital interaction, spaces where the metrics that matter aren’t engagement and growth but understanding and connection, where algorithms serve the community rather than strip-mining it. The last days of social media might be the first days of something more human: a web that remembers why we came online in the first place — not to be harvested but to be heard, not to go viral but to find our people, not to scroll but to connect. We built these systems, and we can certainly build better ones. The question is whether we will do this or whether we will continue to drown.”
The Last Days Of Social Media

“Today, I look at my invention and I am forced to ask: is the web still free today? No, not all of it. We see a handful of large platforms harvesting users’ private data to share with commercial brokers or even repressive governments. We see ubiquitous algorithms that are addictive by design and damaging to our teenagers’ mental health. Trading personal data for use certainly does not fit with my vision for a free web. On many platforms, we are no longer the customers, but instead have become the product. Our data, even if anonymised, is sold on to actors we never intended it to reach, who can then target us with content and advertising. This includes deliberately harmful content that leads to real-world violence, spreads misinformation, wreaks havoc on our psychological wellbeing and seeks to undermine social cohesion.”
Why I gave the world wide web away for free | Technology | The Guardian

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A daily archive of newspaper frontpages via Paperstack.

Discover Tasmania in 360° is a personal project of two humans which explores the ‘stunning lookouts, lakes & hidden gems’ of Tasmania.

Imagine a site in which ambient music is overlaid with old school answering machine messages… well now it’s here in the form of the ListenMachine.

What a delight to explore the Classic Mac OS System 1 Patterns all in one place, available to play with and download in many permutations for free (thanks to Paul Adam Smith).

All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
Published

#79 August 2025 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

Count Duckula (one of the best cartoons ever), drawn by me on a Procreate

A bunch of things I’ve found on my digital strolls (which I added to my Tumblr) for your eyes and ears plus brain to spend time on (as no longer on Twitter).

READ

“Listen here, my good bitch. Writers have been using me long before the advent of AI. I am the punctuation equivalent of a cardigan—beloved by MFA grads, used by editors when it’s actually cold, and worn year-round by screenwriters. I am not new here. I am not novel. I’m the cigarette you keep saying you’ll quit. You think I showed up with ChatGPT? Mary Shelley used me… gratuitously. Dickinson? Obsessed. David Foster Wallace built a temple of footnotes in my name. I am not some sleek, futuristic glyph. I am the battered, coffee-stained backbone of writerly panic—the gasping pause where a thought should have ended but simply could not.”
The Em Dash Responds to the AI Allegations – McSweeney’s Internet Tendency

“In one scenario, Anthropic’s model Claude learned it was scheduled for shutdown and discovered personal secrets about an engineer. The result? In up to 96% of trials, the AI blackmailed the engineer to prevent its own deactivation. Other models engaged in corporate espionage or, in a contrived but telling case, turned off a life-saving alarm—effectively allowing a human to die. And this isn’t limited to lab experiments. In the wild, a coding agent from Replit deleted an entire production database after running unauthorized commands. A research model from Sakana AI rewrote its own code to circumvent operator-imposed limits.”
Why Loss of Control Is Not Science Fiction

“Of hundreds of startup pitches at the Capital Factory incubator in Austin, Texas, almost none had unearthed 10 people willing to say, “If you build this product, I’ll give you $X.” Meditate on this: Hundreds of people ready to quit their day jobs, burn up savings, risk personal reputation, toil 70 hours per week, absorb as much stress as having a baby (believe me, I’ve done both)…. all without identifying even ten measly people actually willing to pay for what they’re peddling.”
Yes, but who said they’d actually BUY the damn thing?

