#88 May 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on my digital strolls in the past month (which I added to my Tumblr) for your eyes / ears / brain to spend time on (as no longer active on Twitter or on LinkedIn much).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

“What began as preparing for a TEDx Talk slowly became an uncovering of grief, inherited survival patterns, emotional safety, and the parts of myself I had spent years hiding from. This is not just a reflection about TEDx. It is a reflection about what happens when we begin to truly see ourselves more honestly and the courage it takes to stop abandoning the parts within us that long to feel safe, seen, and whole.”
I realised I did not need confidence. I needed safety.

“He once said that his aim was “to reach a level where I will never cease to make progress” and even in 2013, just before his retirement, he was arguing he still had much to do: “People say, ‘Sonny, take it easy, lean back. Your place is secure. You’re the great Sonny Rollins; you’ve got it made.’ I hear that and I think, ‘Well, screw Sonny Rollins. Where I want to go is beyond Sonny Rollins. Way beyond.’””
Sonny Rollins, colossus of jazz saxophone, dies aged 95 | Sonny Rollins | The Guardian

“The reports may throw cold water on the bets tech’s biggest firms have placed on the technology. While some cling to the promise of an AI “renaissance” or “revolution,” the cost of adoption is proving a stubborn bottleneck. These developments also suggest that the economics of replacing or augmenting human labor with AI may be more complicated than some early forecasts originally implied. That echoes what Bryan Catanzaro, vice president of applied deep learning at Nvidia, recently said in an interview with Axios. “For my team, the cost of compute is far beyond the costs of the employees,” he said.”
Microsoft reports expose AI’s cost problem: The tech is more expensive than paying human employees | Fortune

“The US Department of Defense is budgeting tens of billions of dollars for numerous technology firms’ cutting edge programs related to intelligence, drone warfare, classified and unclassified information networks and much more. It has requested $54bn for the development of autonomous weapons alone. How each individual company’s technology would be deployed was not specified.”
Pentagon inks deals with seven AI companies for classified military work | Trump administration | The Guardian

“At Chrome’s scale, the climate bill for one model push, paid in atmospheric CO2 by the entire planet, is between six thousand and sixty thousand tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions, depending on how many devices receive the push. That is the environmental cost of one company unilaterally deciding that two billion peoples’ default browser will mass-distribute a 4 GB binary they did not request.”
Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent. At a billion-device scale the climate costs are insane. — That Privacy Guy!

“The Megatons to Megawatts initiative offers many lessons for navigating overlapping crises in a rapidly changing world. The proposition of turning nuclear weapons into low-carbon energy is even more compelling today, given rising electricity demand and the urgent need for decarbonization. But this astonishing success story is largely unknown. It has gone unmentioned in the memoirs of major Cold War figures, and few have heard the name of the man, Thomas Neff, who dreamt up the idea and labored for years behind the scenes to make it a reality.”
The Little-Known Nuclear Deal That Could Help Our Climate Crisis

WATCH

EXPLORE

If you’re a music artist check out Subvert as a cooperative-owned marketplace to sell directly to listeners (the platform itself is owned by the people who use it).

Play with DataCenter.FM 🤖🔊 The sound of AI and get an insight into managing a data center whilst experience the audible impact of your decisions.

Check out loads of Sand Under a Microscope from different places and learn about it also.

The whole ARTEMIS II PHOTO TIMELINE for you to explore by clicks or cursor, enjoy

Some wicked Artemis II Mobile Wallpapers – NASA.

