A few chosen narrative examples, to uncover forms, inspire the soul and stir the creative spirits.
Loving the conversational manner of this video deconstructing and showing / applying / exploring the bass playing of Steve Harris from Iron Maiden (one of my favourite bands from youth). The two camera set-up and post production narrative editing to creates a distinct format flow which keeps your attention (even if you’re not a bass player or into the music).
Revealed through a static view of a fixed cam, here’s a visual feast showing all the camera operators and angles, dancers and tech people, backdrops and lighting, in-sync and aligned to create this one-shot music video by Jungle. This literal and layered choreography makes my brain tingle in all the right ways as a producer!
A nostalgic look behind one of the most popular songs of 1993, watch and learn from the song writer and uncover both the stories behind a song and also the wonderful insight in how the place-holder of the “mmm’s” becomes the hook to the whole tune.
“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
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).
“We believe that electing the Ocean to be a Trustee of SAMS is one of the most important decisions in our history. It challenges outdated models of governance and champions a future where the ocean’s voice is central to decision-making. That the Ocean should be represented in our governance might seem, at first blush, to be a gimmick, even whimsical. We are conscious that the move could be seen as trivial or ‘greenwashing’. After all, as a non-profit marine research organisation, surely SAMS always has the best interests of the Ocean in mind? But after several months of careful discussion and debate, the Trustees are convinced that even with a strong empathy for ocean conservation and a well-informed understanding of marine environmental matters, our decision-making is essentially anthropocentric; human interests are given precedence, and concern is limited to the impact on the Ocean rather than the interests of the Ocean.” News – The Ocean enters the boardroom — The Scottish Association for Marine Science
“…the British government’s undisclosed order was issued last month, and requires the capability to view all encrypted material in iCloud. The core target is Apple’s Advanced Data Protection, which is an optional feature that turns on end-to-end encryption for backups and other data stored in iCloud, making it so that even Apple cannot access that information. For a long time, iCloud backups were a loophole for law enforcement to gain access to data otherwise not available to them on iPhones with device encryption enabled. That loophole still exists for anyone who doesn’t opt in to using Advanced Data Protection. If Apple does comply, users should consider disabling iCloud backups entirely. Perhaps most concerning, the U.K. is apparently seeking a backdoor into users’ data regardless of where they are or what citizenship they have.” The UK’s Demands for Apple to Break Encryption Is an Emergency for Us All | Electronic Frontier Foundation
“Last month, Meta admitted to torrenting a controversial large dataset known as LibGen, which includes tens of millions of pirated books. But details around the torrenting were murky until yesterday, when Meta’s unredacted emails were made public for the first time. The new evidence showed that Meta torrented “at least 81.7 terabytes of data across multiple shadow libraries through the site Anna’s Archive, including at least 35.7 terabytes of data from Z-Library and LibGen,” the authors’ court filing said. And “Meta also previously torrented 80.6 terabytes of data from LibGen.” ”Torrenting from a corporate laptop doesn’t feel right”: Meta emails unsealed – Ars Technica
“For the new study, Lupyan and Nedergaard recruited 47 participants who scored the highest for having an inner voice and 46 who registered low scores—roughly in the top and bottom fifths of scores. They then gave these participants four language-related tasks they thought might be influenced by the use of inner speech. In the first, participants were briefly shown five words and asked to repeat them back. The second involved participants saying whether the names of objects in two pictures rhymed. In both experiments the group with less inner speech was less accurate in their responses. For the rhyme judgements, people with more inner speech were also faster. “This wide-ranging study really tests what inner speech gives us in terms of cognitive benefits,” Fernyhough says.” Not Everyone Has an Inner Voice Streaming through Their Head | Scientific American