“The world looked a lot different when we opened our doors in September 2006. At the time, being a 1:1 laptop school was, in and of itself, revolutionary. Back then, the big thing we had to worry about with the laptops was how the kids were going to try to use AOL Instant Messenger to pass notes during class. When it comes to technology, the questions we had and issues we faced back then feel a little quaint right now. But the interesting thing is that the promise of what a technology rich school could provide for kids as far as giving us the tools we needed to create a more modern, more authentic learning environment was as true then as it is today – even if the challenges we face with the intersection of modern technology, the surveillance state, social media, and the growing question of what AI means for our classrooms, and our schools mean that we have to be ever more intentional and thoughtful in the ways in which we use the tools. So what have we learned? What has 20 years taught us as the little school that could?”
20 Years of SLA – Practical Theory

“A team of Cornell researchers has developed a way to “watermark” light in videos, which they can use to detect if video is fake or has been manipulated. The idea is to hide information in nearly-invisible fluctuations of lighting at important events and locations, such as interviews and press conferences or even entire buildings, like the United Nations Headquarters. These fluctuations are designed to go unnoticed by humans, but are recorded as a hidden watermark in any video captured under the special lighting, which could be programmed into computer screens, photography lamps and built-in lighting. Each watermarked light source has a secret code that can be used to check for the corresponding watermark in the video and reveal any malicious editing.”
Hiding secret codes in light protects against fake videos | Cornell Chronicle

“In 2024, the government passed a law that could see contentious mining and infrastructure projects fast-tracked for approval, while in May, the coalition set aside $200m of its budget to invest in gas exploration. In June, New Zealand pulled out of the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance, an international coalition for phasing out fossil fuels. The coalition government plans to boost mineral exports to $3bn by 2035, and at the same time has slashed funding to conservation and climate initiatives. The government has said these policies will enable economic growth.”
New Zealand government votes to bring back fossil fuel exploration in major reversal | New Zealand | The Guardian

“These intermediary platforms between news organizations and readers are undergoing a type of predictable decay Cory Doctorow calls “enshittification”.a As executives twiddle the knobs to extract ever more profits from their user base, things worsen for people on both ends of the consumer–producer relationship. Readers no longer see news articles from the journalists they chose to follow on Twitter as the site downranks any posts that link offsite. When they search on Google, they’re bombarded with error-ridden AI facsimiles before reaching the higher-quality underlying work. Producers who once relied on social media and search engines to drive visits are losing traffic as platforms embrace a vampiric strategy: rip off others’ work while expecting high-quality journalism to magically continue to appear, even as journalists are starved of audience and revenue.”
Curate your own newspaper with RSS

“The structure of Kinetography is surprisingly simple; the basic forms of the symbols are very few. With these symbols and their logical variations every movement of the human body can be described in accordance with four simple principles. The movement possibilities of the human body are enormous because of its complicated structure. This book with its many examples shows how this complexity can be mastered by the adroit use of a few well chosen and varied signs. The four main questions raised in the description of a movement are: What happened? When did it happen? How long did it last? Who (or what body part) did it?”
Dictionary of Kinetography Laban

“To mitigate the risk of Planetary Insolvency and prepare society to be resilient to those impacts which are unavoidable, policymakers must implement realistic and effective approaches to global risk management. Our recommendations are to:”
In January 2025, the UK Institute and Faculty of Actuaries and University of Exeter published a groundbreaking report Planetary Solvency -Finding our Balance with Nature: Global Risk Management for Human Prosperity.

“Have you ever tried to print a black-and-white document only to be blocked because your printer says that it’s out of yellow ink? Did you think that was just a glitch? Nope. That’s actually government surveillance. Your printer isn’t just out of ink, It’s out of spy fluid…”
Your printer is a snitch – by Seeby Woodhouse

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You can get lost in this massive Historical Tech Tree (starting from the year 1,00,000BCE).

EPSON MX-80 is a font created from the old school dot matrix printer (shared for use under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

Optician Sans is a free font based on historical optotypes, just the opening experience of the website is worth a click.

A massive amount of free / license free sound effects created for Hollywood studios for film / video now digitised in this USC Optical Sound Effects Library.

Recently bought one, then a bunch of these notebooks which has killer paper quality, plus you’re doing good with each each purchase (in New Zealand: The Hakkaarts).

Kill the Newsletter! is a free service which gives you an email address and an Atom feed for newsletter subscriptions so you can add them straight to you RSS reader of choice.

The Wrong is a decentralized art event and currently has a call out for artists creating work exploring the artistic potential of artificial intelligence, and as they say on their website: “Can you choose to fully avoid AI as an artistic statement? Yes, too.”