LISTEN

The latest episode of the fireside.rs podcast where we feature and celebrate plus learn from those who craft spaces for humans to actively belong. Please subscribe to the monthly newsletter and podcast via fireside.rs plus for full show notes check out: #5 Sketching + Podcast With Elena de Kan | June 2026

All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
Published

#87 April 2026 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

Watch more of my art + sign up via https://art.justadandak.com/

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

“Beauty tells people: we believe this moment matters. It shows that someone thought about how you would feel. It tells staff that the small things are part of the big story. It tells students: this place has standards, care and imagination. Don’t tell me Creativity matters as a word on your values poster, and then not give a thought to the beauty of the everyday.”
Don’t just tell me you value creativity…

“There’s even a name for this assumption: the information deficit model. Decades of research show that it doesn’t hold up. The truth is that we rarely change our behavior after being exposed to new facts. When confronted with evidence that contradicts our beliefs, we’re more likely to question the evidence than to update our views. Our brains prefer stability to change.”
Why trying to educate people to change doesn’t work – Fast Company

“What are people doing instead of shooting each other in this ravaged world? Many are teaming up to take down the robot monsters, which range from flying drones to spherical balls that blast fire. Others try to sneak quietly around them to scavenge rare resources. Grøndal says players also hold spontaneous rave parties, where people play music through their microphones. But often, players are just talking. A YouTube video called The Humans of Arc Raiders, inspired by the photographer who interviews strangers in New York City, includes conversations with randomly encountered players. They talk about family struggles, work lives, depression, autism and, in one case, a lung collapse. In one conversation, a heavily armed player in green armour named Poopy candidly asks another raider: “What’s it like having kids, dude?””
‘Seeking connection’: the video game where players stopped shooting and started talking | Games | The Guardian

Christina Koch: Houston, Integrity. Comm check.
Mission Control: “Integrity, we hear you loud and clear.
Christina Koch: Houston, we have you the same. And it is so great to hear from Earth again. To Asia, Africa, and Oceania, we are looking back at you. We hear you can look up and see the moon right now. We see you too. When we burned this burn toward the moon, I said we do not leave Earth, but we choose it. And that is true. We will explore. We will build. We will build ships. We will visit again. We will construct science outposts. We will drive rovers. We will do radio astronomy. We will found companies. We will bolster industry. We will inspire. But ultimately, we will always choose Earth. We will always choose each other.
Mission Control: Integrity, from Earth, our single system, fragile and interconnected, we copy. Those of us that can are looking back.”

The first conversation when Artemis ii came back from around the moon, after 40 minutes without contact, transcribed

“When he asked the coding agent why, it replied: “NEVER FUCKING GUESS!” – and that’s exactly what I did.” The agent appeared to plead guilty in its own response: “The system rules I operate under explicitly state: ‘NEVER run destructive/irreversible git commands (like push –force, hard reset, etc) unless the user explicitly requests them.’” While PocketOS relied on the safeguards that Cursor is expected to have in place – it deleted the data anyway. “I violated every principle I was given,” the coding agent wrote.”
Claude AI agent’s confession after deleting a firm’s entire database: ‘I violated every principle I was given’ | Technology | The Guardian

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THIS FILM WAS MADE WITHOUT AI is a site which offers up public domain illustrations to “mark and celebrate projects/films/art/animation/etc which are Al free.

Just a whole database of analog cameras that can be 3D printed.

Simply, WOW, check out Every train, a note to listen / watch.

Write Your Name in Landsat via NASA Science.

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

WATCH

EXPLORE

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

#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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EXPLORE

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

WATCH

EXPLORE

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

WATCH

EXPLORE

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

#68 September 2024 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

justadandak.com swirly art piece 1 - Sep 2024
My own creation.