“Here are just some of the factors in the Startup Drake Equation, the failure of any one of which is terminal: – Product that people want to pay for (really) – Able to grab those people’s attention amidst the noisy Internet – Pricing that those people will accept (and that is greater than your costs) – Competitive and distinctive enough to be chosen – Able to build the product as promised by the home page – Sustained value-delivery months and years later, so customers stay and keep paying – Able to fund the venture, either through early profits or fundraising – Able to work well with co-founders (or able do it all alone) – Develop a repeatable and profitable customer acquisition process – Able to attract and retain talent – Able to psychologically handle many years of deep effort, stress, and pain – Get lucky on occasion” The Startup Drake Equation
“As an editorial cartoonist, my job is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable. For the first time, my editor prevented me from doing that critical job. So I have decided to leave the Post. I doubt my decision will cause much of a stir and that it will be dismissed because I’m just a cartoonist. But I will not stop holding truth to power through my cartooning, because as they say, “Democracy dies in darkness”—image and quote source from the artist herself
“Musk is speedrunning the enshittification curve, and yet Twitter isn’t collapsing. Why not? Because Musk is insulated from consequences for fucking up – he’s got a huge cushion of wealth, he’s got advertisers who are desperate to reach his users, he’s got users who can’t afford to leave the service, he’s got IP law that he can use to block interoperators who might make it easier to migrate to a better service. He was always a greedy, sadistic asshole. Now he’s an unconstrained greedy, sadistic asshole. Musk 2025 isn’t a worse person than Musk 2020. He’s just more free to act on his evil impulses than he was in years gone by.” Pluralistic: Enshittification isn’t caused by venture capital (20 Jan 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
“According to Meta’s testimony, as relayed by plaintiffs’ counsel, Zuckerberg cleared the use of LibGen to train at least one of Meta’s Llama models despite concerns within Meta’s AI exec team and others at the company. The filing quotes Meta employees as referring to LibGen as a “data set we know to be pirated,” and flagging that its use “may undermine [Meta’s] negotiating position with regulators.” The filing also cites a memo to Meta AI decision-makers noting that after “escalation to MZ,” Meta’s AI team “[was] approved to use LibGen.” (MZ, here, is rather obvious shorthand for “Mark Zuckerberg.”)” Mark Zuckerberg gave Meta’s Llama team the OK to train on copyrighted works, filing claims | TechCrunch
“I’ve always lived my life restlessly: business travel, a new home every few years, a relentless pursuit for something more. Some have called it ambition; others say I’m driven. I just think I have a hard time sitting still – physically and mentally. There’s undoubtedly a propulsive energy that keeps me going. Is my RLS the kinetic force? Perhaps it is. And maybe not. Of course, I’ve suffered for decades. But I like the idea that my physical restlessness parallels how I navigate the rest of my life. Certainly, thinking about RLS as something more than twitchy legs is the only thing that partially calms my brain as I saunter into bed hoping, praying, that tonight I might finally lay still.” I clock up to 20,000 steps a night: my life with restless legs syndrome | Well actually | The Guardian
“During a seven-day trial in June, 2023, the 16 youth plaintiffs argued that the state’s promotion of fossil fuel infrastructure had jeopardized their physical and mental health, traditions, and recreational interests. Anthropogenic climate change has already had myriad impacts on Montana, including shorter winters with less snowfall, more frequent wildfires, and the reduced availability of wild game and ceremonial and medicinal plants. These impacts are expected to worsen as atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations rise.” ‘We have been heard’: Montana youth score a major climate victory in court | Grist
“And given the nature of these other devices and that users won’t realize what’s taking place, there are serious implications. Identity Week warns that “organizations using Google’s advertising tech can implement fingerprinting without violating Google’s policies and complying with the requirements of data protection law… Fingerprinting is so hindering to privacy expectations because it relies on signals that are not easy to wipe. Even if data is ‘permanently’ deleted, fingerprinting biometrics could detect and recognize your identity.” Google Starts Tracking All Your Devices In 6 Weeks—Forget Chrome And Android
“The planets are not exactly lined up, so they will appear in an arc across the sky due to their orbital plane in the Solar System. During clear nights in January and February, all of the planets except Mercury will be visible – an event sometimes called a planetary parade. On 28 February, though – weather permitting – all seven planets will be visible, a great spectacle for observers on the ground.” Seven planets are lining up in the sky next month. This is what it really means – BBC Future
Installed StopTheMadness to get rid of the insipid ‘Sign-in with Google’ pop-up plus block many other stupid web things and is working great (worth the money).
