January 14, 2023
Guinea pigs exit and enter the tube.
A tintinnabulation of greeping. Guinea pigs living their best lives. Also, bonus chickens. (SL YouTube)
Robots posing with some butter
Whenever one of these models is upgraded, it becomes less good. Janelle Shane asks software to create novelty sock ideas. Various surreal designs result. ChatGPT appears to like alliteration. [more inside]
Is New York Turning Into Los Angeles?
Quintessentially Californian institutions are popping up all over Manhattan as New Yorkers embrace sound baths, mocktails and legal marijuana. [more inside]
At Some Point, Creative Destruction Simply Destroys
And yet, while dragging the likes of Apple CEO Tim Cook off to the whipping post may be fine sport, what’s the state of our own souls in all of this? We who encourage and enable these 21st-century digital robber barons? Are we their victims? Co-conspirators? Could we find our own way out of the walled garden? Do we even want to? from The Pulitzer winner who predicted Elon Musk and Elizabeth Holmes 25 years ago, a look at Steven Millhauser's 1997 novel, Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer
postcards from an unfolding crisis
A Writer Collapses. As He Recovers, His Dispatches Captivate Readers (NYT -- archive link) Hanif Kureishi lost use of his arms and legs. In tweets dictated to family members, he narrates the drama, and muses about writing and art, love and patience. He’s also quite funny.
Nightmare fuel
99 years-old artist Huang Yongyu designed the Year of the Rabbit (from Hell) zodiac stamp for the Chinese postal service. Huang actually came on livestream to talk about his red-eyed blue rabbit, expressing that drawing a rabbit is something fun, something celebratory, and that he just hoped his rabbit would make people happy. "But it doesn't," one person replied. From What's on Weibo founder Manya Koetse.
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