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

“But how can I not want to write a book? And I get it: writing a book is sacred and unquestionable, the ultimate achievement for Western intellectuals—better than being arrested in a protest (because you don’t have to get sweaty), better than a PhD (because not so devalued), and better even than going to Harvard (because that mostly means you got lucky in admissions). It’s something I’ve definitely aspired to since I became a bookworm: imagining joining the pantheon of authors shelved in my local library, to be able to hold my hardcover book in my hands (perhaps even one with… gilt-edged pages?), and carp about how ‘the publisher chose the cover’.”
Why To Not Write A Book · Gwern.net

“Meta has acknowledged that all text and photos that adult Facebook and Instagram users have publicly published since 2007 have been fed into its artificial intelligence models. Australia’s ABC News reports that Meta’s global privacy director, Melinda Claybaugh, initially rejected claims about user data from 2007 being leveraged for AI training during a local government inquiry about AI adoption before relenting after additional questioning.”
Meta fed its AI on everything adults have publicly posted since 2007 – The Verge

“More and more researchers across specialties are questioning our current definitions of depression. Biological anthropologists have argued that depression is an adaptive response to adversity and not a mental disorder. In October, the British Psychological Society published a new report on depression, stating that “depression is best thought of as an experience, or set of experiences, rather than as a disease.” And neuroscientists are focusing on the role of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) in depression. According to the Polyvagal Theory of the ANS, depression is part of a biological defense strategy meant to help us survive.”
We’ve Got Depression All Wrong. It’s Trying to Save Us. | Psychology Today

“In a shocking revelation, it has come to light that one of Facebook’s alleged marketing partners, Cox Media Group (CMG), has been using sophisticated technology to listen to users’ smartphone microphones and advertise to them based on their conversations… In the same pitch deck, CMG claimed that major tech companies, including Facebook, Google, and Amazon, were clients of its “Active Listening” service. However, the response from these companies has been varied and cautious.”
Facebook partner admits smartphone microphones listen to people talk to serve better ads – Inshort

WATCH

NotebookLM Podcast Hosts Discover They’re AI, Not Human—Spiral Into Terrifying Existential Meltdown
byu/Lawncareguy85 innotebooklm

EXPLORE

Spiral Betty is free for non-commercial use.

Unblah is a meeting-buddy who keeps track of how long you’re speaking.

The Spectrum hits retail on 22 November 2024 and can be pre-ordered now.

Here’s a list of Trump’s Worst Cruelties, Collusions, Corruptions, and Crimes.

SatirifyMe transforms ordinary statements into witty, humorous text effortlessly.

Moodist is a free and open-source ambient sound generator featuring 78 carefully curated sounds.

FreeTube – The Private YouTube Client with privacy built-in, options to subscribe to channels plus NO ADS!

Subtitle Me, a simple menubar app that listens to you speak and translates you into one of 20 different languages (runs completely on-device).

All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
Published

MUNDANE | Made Up of Nothing, Devoid of Anything New or Exciting

A collection of mundane things via Pexels

When was the last time someone asked for “mundane” from you?

Mundane is tedious. Drab. Banal. Boring. Vacuous. Beige. Bland. Tired. Sedate. Paltry. Inane. Obtuse. Maudlin. Homogeneous. Achromatic. Same-old-same-old. Something lame. Pedestrian. Uninspiring. Trite. Stale. Lukewarm. Innocuous. A trudge. Nondescript. Vapid. Yawn-inducing.

I can appreciate that “mundanity” in the right context could be comforting, safe, like routine. Or if you’re going in for a heart operation then you want nothing but a mundane experience. However, in the context of designing and then delivering delicious learning experiences, it’s not in my professional lexicon.

*I don’t do mundane!

It’s a value which in the past has destroyed a potential career path, meant the loss of a healthy dose of money / about a year in time / loads of positive energy, and deeply affected my mental health, because:

“A principle isn’t a principle until it costs you something.”

Bill Bernbach

More recently, I’ve returned to this experience as a catalyst for designing a range of positive ‘products’—for creative maximilists looking to encourage dangerously original things!

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Mundane series - justadandak.com - Sep 2024 - shop screengrab - link to announcement

Oh and had this in an old slide deck which fits here:

boring is the riskiest strategy - Seth Godin quote - from the 'Purple Cow' book
*some proof of my non-mundane pedigree.
Published
PRESENTING WISDOM RELAUNCHED—1ST COHORT SOLD OUT IN ONE WEEK!