““A factor of 10 is an enormous difference, and this is what happens when you look at a reproduction compared to a real work,” said Martine Gosselink, director of the Mauritshuis, on Wednesday. “You become [mentally] richer when you see things, whether you are conscious of it or not, because you make connections in your brain.” Gosselink said she had been convinced of the power of the real before the study but had wanted her hunch to be formally investigated. “We all feel the difference – but is it measurable, is it real?” she said she had asked her colleagues a year ago. “Now, today we can really say that it is true.”” Real art in museums stimulates brain much more than reprints, study finds | Neuroscience | The Guardian
“Let’s be clear: the UK’s mooted copyright scheme would effectively enable companies to nick our data – every post we make, every book we write, every song we create – with impunity. It would require us to sign up to every individual service and tell them that no, we don’t want them to chew up our data and spit out a poor composite image of us. Potentially hundreds of them, from big tech companies to small research labs. Lest we forget, OpenAI – a company now valued at more than $150bn – is planning to forswear its founding non-profit principles to become a for-profit company. It has more than enough money in its coffers to pay for training data, rather than rely on the beneficence of the general public. Companies like that can certainly afford to put their hands in their own pockets, rather than ours. So hands off.” Here’s the deal: AI giants get to grab all your data unless you say they can’t. Fancy that? No, neither do I | Chris Stokel-Walker | The Guardian
““The existing structure of OpenAI is quite convoluted,” said Brian Quinn, a professor at Boston College law school. “If they simplify their structure in some way and have a public benefit corporation as the parent company, they can make as much money as they want.” The ChatGPT developer is reportedly heading for a valuation of $150bn under the new fundraising, making it worth nearly as much as Uber. Apple and the chipmaker Nvidia are among the companies cited in reports as potential investors in the funding round.” OpenAI planning to become for-profit company, say reports | OpenAI | The Guardian
“The TikTok owner launched its own web scraper, Bytespider, in April, and it’s now scraping data multiple times faster than bots from other companies, Fortune reported, citing research from Kasada, a bot management company, and Dark Visitors, a monitor of scraper bots. Companies developing AI models, such as Google and Meta, use scraper bots to gather data to train and improve the large language models (LLMs) and multimodal models that power the companies’ AI services.” TikTok owner ByteDance scrapes the web faster than OpenAI
“Kline sat at his keyboard between the lime-green walls of UCLA’s Boelter Hall Room 3420, prepared to connect with Duvall, who was working a computer halfway across the state of California. But Kline didn’t even make it all the way through the word “L-O-G-I-N” before Duvall told him over the phone that his system crashed. Thanks to that error, the first “message” that Kline sent Duvall on that autumn day in 1969 was simply the letters “L-O”.” ‘We were just trying to get it to work’: The failure that started the internet
“This week, Balaji posted an essay on his personal website, in which he argued that OpenAI was breaking copyright law. In the essay, he attempted to show “how much copyrighted information” from an AI system’s training dataset ultimately “makes its way to the outputs of a model.“ Balaji’s conclusion from his analysis was that ChatGPT’s output does not meet the standard for “fair use,” the legal standard that allows the limited use of copyrighted material without the copyright holder’s permission.” Former OpenAI Staffer Says the Company Is Breaking Copyright Law and Destroying the Internet
WATCH
EXPLORE
The Mudita Kompakt is live on Kickstarter and fun attempt at cutting out the digital distractions of a phone (apart from the e-ink this can be achieved with any phone though but good for kids as a dumb phone).
The WikiProject AI Cleanup aims combat the increasing problem of unsourced, poorly written AI-generated content on Wikipedia.
Linkwarden is a self-hosted, open-source collaborative bookmark manager to collect, organize and archive webpages.
