Over at the newsletter I wrote about the unholy scourge that is "CEO said a thing!" journalism:

favorite type of film photography nerd reddit post is "what's wrong with my photos" / "why do my photos turn out so bad?" and then the post is like 8 perfect/beautiful photos

guys I think vice is back with a new podcast

why do all the new linen pants have elastic and drawstrings and not belt loops

OpenAI's Sora and Meta's metaverse were shuttered the same week. Both were defined by an aesthetic that embodies Silicon Valley's current project: to undermine labor, replace art + lived experience with digital facsimiles, and extract value at any cost. And users recoiled at the mere sight of them.

ABS is good because it's not human v robot. It's one human's judgment v another human's judgment and the robot is the judge. I think it's highlighting baseball's human element & adding new strategy. Side effect is the umpires get humiliated, but it's cinema. no notes www.404media.co/you-cant-def...

more than half the article is about the thing that is being criticized here. like, most of the article is about that. these questions are answered in the article. people need to get a grip

need an ai that lets me block people by just thinking about it. clicking the button gives them too much power

good thing we've enabled robots that spam human communities then harass those communities after they get banned www.404media.co/an-ai-agent-...

orioles in midseason form already

don’t leave for vacation without a shipping container full of these items

Samuel Basallo is going to be a monster

I don’t quite understand what they’ve done but five years ago I thought United was extreme trash and now I think they’re the best, good for all involved

go o's

i like when people/brands say "colorways" instead of "colors" look at our new spring colorway and it's just red

Georgia state troopers used Flock to issue a traffic ticket. Sounds minor but is a new use. Most police depts say they will not use the system for this purpose. Fact that they're all networked means possibly more people subjected to lookups/surveillance etc www.404media.co/police-used-...

Wikipedia does what is essentially a full ban on AI content: www.404media.co/wikipedia-ba...

after much deliberation and giving AI the benefit of the doubt, Wikipedia editors have had enough of AI slop. New policy bans LLM generated content, periodt www.404media.co/wikipedia-ba...

painful the orioles don’t play til tomorrow

and why the hell would disney want to partner with a service like openai where we saw users AI slopify hitler spongebob? as @jasonkoebler.bsky.social writes, execs “hate paying human labor so much they convinced themselves customers would happily consume AI slop if shoved down their throats.”

I got an email the other day. They were writing to thank me for parking but also wanted to know How was your experience at: Emerson Hospital? Not that great man. If you want the truth of it. I was parking at the hospital for starters. As you well know. www.welcometohellworld.com/how-was-your...

OpenAI news: 1. Sora is dead. May the memory of its four-month existence as a copyright infringement machine be a blessing. 2. Disney is pulling out of its billion-dollar investment in OpenAI entirely. Turns out when you try to serve AI slop on a product people pay for, no one wants it.

there were, in fact, people using Meta's Horizon Worlds. And the announcement it would shut down felt like a betrayal

The Hollywood executive dream that AI will revolutionize how movies are made or that they can lean on user generated AI slop to drive costs down is not going to work and is already a disaster www.404media.co/disneys-open...

A delivery robot crashed through a bus shelter in Chicago, shattering glass all over the sidewalk. The crash comes amid a protest against delivery robots in the city and a few weeks after a politician said he would not allow the robots into his district. Read now: www.404media.co/delivery-rob...

The things I flagged in the article I wrote for you at MB (8 years ago!) are happening more now. Plus, since the bots are no longer in a 'contained space' like a campus, there are now even more interoperability and social issues. www.vice.com/en/article/d...

turns out delivery robots are kind of like birds in that they run into windows sometimes www.404media.co/delivery-rob...

This is wild: a company is secretly scanning the internet for Zoom meeting links and turning them into AI-generated podcasts for $$$. Some meeting participants only found out after we told them. Included meeting on protecting kids from ICE, was supposed to be private www.404media.co/this-company...

75% of people in a post office at any given moment are mailing something for the first time in their entire life

in an energy crisis we’re using $1 billion of taxpayer money to pay a company to not make local, renewable energy www.nytimes.com/2026/03/23/c...

This is diabolical in a v cool way. Great piece by @janus.bsky.social www.404media.co/this-web-too...

We're having a theme week! As part of that, we've got two sales for you: $1 for your first month of our Reader tier: aftermath.site/03-20-2026-0... OR $75 for a year of our Member tier, which gives you access to our Discord and a merch discount: aftermath.site/03-20-2026-0...

"not to mention, there is a large amount of combinatorial possibility inherent to the choice of dip being paired to the chip chosen"

i have so many credit card points but they are too precious to use. i will never use them. too valuable.

this is now!

checking what i wrote the day Mark Zuckerberg announced his metaverse www.404media.co/rip-metavers...

Hope everyone still has the NFT that grants them access to the Metaverse funeral! www.404media.co/rip-metavers...

i hate my editors

for 404 Media, I wrote about Tinder's new feature that will let AI scan your entire camera roll. The company's head of product says the app’s use of AI is to “help you express yourself." www.404media.co/tinder-plans...

cool

really excited to do this in 45 mins! Cindy's book is amazing, highly recomend www.eff.org/event/effect...

Join us today at 11am PT with @404media.co Cofounder Jason Koebler in conversation with Cindy Cohn about her new book "Privacy's Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance." eff.org/livestream-...

North Oaks, Minnesota is home to united healthcare executives and various CEOs. It's also the only city in the US that is not on Google Street View. A documentary filmmaker set out to change that. pretty interesting look at who gets privacy in America and how www.404media.co/mapping-goog...

I talked with @prisonculture.bsky.social, Alison Macrina, and Katie Clark about libraries as public infrastructure, contested political terrain, and spaces of possibility—and about what it means to fight for them in this fascistic moment.

sparkling water World Series is mineragua v topo chico and no one else is even close to in the running

Really love this @jasonkoebler.bsky.social reframe of all this AI job loss talk: If we are talking about how AI affects the labor market, we also have to talk about how AI is destroying the internet on both a cultural and practical level.

WBC was awesome no notes

Hi I’m a person experiencing AI psychosis I’m going to signal you at midnight and be super annoying about it

SCOOP— Trump wants a 24k gold coin w/ his face on it for America 250, but an official at a late February coin advisory committee meeting called it something only done by "nations ruled by kings or dictators." After NYT reported the criticism, US Mint yanked online vid of the meeting w/o explanation.

going on the bitchuation room to talk about flock in 20 mins very excited: www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYmf...