@jamesjgill.bsky.social This from @bcmerchant.bsky.social is the counterpoint to the Matt Shumer piece you posted the other week. It's long but well worth it, bring a cuppa. Lots of further reading from it too! www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/actually-t...

"Take search as an example. Using #Google search in a certain way can sometimes yield more useful results than #DuckDuckGo or #Ecosia, but that doesn’t mean it should be the default choice." FULL INTERVIEW >

"That said, we can and should exercise agency and choice in how and where we spend our time online. Just because something is tricky or time-consuming doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing. Companies like #Google rely on us choosing ease over friction to maintain their position..."

🧵 Snippet from our latest interview with Andy "We might have chosen default platforms for email, search & browsing without much thought, & the ethos of the companies running them has probably changed over time. Moving away from them can be time-consuming and tricky..."

"I don't think you understand how many puppies might die if someone doesn't do a something." Chucky Hagan - CEO of Decapa-leash www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Hugely impressed with my first @ifixit.com experience. Just replaces the battery on my son's second hand Pixel 6a. Great quality tool kit and clear instructions. 10/10 would fix it again.

Hire Dave for beautiful, performant sites built with the planet in mind.

"Put down your phone and knit something" My neo-luddite call to arms for 2026

Winter is improved if you put your veg trimmings and herb stalks in a bag in the freezer and when it's full you make it into a stock for a banging minestrone. Omnivores can and should add chicken bones & parmesan rinds to the bag too. Extract value & nutrition from what seems like waste.

While kneeling by a lake to take a photo, the man stood next to me said "are you going to have a drink?" to his dog. I looked up and told him I wasn't thirsty and he took a beat and told me he was talking to his dog.

Me - Highlight text and turn into a heading Google Docs - Turn the highlighted text & the previous, paragraph into a heading. Got it Me - What? No, just the highlighted text. GD - Maybe if you add an extra line break? Me - Ok, try now. GD - Nope, that wasn't it either. Maybe try Gemini, IDK.

Slow hand clap www.theguardian.com/politics/liv...

Does anyone know of any agencies or small to mid sized businesses that moved from Gsuite or Microsoft365 to more ethical or EU based alternatives?

Google quietly replaces it's Operating Sustainably page with an operations page on it's sustainability website. Ghouls gonna ghoul. Old web.archive.org/web/20250626... New sustainability.google/operations/

This article from @bell.bz on AI usage in companies and agencies is fascinating reading. Really, really good. piccalil.li/blog/are-peo...

This sucks. I often find myself sharing @hf.co articles and initiatives when looking for more balanced take than the usual AI hype. Deeply disappointed to see this happening and their silence in the face of questions from @404media.co. Do better.

I am slightly floored by this article. I've read and listened to a lot of reporting about GenAI platforms aiming for engagement over accuracy and speed running the issues social media platforms have. The latest @techwontsave.us covers the topic nicely and is a great chaser to the article.

Really enjoyed chatting with SEO oracle @davepeiris.bsky.social from @propellernet.co.uk for this article on how AI is effecting SEO, SERPs and discoverability. TLDR: AI changes everything and nothing. www.wholegraindigital.com/blog/how-sho...

Surfacing from a rabbit hole marked: "SEO, GEO, AI Overviews and declining organic click through rates". Hard to know why site traffic from Google might be falling I guess.

Yer da is trying to print the internet again... ...and it looks gooooood. Feeling slightly mindblown by this Picallili article about controlling how your site looks when printed. Fascinating stuff from @vale.rocks via @bell.bz's excellent Index newsletter and site. piccalil.li/blog/printin...

Hugely important report on AI's current energy usage, AI companies' lack of transparency and what future energy demands might look like from @technologyreview.com www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1...

Luckily all this is offset the societal damage caused by the joy generated by the fact we can create Ghibli inspired action figure avatars of ourselves.