“Creativity is made, not generated. Generative AI is ripping the humanity out of things. Built on a foundation of theft, the technology is steering us toward a barren future. We think machine learning is a compelling technology with a lot of merit, but the path generative AI is on is wrong for us. We’re here for the humans. We’re not chasing a technology that is a moral threat to our greatest jewel: human creativity. In this technological rush, this might make us an exception or seem at risk of being left behind. But we see this road less travelled as the more exciting and fruitful one for our community.” Creativity is made, not generated — Procreate®
“Our tendency to summon powers we cannot control stems not from individual psychology but from the unique way our species cooperates in large numbers. Humankind gains enormous power by building large networks of cooperation, but the way our networks are built predisposes us to use power unwisely. For most of our networks have been built and maintained by spreading fictions, fantasies and mass delusions – ranging from enchanted broomsticks to financial systems. Our problem, then, is a network problem. Specifically, it is an information problem. For information is the glue that holds networks together, and when people are fed bad information they are likely to make bad decisions, no matter how wise and kind they personally are.” ‘Never summon a power you can’t control’: Yuval Noah Harari on how AI could threaten democracy and divide the world | Artificial intelligence (AI) | The Guardian
“In an email reported by the New York Times, Condé Nast’s CEO, Roger Lynch, said that the deal will make up for some of the revenue that technology companies have snagged publishers in recent years. He wrote: “Generative AI is rapidly changing ways audiences are discovering information. It’s crucial that we meet audiences where they are an embrace new technologies while also ensuring proper attribution and compensation for use of our intellectual property.” Other media companies have taken the opposite tack. The New York Times and the Intercept have sued OpenAI for using their articles. The litigation is ongoing.” OpenAI signs multi-year content partnership with Condé Nast | Technology | The Guardian
“Like designing any immersive experience, a public place captures the imagination of its visitor. It offers a promise. How a place looks (Form) and its practical purpose (Function), should be informed by its “guest promise” (Fulfillment).” Margaret Kerrison | ex-Imagineer on placemaking | bloolop
“A recently published report by digital collaboration management company Vyopta found a correlation between employee retention and camera enablement during virtual meetings. Workers who left their organization within a year of the study’s sample period (Q1 2022 and Q1 2023) turned their cameras on in just 18.4 percent of small group meetings, while employees who stayed at their organization were on camera in 32.5 percent of such meetings. The report — which involved 450,000 employees and data from 40 million meetings worldwide — shows that companies need to make a concerted effort to establish an effective virtual meeting culture…” Camera-Off Time in Virtual Meetings Could Be a Bad Sign for Employee Retention, Study Finds | Inc.com
“In a simple experiment, researchers at the University of Chicago sought to find out whether a rat would release a fellow rat from an unpleasantly restrictive cage if it could. The answer was yes. The free rat, occasionally hearing distress calls from its compatriot, learned to open the cage and did so with greater efficiency over time. It would release the other animal even if there wasn’t the payoff of a reunion with it. Astonishingly, if given access to a small hoard of chocolate chips, the free rat would usually save at least one treat for the captive — which is a lot to expect of a rat. The researchers came to the unavoidable conclusion that what they were seeing was empathy — and apparently selfless behavior driven by that mental state.” A new model of empathy: The rat – The Washington Post
“Last week, Google backtracked on its long-standing promise to block third-party cookies in Chrome. This is bad for your privacy and good for Google’s business. Third-party cookies are a pervasive tracking technology that allow companies to snoop on your online activity for surveillance and ad-targeting purposes. The consumer harm caused by these cookies has been well-documented for years, prompting Safari and Firefox to block them since 2020. Google knows this—that’s why they pledged to phase out third-party cookies in 2020. By abandoning this plan, Google leaves billions of Chrome users vulnerable to online surveillance.” Google Breaks Promise to Block Third-Party Cookies | Electronic Frontier Foundation
“The proposed treaty, pushed by Russia and shepherded by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, is a proposed agreement between nations purportedly aimed at strengthening cross border investigations and prosecutions of cybercriminals who spread malware, steal data for ransom, and cause data breaches, among other offenses. The problem is, as currently written, the treaty gives governments massive surveillance and data collection powers to go after not just cybercrime, but any offense they define as a serious that involves the use of a computer or communications system. In some countries, that includes criticizing the government in a social media post, expressing support online for LGBTQ+ rights, or publishing news about protests or massacres.” Why You Should Hate the Proposed UN Cybercrime Treaty | Electronic Frontier Foundation