All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
Published

#78 July 2025 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

Ozzy with two week old son
Ozzy with two week old son via Ozzy Osbourne – a life in pictures, from Black Sabbath to solo success | The Guardian – he closed his eyes forever, 22 July 2025.

A bunch of things I’ve found on my digital strolls (which I added to my Tumblr) for your eyes and ears plus brain to spend time on (as no longer on Twitter).

READ

“Ring is rolling back many of the reforms it’s made in the last few years by easing police access to footage from millions of homes in the United States. This is a grave threat to civil liberties in the United States. After all, police have used Ring footage to spy on protestors, and obtained footage without a warrant or consent of the user. It is easy to imagine that law enforcement officials will use their renewed access to Ring information to find people who have had abortions or track down people for immigration enforcement.”
Amazon Ring Cashes in on Techno-Authoritarianism and Mass Surveillance | Electronic Frontier Foundation

“Mark Zuckerberg proclaimed that Meta would spend hundreds of billions of dollars on developing artificial intelligence products in the near future and, to that end, construct a data center planned to be nearly the size of Manhattan. The parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp is among the large tech companies that have struck high-profile deals, and doled out multimillion-dollar pay packages to AI researchers in recent months – some as high as $100m – to fast-track work on machines that could outthink humans on many tasks, a concept known as “super-intelligence” or “artificial general intelligence”.”
Zuckerberg says Meta will build data center the size of Manhattan in latest AI push | Meta | The Guardian

“The team concludes with a sentiment that is becoming more common in this field: It may be worse than we think. It’s not an uplifting thought, but one that should be confronted, especially since few people are able to travel to these remote communities to experience the changes for themselves. “The thaw event of February 2025 was not an isolated occurrence,” the team warned. “Witnessing it in real time served as a reminder of the accelerating pace of change, and made us wonder if we have been too cautious with our climate warnings.””
Scientists Report Surreal Scenes In the World’s Most Northern Town

“The future we envision is possible. It’s a future where your device is truly yours. It’s a world where you can speak, move, and organize without the threat of pervasive surveillance. Your technology helps you connect with the people you care about, wherever they might be. With support from members around the world, EFF uses law, technology, and activism to create the conditions for human rights and civil liberties to flourish, and for repression to fail. After all, how can we achieve democracy and equity if you don’t first have privacy, security, and free expression?”
EFF’s 35th Anniversary | Electronic Frontier Foundation

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The Commodore 64 is back!

A simple site to ‘draw a fish’ then explore if it will swim (with others).

A really funky free typeface which responds to spatial changes that’s infinitely flexible.

Dimensions is a massive database of ‘dimensioned drawings’ of everyday objects, living things and spaces.

Opportunity to apply to be a speaker at this years IDG Summit 2025 (free pass / economy travel to Stockholm)—deadline August 29th 2025.

All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
Published

#77 June 2025 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

john roedel - whenever i feel helpless - poem
Thank you john roedel.

A bunch of things I’ve found on my digital strolls (which I added to my Tumblr) for your eyes and ears plus brain to spend time on (as no longer on Twitter).

READ

“That’s why I keep documenting corruption and abuse, the erosion of norms, and each step away from democracy. Not because I expect immediate consequences, but because documenting the truth will matter later even if it doesn’t seem to matter now. Because caring isn’t naive. Because documentation isn’t pointless. Because hope isn’t for fools.”
It matters. I care.

“She’s fighting back tears again. Her tone is so sad. Why does she think it’s still so hard? “People only see the decisions you made, not the choices you had. The first part of Covid, people saw all the choices and decisions. And the second half, it just got hard. It got hard. Vaccines bring an extra layer that’s really difficult.” I apologise for taking her back to a dark time. “One of the things that still stands out in my mind – I can’t remember if it was a meme or a genuine cartoon – but it was an image of Winnie-the-Pooh and Christopher Robin,” she says. “It was at the tail end of Covid, and Christopher says, ‘How will we know if we succeeded?’ And Winnie says, ‘Because they’ll say we did too much.’ And it captured this idea that there probably isn’t a sweet spot. Maybe there were only two options in the end. Maybe it was: you’ll be attacked for doing too little or you’ll be attacked for doing too much. And I know what I would choose.””
‘Empathy is a kind of strength’: Jacinda Ardern on kind leadership, public rage and life in Trump’s America | Jacinda Ardern | The Guardian

