Notable links
[Becky Chambers] âYouâre an animal, Sibling Dex. You are not separate or other. Youâre an animal. And animals have no purpose. Nothing has a purpose. The world simply is. If you want to do things that are meaningful to others, fine! Good! So do I! But if I
Iâm a natural-born American citizen but never lived here until my early thirties. I have a complicated relationship with the country: I never thought Iâd live here until I suddenly did. As it happened, my parents moved back to look after my grandmother, and ten years later, I
Notable links
[Lydia Kiesling] It took me a long time to get through the first third of this novel. The protagonist is so vapid, her point of view so incurious and at the same time so familiarly American, against a backdrop of obvious imperialism and climate obliviousness, that it was hard to
Iâve spent the week in Florence, Oregon, a lovely little town on the coast. Itâs a bit windy and a little cold, but as Iâm fond of saying, I lived in Scotland for a decade. I can take it. Frank Herbert came to the town in 1957
AI
[Cloudflare] "To help preserve a safe Internet for content creators, weâve just launched a brand new âeasy buttonâ to block all AI bots. Itâs available for all customers, including those on our free tier." This is really neat! Whatever you land on AI scraping, giving site
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[Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Vint Cerf, Hadley Beeman, Daniel Appelquist, Robin Berjon, et al] "Government engagement in digital and Internet governance is needed to deal with many abuses of this global system but it is our common responsibility to uphold the bottom-up, collaborative and inclusive model of Internet governance that
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[Rachel Leingang at The Guardian] "The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navyâs Seal Team 6 to assassinate
Technology
[Jonathan Zeller at McSweeney's] "We do not live in some tech dystopia in which our smartphones clandestinely use their mics to pick up every word we say and then feed us commercial messages based on them. The truth is simpler and not at all alarming: your phone
I want to apologize for yesterdayâs rant about British politics. That kind of rhetoric isnât big or clever, and it runs against the tone I usually try for*. Over time, this space has shifted from more personal thoughts towards more directed opinions at the intersection of tech and
Culture
[Vanessa Thorpe in The Guardian] âArt is about reaching out. So I think itâs wrong to allow one strata of society to have the most access.â This is an older article, but it resonated with me so much that I wanted to share it immediately. This is so important,
AI
[Molly White] "I fear that media outlets and other websites, in attempting to "protect" their material from AI scrapers, will go too far in the anti-human direction." I've been struggling with this. I'm not in favor of the 404 Media approach, which
Notable links
"Governed by an independent board of directors, the 501(c)3 charitable organization will help AP sustain, augment and grow journalism and services for the industry, as well as help fund other entities that share a commitment to state and local news." Fascinating! And much needed. I'