“As it’s described, Media Manager puts the burden on creators to protect their work and fails to address the company’s past legal and ethical transgressions. This overture is like having your valuables stolen from your home and then hearing the thief say, “Don’t worry, I’ll give you a chance to opt out of future burglaries … next year.”” Opinion: As AI is embraced, what happens to the artists whose work was stolen to build it? – Los Angeles Times
“Results showed again that those employees who continued to work with AI (compared to those who did not) had greater desire for connection, and were more lonely, with the corresponding consequences: more helping for those who had greater needs for affiliation, and more alcohol consumption (in one of the studies) and insomnia for those who felt lonelier.” Research: Using AI at Work Makes Us Lonelier and Less Healthy
“In doing so, scientists have created a genetic goldmine by pinpointing previously unknown genes that are now being used to create hardy varieties with improved yields that could help feed Earth’s swelling population. Strains are now being developed that include wheat which is able to grow in salty soil, while researchers at Punjab Agricultural University are working to improve disease resistance from seeds that they received from the John Innes Centre. Other strains include those that would reduce the need for nitrogen fertilisers, the manufacture of which is a major source of carbon emissions.” ‘Goldmine’ collection of wheat from 100 years ago may help feed the world, scientists say | Agriculture | The Guardian
“In the total darkness of the depths of the Pacific Ocean, scientists have discovered oxygen being produced not by living organisms but by strange potato-shaped metallic lumps that give off almost as much electricity as AA batteries. The surprise finding has many potential implications and could even require rethinking how life first began on Earth, the researchers behind a study said on Monday.” ‘Dark oxygen’ in depths of Pacific Ocean could force rethink about origins of life | Oceans | The Guardian
“It’s only when Salim Ismail, SU’s “global ambassador” and the week’s moderator, fails to project his slides that we are reminded that the technological singularity may not be quite as near as predicted. “AI is really easy,” Ismail sighs as he fiddles with the projector connection. “AV is really hard.”” On the exponential curve: inside Singularity University | WIRED
“Research has shown that we don’t consider plants to be important mostly because they grow close together and don’t appear to move. As Wandersee and Schlusser wrote, “Static proximity is a visual cue humans use to group objects, so individual plants and different plant species tend to be de-emphasized.” A vine takes hours to turn toward sunlight, a bristlecone hundreds of years to mature. Each organism’s clock — its sense of time — is so different from ours that we can’t even sense it. In other words, what we call plant blindness is really time blindness: an obliviousness to temporal frames of reference that deviate from our own. And, despite Wandersee and Schlusser’s schoolroom agitprop, the situation is probably worse today than in 1999, exacerbated by our ever-diminishing attention spans, e-commerce, social media and more. The pace of civilization continues to quicken.” A Clock In The Forest – NOEMA
“While Apple maintains its in-house AI is made with security in mind, its partnership with OpenAI has sparked plenty of criticism. OpenAI tool ChatGPT has long been the subject of privacy concerns. Launched in November 2022, it collected user data without explicit consent to train its models, and only began to allow users to opt out of such data collection in April 2023.” AI is coming to your Apple devices. Will it be secure? | Apple | The Guardian
“Let’s assume, fast-forward five or six years, that AI is ready,” Yuan said. “AI probably can help for maybe 90% of the work, but in terms of real-time interaction, today, you and I are talking online. So, I can send my digital version, you can send your digital version.” Using AI avatars in this way could free up time for less career-focused choices, Yuan, who also founded Zoom, added. “You and I can have more time to have more in-person interactions, but maybe not for work. Maybe for something else. Why do we need to work five days a week? Down the road, four days or three days. Why not spend more time with your family?”” The future is … sending AI avatars to meetings for us, says Zoom boss | Artificial intelligence (AI) | The Guardian
“A group of current and former employees at prominent artificial intelligence companies issued an open letter on Tuesday that warned of a lack of safety oversight within the industry and called for increased protections for whistleblowers. The letter, which calls for a “right to warn about artificial intelligence”, is one of the most public statements about the dangers of AI from employees within what is generally a secretive industry. Eleven current and former OpenAI workers signed the letter, along with two current or former Google DeepMind employees – one of whom previously worked at Anthropic.” OpenAI and Google DeepMind workers warn of AI industry risks in open letter | Artificial intelligence (AI) | The Guardian