"This is the whey" Mandalorian power lifting club motto

Loved this snarkily accessible puncturing of the AI bubble. The rest of JD's writing on ESC KEY .CO is well worth your time too.

Published an article about why 66% of the online population using Chrome is a bad thing for people and the planet... www.wholegraindigital.com/blog/can-bro...

I've realised that all the time I'd usually spend listening to podcasts about tech bros and cos being awful has been high jacked by binging @realmsunknown.bsky.social. My inner geek is a lot happier than normal as a result. Humble request for a touch more Culture/Iain M Banks content please.

Can anyone recommend a none google online translation platform?

Today on the International Transgender Day of Visibility I celebrate all trans people and wish that they could all just exist, live and love as themselves. Trans rights are human rights. www.hrc.org/campaigns/in... I see you. You're all safe with me and I feel safe with you.

This

Can anyone help Sam?

TIL about browser fingerprinting and it made me want to live like Gene Hackman (RIP) in Enemy of the State. www.techradar.com/features/bro...

Roses are red Their stems are deep green The environmental impact of training and running US built LLMs Is truly obscene

👀 Public think Heathrow expansion ‘wrong priority’. Just 6% said expanding airports should be an investment priority, found polling of more than 2,000 people by @yougov.co.uk we commissioned with Possible. Find out more: www.independent.co.uk/business/pub...

AI Needs Your Help Artificial Intelligence is facing a crisis: humans are consuming far too many precious resources that AI needs to thrive. Every sip of water you take and every light you turn on could be sustaining the AI systems that uphold your digital conveniences. savethe.ai

Hey Gemini. If you really want to help me write stop Google Docs from applying the format that I want applied to highlighted text to the copy above that text, which is separated by a blank line. Every goddamn time.

<table> highlighting with CSS :has() 💡 td:has(~ td:hover), /* previous sibling cells */ table:has(td:nth-of-type(3):hover) /* column cells */ tr:not(:first-of-type):has(~ tr:hover) td:nth-of-type(3) { background: var(--highlighted); }

"The plagiariser of my plagiariser is my friend" Ancient AI advocacy proverb

Deepseek to NASDAQ...

NEW: Bloomberg reviewed +1K hours of YouTube vids from 9 popular streamers and podcasters who cater to American men. We analyzed 2 yrs of guests and transcripts to see how they discussed political topics and understand their role as a new mainstream info hub www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...

Waking up to see someone make a fascist salute on the US inauguration stage is truly depressing. My heart goes out to US citizens who are seeing their right to peacefully exist being taken away by these tiny minded fuckers.

The fact that Virgin media didn't call their AI Granny Chatbot a "Nan-droid" tells me everything I need to know about the lack of joy, vision and imagination in the generative AI industry. forbes.com/sites/leslie...

The kinds of AI that help recognise blood clots is not the same that creates substandard lesson plans for children. These are fundamentally different and problematically merged in discussions around implementation of AI. It's a mess.

This headline is making me SO CRANKY esp because I'm reading @shannonvallor.bsky.social's new book. These systems should never be placed in a position of replacing public service humans. They will just replicate existing poor decisions and further entrench harms. It will be a dark age.

Vanity Fair covering the all-important angle about the LA wildfires...

Excuse my french, but what the fucking fuck do you think you're doing Kier? www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

@404media.co are you aware of Matt Mullenweg disbanding the sustainability team in a fit of pique? www.reddit.com/r/WPDrama/co...

Do you think I can get a 500 word article out of the fact that Google docs dictionary doesn't recognise the word "enshittification"?

My smart watch is so smart that has transformed itself into fancy e-waste. Can anyone recommend a dumb watch? Something simple that doesn’t look like Q has given it to a double oh agent. Bonus points if it’s a wind up and not battery powered. Is watchsky a thing?

Jack's law's of content check out. Also "the infinite lasagne of content sadness" is a handy subtitle for 90% of the internet and my phrase of the day.