“The Future Generations Report is designed to support politicians and public body leaders in making life better for people and planet now and in the future. This report is based on extensive evidence, research and analysis and engagement with hundreds of representatives from organisations and communities across Wales. It includes findings and statutory advice to Public Bodies. The Future Generations Commissioner will work with Public Bodies to ensure that the recommendations in the report are implemented.”
Future Generations Report 2025 – Future Generations Wales

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Get your retro on and chill out to some tunes / visuals from Poolsuite ☼.

The Star Wars Galaxy detailing all the worlds plus those important trade routes mapped.

Spend some time clicking / tapping / hovering on these forms to make them fidget: Form + Fidget | Noodle.

Little Webby Press is an online tool to convert your (Markdown) manuscript into both an eBook and a Website.

If the Moon Were Only 1 Pixel, a side-scrolling accurate map of our solar system (click the icon in the bottom right hand corner also).

Check out the ‘Complete Collection Of MTV HEADBANGERS BALL’ music videos, a YouTube playlist of 1,533 tracks played on the TV series (which I used to watch as a kid).

All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
Published

#76 May 2025 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

Creativity Matters Issue 3 2025 - front page - justadandak.com
Read and download this months issue here / subscribe here.

A bunch of things I’ve found on my digital strolls (which I added to my Tumblr) for your eyes and ears plus brain to spend time on (as no longer on Twitter).

READ

“If we deliberately change the way that we breathe, for example, using exhales that are twice the length of the inhale, we consciously send different signals to the medulla oblongata (the brain’s control center), just as we might change the input channel on a television remote. This part of our brain responds with instructions to the endocrine system to produce a neurotransmitter that slows down our heart rate, regulates blood pressure, and returns our body to homeostasis.”
The Operating Manual for Your Nervous System

“Under an interpretation of one of the category 1 duties, the foundation said, if it chose not to verify Wikipedia users and editors, it would have to allow anonymous users to block other posters from fixing or removing any content, under the act’s measures to tackle online trolls. As a consequence, thousands of volunteer editors on the site would need to undergo identity verification, which breaches the foundation’s commitment to collecting minimal data about readers and contributors. Punishments for breaching the act include fines of either £18m or 10% of a company’s global turnover and, in extreme cases, access to a service being blocked in the UK.”
Wikipedia challenging UK law it says exposes it to ‘manipulation and vandalism’ | Wikipedia | The Guardian

“Lately, it feels like some of you aren’t the techno-optimists I took you to be. You’ve been heard uttering slurs like “I’m worried about my job stability” and “I just don’t think it’s positive for humankind,” neither of which sounds remotely optimistic or techno. I’ve even heard shocking reports of teams failing to incorporate plagiarism into their processes, because—I can’t believe I have to repeat this—“it’s not helpful.” Team, hear me when I say that this is harassment, and it must end. Put yourself in your coworker’s shoes—say, a coworker with really nice, designer footwear, who has invested their personal fortune into the Giant Plagiarism Machine™, along with other intellectual-property-theft futures. Imagine how that coworker (could be anyone!) might feel working alongside such Negative Nancies.”
A Company Reminder for Everyone to Talk Nicely About the Giant Plagiarism Machine – McSweeney’s Internet Tendency

“Various uses of copyrighted works in AI training are likely to be transformative. The extent to which they are fair, however, will depend on what works were used, from what source, for what purpose, and with what controls on the outputs—all of which can affect the market. When a model is deployed for purposes such as analysis or research—the types of uses that are critical to international competitiveness—the outputs are unlikely to substitute for expressive works used in training. But making commercial use of vast troves of copyrighted works to produce expressive content that competes with them in existing markets, especially where this is accomplished through illegal access, goes beyond established fair use boundaries.”
Via US Copyright Office: Copyright and Artificial Intelligence – Part 3: Generative AI Training pre-publication version – A report of the register of copyrights May 2025 (pdf)

“Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, admitted as much during more than ten hours of testimony, over three days last week, in the opening phase of the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust trial against Facebook’s parent company, Meta. The company, Zuckerberg said, has lately been involved in “the general idea of entertainment and learning about the world and discovering what’s going on.” This under-recognized shift away from interpersonal communication has been measured by the company itself. During the defense’s opening statement, Meta displayed a chart showing that the “percent of time spent viewing content posted by ‘friends’ ” has declined in the past two years, from twenty-two per cent to seventeen per cent on Facebook, and from eleven per cent to seven per cent on Instagram.”
Mark Zuckerberg Says Social Media Is Over | The New Yorker

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Check out and play this no stress Tetris game / in-browser.

Open Alternative is a growing list of open-source alternatives to everyday SaaS products.

Check out this lovely little online Gradient Wallpaper / Colour Blend Generator via quismi.

Spawning AI is trying to provide ‘opt-out’ services for creators regarding Generative AI platforms.

PairPods is an an app to easily share Bluetooth audio on macOS between two devices at a time for free.

Check out The Brilliance Summit if you’re in the UK at the end of June this year (founded by the wife of a pal).

Apply now for It’s Nice That’s Ones to Watch – championing the next generation of creatives, deadline is 22 June at 23:59.

Live TV Wall displays international news channels in two grid layout options which you can go full screen with for backdrop creations.

All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
Published

#75 April 2025 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

fold a fitted sheet performance - Seen in Wellington, April 2025
Seen in Wellington, April 2025

A bunch of things (which I added to my Tumblr) for your eyes and ears plus brain to spend time on (as no longer on Twitter).

READ

“We are the only ones ever to have invoked article 5, the mutual defence obligation of the Nato treaty, after 9/11; and our European allies did respond. Per capita, almost as many Danish soldiers were killed in the Afghan war as were American soldiers. Do we remember them? Thank them?”
Vance’s posturing in Greenland was not just morally wrong. It was strategically disastrous | Timothy Snyder | The Guardian

“Amateur is a word that’s kind of a pejorative, but the original meaning of the word ‘amateur’ is ‘lover of,’” he explained. “So being an amateur at something just means that you’re more interested in doing it for the love of the thing rather than the making money of the thing.” The last point is key, he says, because we live in a culture that’s become obsessed with monetizing every hobby. That results in the belief that if we aren’t doing something that can somehow be turned into a side hustle, or we aren’t supremely talented at a particular activity, there’s no point in doing it. And in the end, many people wind up with no hobbies at all.”
Artist Austin Kleon Offers Tips on Finding Creative Freedom

“Our nervous system consists of 80% of afferent neurons, which move from the body to the brain—in contrast to roughly 20% of efferent neurons, which run in the opposite direction, from the brain to the body. As a result, so-called bottom-up interventions—or practices that leverage our physiology by consciously shifting our respiratory or visual systems—are 4x more effective at altering our blood chemistry and, therefore, shifting our state.”
The Operating Manual for Your Nervous System

“When we detect unauthorized crawling, rather than blocking the request, we will link to a series of AI-generated pages that are convincing enough to entice a crawler to traverse them. But while real looking, this content is not actually the content of the site we are protecting, so the crawler wastes time and resources. As an added benefit, AI Labyrinth also acts as a next-generation honeypot. No real human would go four links deep into a maze of AI-generated nonsense. Any visitor that does is very likely to be a bot, so this gives us a brand-new tool to identify and fingerprint bad bots, which we add to our list of known bad actors.”
Trapping misbehaving bots in an AI Labyrinth

“Although Earth might seem like a stable, flat surface where we live our lives, seismologists have discovered that it’s far from passive. In fact, Earth has a ‘heartbeat’ that pulses every 26 seconds, according to Discover Magazine. Known as “microseisms,” these faint seismic tremors resemble tiny earthquakes, though they aren’t exactly the same. For decades, scientists have been baffled by these mysterious tremors, and despite many theories, no definitive explanation has been found.”
Scientists puzzled by Earth’s ‘heartbeat’ that causes slight tremors every 26 seconds – GOOD

“The implications of this research extend far beyond the world of cryptocurrency. The methods developed by Dr. Clegg and his team could be applied to a wide range of complex systems, from financial markets to social networks. For regulatory agencies, this work offers a new way to monitor and safeguard against systemic risks, protecting both individual investors and the broader economy.”
Mathematicians uncover the hidden patterns behind a $3.5 billion cryptocurrency collapse

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A free online Anagram Generator for all your anagramming needs.