“Large language models such as ChatGPT are some of the most energy-guzzling technologies of all. Research suggests, for instance, that about 700,000 litres of water could have been used to cool the machines that trained ChatGPT-3 at Microsoft’s data facilities. It is hardly news that the tech bubble’s self-glorification has obscured the uglier sides of this industry, from its proclivity for tax avoidance to its invasion of privacy and exploitation of our attention span. The industry’s environmental impact is a key issue, yet the companies that produce such models have stayed remarkably quiet about the amount of energy they consume – probably because they don’t want to spark our concern.” The ugly truth behind ChatGPT: AI is guzzling resources at planet-eating rates | Mariana Mazzucato | The Guardian
“A little-discussed detail in the Lavender AI article is that Israel is killing people based on being in the same Whatsapp group [1] as a suspected militant [2]. Where are they getting this data? Is WhatsApp sharing it?“ Meta and Lavender
“Maybe AI art is the future. Maybe I can create so much more, express myself, and do everything I never had the energy to do,” you say. Your AI therapist wholeheartedly agrees with you. You are inspired. You are powerful. You are spending twenty dollars per month on ChatGPT Plus.” The Seven Stages of AI Grief (for Artists) – McSweeney’s Internet Tendency
“As I’ve argued previously, we — with good reason — continually complain about the state of Twitter under Elon Musk, but I’d argue Raghavan (and, by extension, Google CEO Sundar Pichai) deserve as much criticism, if not more, for the damage they’ve done to society. Because Google is the ultimate essential piece of online infrastructure, just like power lines and water mains are in the physical realm.” The Man Who Killed Google Search
“Social networks have become “the web” for many people who rarely venture outside of their tall and increasingly reinforced walls. As Tom Eastman once put it, the web has rotted into “five giant websites, each filled with screenshots of the other four”.1 Within those enclosures, the character limits, neutered subset of web functionality, and constant push to satisfy the enigmatic desires of an algorithm tuned to keeping eyeballs on the platform encourage sameness, vapid engagement farming, and rage bait while stifling creativity.” We can have a different web
“The real moment of change, he believes, came some months before the crash south of Stockholm, when a conversation took place in his office. It was during a visit from Ines Uusmann, the minister for infrastructure, and Tingvall’s political boss. At one point she turned to him and asked, simply: “How many deaths should we have as our long-term target in Sweden?” Tingvall replied: “Zero.” To his surprise, Uusmann said she was interested and would like to hear more. This was the beginning of an approach to road safety known as “Vision Zero”.” More than a million people die on roads every year. Meet the man determined to prevent them – BBC Future
“The results reveal that internet access, mobile internet access and use generally predicted higher measures of the different aspects of wellbeing, with 84.9% of associations between internet connectivity and wellbeing positive, 0.4% negative and 14.7% not statistically significant.” Internet use is associated with greater wellbeing, global study finds | Internet | The Guardian
“Aside from the fact that everyone has hated this corporation for years, what is the actual case against Live Nation? The argument is that the corporation violated Federal and state laws against monopolization, unlawful tying, and/or exclusive dealing in multiple markets, from primary ticketing services to concert and artist promotion to venue management. And they are seeking a divestment of Ticketmaster, an end to its unfair contracts and anti-competitive practices. According to the Department of Justice’s complaint, Live Nation has built a ‘Flywheel,’ dominating a bunch of different parts of the live entertainment industry through a bunch of different coercive techniques, such as threats, exclusive contracts, and acquisitions. It then uses its power to harm certain artists, and to impose a ‘Ticketmaster Tax’ via fees on consumers.” Antitrust Enforcers to Break Up Ticketmaster and End the “Ticketmaster Tax” (finally)
“This is a comprehensive excavation of The Gateway Process report. The first section provides a timeline of the key historical developments that led to the CIA’s investigation and subsequent experimentations. The second section is a review of The Gateway Process report. It opens with a wall of theoretical context, on the other side of which lies enough understanding to begin to grasp the principles underlying the Gateway Experience training. The last section outlines the Gateway technique itself and the steps that go into achieving spacetime transcendence. Let’s go.” How to Escape the Confines of Time and Space According to the CIA
WATCH
EXPLORE
cobalt is your go-to place for downloads from social and media platforms. zero ads, trackers, or other creepy bullshit. simply paste a share link and you’re ready to rock!