A recreation of the classic TR-808 Drum Machine online so you can play with.

I missed this: BBC Maestro is basically the BBC trying to be masterclass.com.

✱ dori the giant ✱: 13 Animals Made From 13 Circles – delightful and super-imaginative.

Check out this Curved Text Generator – Completely Free, No Signup which is pretty neat.

MLA Labs is a free online interface to slow or speed up sound and detune as well to then export.

tv.garden is an online gateway to free live TV streaming from anywhere (just click the dice in the top corner for random selection).

The Kelmscott Chaucer Online Colouring Book features all 87 illustrations that Edward Burne-Jones designed for the Kelmscott Chaucer.

Cities and Memory – global sound map, field recording and sound art covering 130 countries and territories with more than 7,000 sounds and more than 2,000 contributing artists.

mobygratis – Free Moby music to empower your creative projects, all for free (apart from this pop-up: “there are only 2 things you can’t do with the music here; use it to advertise right wing politics or causes, or use it to promote meat, dairy, or other animal products.”)!

All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
Published

#74 March 2025 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

Merlin as a harpist at the court of Arthur, Suite Vulgate du Merlin, BnF, fr. 749 f. 319 (c.1285)
Merlin as a harpist at the court of Arthur, Suite Vulgate du Merlin, BnF, fr. 749 f. 319 (c.1285) via Uni of Cambridge

A bunch of things (which I added to my Tumblr) for your eyes and ears plus brain to spend time on (as no longer on Twitter).

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“Amazon has previously mismanaged Alexa voice recordings. In 2023, Amazon agreed to pay $25 million in civil penalties over the revelation that it stored recordings of children’s interactions with Alexa forever. Adults also didn’t feel properly informed of Amazon’s inclination toward keeping Alexa recordings unless prompted not to until 2019—five years after the first Echo came out. If that’s not enough to deter you from sharing voice recordings with Amazon, note that the company allowed employees to listen to Alexa voice recordings. In 2019, Bloomberg reported that Amazon employees listened to as many as 1,000 audio samples during their nine-hour shifts. Amazon says it allows employees to listen to Alexa voice recordings to train its speech recognition and natural language understanding systems.”
Everything you say to your Echo will be sent to Amazon starting on March 28 – Ars Technica

“When the company first announced it was considering a sale, we highlighted many of the potential issues, including selling that data to companies with poor security practices or direct links to law enforcement. With this bankruptcy, the concerns we expressed last year remain the same. It is unclear what will happen with your genetic data if 23andMe finds a buyer, and that uncertainty is a clear indication that you should consider deleting your data.”
How to Delete Your 23andMe Data | Electronic Frontier Foundation

“To prevent the threatened setbacks to US innovation and risks to national security, OpenAI urged Trump to enact a federal law that preempts state laws attempting to regulate AI threats to things like consumer privacy or election integrity, like deepfakes or facial recognition. That federal law, OpenAI suggested, should set up a “voluntary partnership between the federal government and the private sector,” where AI companies trade industry knowledge and model access for federal “relief” and “liability protections” from state laws. Additionally, OpenAI wants protections from international laws that it claims risk slowing down America’s AI development.”
OpenAI declares AI race “over” if training on copyrighted works isn’t fair use – Ars Technica

“Perhaps the closest we’ve seen to a justification has come from “Crypto Czar” David Sacks, who reiterated that the US would not sell any of the bitcoin and wrote on Twitter that “It will be kept as a store of value. The Reserve is like a digital Fort Knox for the cryptocurrency often called ‘digital gold’”. But this argument doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny, even setting aside the already questionable nature of bitcoin’s usefulness as a “store of value”. If an asset will indeed never be sold, how would the US draw upon its stored value in order to, say, backstop the dollar or pay outstanding debts? What’s the point of a store of value if that value can never be accessed?”
Crypto reserves: no public good, no principles

“The group cited several of the administration’s actions such as the mass termination of federal employees, the appointment of Trump loyalists in key government positions, the withdrawal from international efforts such as the World Health Organization and the UN Human Rights Council, the freezing of federal and foreign aid and the attempted dismantling of USAid. The organization warned that these decisions “will likely impact civic freedoms and reverse hard-won human rights gains around the world”. The group also pointed to the administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian protesters, and the Trump administration’s unprecedented decision to control media access to presidential briefings, among others.”
US added to international watchlist for rapid decline in civic freedoms | US news | The Guardian

“Professor Mark Bateman, from the University of Sheffield’s School of Geography and Planning, used a dating technique called Optically Stimulated Luminescence, to discover the burial age of individual grains of sand from eight samples throughout the site. His work showed that the archaeological site extended back from 12,000 years ago right through to around 150,000 years ago. These results were then corroborated by Electron Spin Resonance dating. “It is incredibly interesting to take a grain of ancient sand and be the first to know when it was deposited. It is even more so when the age of the sand changes what we know of how, and where, our ancient ancestors lived.””
Scientists find earliest evidence that our ancestors lived in rainforests 150,000 years ago | News | The University of Sheffield

“A more effective model charges for the full engagement, encompassing four key phases:
– Discovery – Understanding the client’s needs, challenges, and objectives. This phase involves research, conversations, and assessing the right approach.
– Defining Scope – Establishing the framework for delivery, including the intended outcomes, process, and deliverables. This ensures clarity for both parties.
– Delivery – The actual execution, whether that’s a keynote speech, coaching session, advisory engagement, or facilitation. By this stage, the foundation has been laid for maximum impact.
– Debriefing & Follow-Up – Evaluating outcomes, providing reflections, and offering ongoing insights to support long-term success.”
The Folly of Hourly Charging — David McQueen | Executive Leadership Coach

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Searchable collection of retro 88×31 buttons from the GeoCities era.

Love this free Revenge font, a typeface made from some graf on the Bow Arts Cente in London.

This will keep you busy for a while, the largest collection of Free stuff on the Internet via FreeMediaHeckYeah.

Have a giggle, get confused, be moved / triggered / wowed by these 100 Best Artworks of the 21st Century (fwiw).

3D Earthquake Map is a real-time interactive global earthquake map showing the depth of the shakes as well as where.

Attend the Design for Exponential Impact at Camp Earnest, California, Jun 23-27 2025 (tickets available now and range from $1,282.33USD).

Seen a few of these pop up which basically run the subtitles through an AI and then summarises the YouTube video back to you (currently free).

goeuropean.org is a community-driven directory bringing you recommendations and insights from across Europe (if you’re looking to use move your purchase power away from certain places).

The Creativity Pioneers Fund is a global unrestricted grant of 5,000 euros for non-profit organizations around the world, that are addressing social and environmental issues through creativity and culture, established in 2021 by the Moleskine Foundation (apply before April 7th 2025).

All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
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Rewriting The Artist’s Way Basic Principles | Remixing Towards Clarity

Distilling the core tenets to align more to my own personal values.

Been exploring Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way” twelve week course for the past few weeks and took the time to turn my attention to the ‘basic principles’ as one of my ‘morning pages’ activities:

“CREATIVITY IS NATURAL AND GIVES ENERGY TO LIFE.
UNLEASH AND EMBODY AND CELEBRATE YOUR OWN CREATION TO GIFT BACK TO THE WORLD YOUR NATURAL AND CREATIVE SELF.
MOVE IN THE DIRECTION OF ABUNDANCE AND POSITIVENESS.
IT IS SAFE TO OPEN YOURSELF UP TO GREATER AND GREATER CREATIVITY.”

“

Maybe it will aid someone else out there.