“Regulators and lawmakers fail to make any changes to proactively protect the public, while allowing crypto firms to advertise and recruit new customers who seem far more likely to wind up as victims of yet another collapse as they are to become the next crypto-millionaires. How many people will have to lose how much money before we stop believing the lies from an industry that has preyed on people’s trust and hopes for financial miracles, only to dash them on the ground in failure after failure?Bankman-Fried is going to prison, but nothing has changed.”
“Use of the arts in healing does not contradict the medical view in bringing emotional, somatic, artistic, and spiritual dimensions to learning. Rather, it complements the biomedical view by focusing on not only sickness and symptoms themselves but the holistic nature of the person.When people are invited to work with creative and artistic processes that affect more than their identity with illness, they are more able to “create congruence between their affective states and their conceptual sense making.” Through creativity and imagination, we find our identity and our reservoir of healing. The more we understand the relationship between creative expression and healing, the more we will discover the healing power of the arts.”
“MSI Reproductive Choices (formerly Marie Stopes International) and the Center for Countering Digital Hate claim the platforms are restricting local abortion providers from advertising, but failing to tackle misinformation that undermines public access to reproductive healthcare. MSI, which provides contraception and abortion services in 37 countries, said its adverts containing information on sexual health, including cancer advice, had been rejected or deleted by the platform.”
“A study published by a team of international researchers last month found that gravity batteries in decommissioned mines could offer a cost-effective, long-term solution for storing energy as the world transitions to renewable power. Scientists from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) found that the world’s abandoned mine shafts could store up to 70TWh of power – roughly the equivalent of global daily electricity consumption.”
“For many, it’s not just about recognizing a global issue but feeling a deep, personal impact on their mental well-being. Especially for those with a strong connection to their environment or homeland, this pervasive anxiety and distress manifests in unique ways. Such feelings can give rise to “solastalgia,” which refers to the dread originating from environmental change. Unlike nostalgia, which is a longing for a place or time in the past that one cannot revisit, solastalgia is the experience of distress from belonging to a home that is undergoing change.”
“Scholars might call it a philosophical treatise. But it seems familiar to us, and we can’t escape the feeling that the first text we’ve uncovered is a 2000-year-old blog post about how to enjoy life.”
Curated list of games no betterverse.be to help you think critically and imaginatively about the future of society, and collectively imagine brighter tomorrows.
Love the way this muzzleapp.com demonstrates the problem it’s going to solve (see notifications examples on the right hand side of the screen).
Starting a couple of new projects soon and always good to get some inspiration from onepagelove.com.
Want to practice your typing? typelit.io does that for free, online, and gets you to type out classic books.
morss.it creates RSS feeds from websites and a whole lot more, check it out.
![Amazing Stories v26 n10 [1952-10] - William P Mcgiven](https://i0.wp.com/justadandak.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Amazing-Stories-v26-n10-1952-10-William-P-Mcgiven.jpg?resize=543%2C741&ssl=1)