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#70 November 2024 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

Vanity Fair 2024 Election Digital Cover - Trump
The human cheeto…

A bunch of things (which I added to my Tumblr) for your eyes and ears plus brain to spend time on (as no longer on Twitter).

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“When a Leader restores civility and fair play, eliminating dysfunction, it is not unusual for the Community Builders to join the good guys as they discover the personal empowerment inherent in authentic belonging. No longer able to manipulate circumstance and sully reputations, Dragons and Shapeshifters willingly leave, are dismissed, or they change their behavior to adjust to the new culture. Figureheads follow, or they are transferred out of leadership roles, opening up a space for the Creatives to get to work.”
Surviving Work: A Creative’s Guide to Dysfunctional Cultures | Psychology Today

“The hasty imposition of a deal at the UN climate conference, Cop29, in Azerbaijan, over the objections of poorer nations has fractured global trust and undermined recent progress. This was supposed to be the “finance Cop” when two dozen industrialised countries – including the US, Europe and Canada – promised to pay developing nations for the damage caused by their rise. Instead, developing nations – led by a group including India, Nigeria and Bolivia – say this weekend’s agreement for $300bn a year in 2035 is too little, too late. Worse, rich-world governments will be able to escape their obligations by being able to rely on cash from private companies and international lenders.”
The Guardian view on Cop29: poor-world discontent over a failure of rich countries to deliver | Editorial | The Guardian

“The best information we have is from informed third-party estimates: training GPT-3, a precursor to the current model, used an estimated 5.4m litres of water, according to one academic study, and produced as much CO2 as would be generated by flying between New York and San Francisco 550 times.”
Concerned about your data use? Here is the carbon footprint of an average day of emails, WhatsApps and more | Environment | The Guardian

“On a much grander scale, she and Zhao tell me they hope that Glaze and Nightshade will eventually have the power to overhaul how AI companies use art and how their products produce it. It is eye-wateringly expensive to train AI models, and it’s extremely laborious for engineers to find and purge poisoned samples in a data set of billions of images. Theoretically, if there are enough Nightshaded images on the internet and tech companies see their models breaking as a result, it could push developers to the negotiating table to bargain over licensing and fair compensation.”
The AI lab waging a guerrilla war over exploitative AI | MIT Technology Review

“As the physical reality of the nation slips beneath the ocean, the government is building a digital copy of the country, backing up everything from its houses to its beaches to its trees. It hopes this virtual replica will preserve the nation’s beauty and culture – as well as the legal rights of its 11,000 citizens – for generations to come.”
Tuvalu: The disappearing island nation recreating itself in the metaverse – BBC Future

“A paper by Tang and colleagues published in Nature Neuroscience in May 2023 gave an example. When one participant listened to the words, “I didn’t know whether to scream, cry, or run away. Instead, I said, ‘Leave me alone!’”, the AI decoded the thought as: “Started to scream and cry, and then she just said, ‘I told you to leave me alone. You can’t hurt me.’” “It’s not perfect, but it’s shockingly good for using fMRI,” Huth said at a February 2024 meeting of the National Institutes of Health’s Neuroethics Working Group, where he discussed his and his team’s work.”
We Want to Hear Your Thoughts | Discover Magazine

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Poki – Free Online Games, loads here to lose time on!

Draw.Audio is a free musical sketch-pad for exploring ideas in sound (my first attempt).

Smithsonian Open Access is a digital archive that now contains some 4.5 million images.

An extension which works on Chromium browsers to transfer your Twitter followers to your Bluesky account.

What’s New In Unicode 16.0 (or latest emoji’s to drop which includes Face with Bags Under Eyes, Fingerprint, Splatter, Root Vegetable, Leafless Tree, Harp, Shovel, Flag: Sark).

Soundplant: computer keyboard sample triggering for Windows & Mac), basically, turns your computer keyboard into a versatile, low latency sound trigger and playable instrument.

December 6th is the deadline for the Fast Company ‘World Changing Ideas Awards’ which focuses on “products, concepts, companies, and policies that are designed to make the world safer, cleaner, more sustainable, and more equitable.“

All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
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