When does anything become a fact? Information science has wrestled with that question for centuries, but it feels newly urgent in the age of LLMs. Enter a forgotten librarian, an imaginary antelope, Thomas Jefferson—and a very real dead moose. open.substack.com/pub/thelosts...

People fretting about the rise of AI slop would have hated 1830s newspapers. They were full of recycled material — moon hoaxes, “science wonders,” tall tales, and other low-grade filler. It all amounted to a kind of analog text-generation platform. hiddenfrequencies.alexwright.com/p/ai-slop-is...

I’ve been mostly quiet here for a while, working on a book about 19th-century newspapers and the early attention economy—an era that looks uncannily like our own. More to come soon; in the meantime, I've been thinking about the history of doomscrolling: substack.com/home/post/p-...

Feeling stoked about my latest acquisition: an antique Kelsey Excelsior press, with mini type case. Would you believe these things used to sell for five dollars back in the 1890s? The Victorian equivalent of a cheap inkjet printer.

Pouring one out for Tom Lehrer, a true polymath if ever there was one. I will never look at pigeons in the park the same way again. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/27/a...

Getting our march on.

An impressive piece of digital sleuthing by researchers at Cambridge, stitching together public records and running data analysis to generate "murder maps" of medieval England. Apparently the biggest troublemakers back then were college kids. Plus ça change ;) www.washingtonpost.com/history/2025...

Fascinating piece by David Caswell on the recent changes to x.AI‘s responses on South Africa “white genocide.” Not quite a smoking gun, but gets tantalizingly close to getting Grok to rat out the boss. www.linkedin.com/pulse/interv...

Holy ****

News outlets everywhere should follow @wired.com's lead in dropping paywalls for primarily FOIA-based reporting. freedom.press/issues/wired...

Excellent piece by the always-insightful Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, making the important point that for all the existential doom-and-gloom swirling around the news industry these days, most readers just don't seem all that concerned. www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/media/...

A provocative think-piece by @maxmcguinness.bsky.social on the complex, often conflicted relationship between French modernists and their 19th century news media. “The French modernists show us how to carve out space for artistic expression within dominant media without being dominated by them.”

Paul Otlet was a great many things but, well, not much a poet ;) Still, I quite like this kind of digital found poetry experiment. Sort of an Ezra Pound-meets-William S. Burroughs-meets-Python kind of vibe.

“Reactionary politics and anger farming” may just be my new favorite catchphrase. For anyone interested in less newsy fare, this list seems like a great start.

Fascinating think-piece on the heritage of AI hype cycles past and present, from computer historian Thomas Haigh: cacm.acm.org/opinion/arti...

look i made it the 1979 ibm warning

In 1659, the the Puritans in Massachusetts enacted a law that declared that Christmas was sacrilege and exchanging of gifts, greetings, and wearing fine clothing on that day was Satanic. Anyone caught celebrating was fined 5 shillings. (About 5 days wages.) The "War on Christmas" was an inside job.

A few pics from a morning well spent at the Museum of Printing in Haverhill, Massachusetts—a wonderland of old prints, presses, and assorted typographical gewgaws. Also one of the last places on earth where you can still see a working Linotype! www.museumofprinting.org

Audubon, a century and a half ahead of modern science, on other minds and animal intelligence

Sad to hear the news about Zakir Hussein. Indian classical music isn’t my usual cup of tea, but he gave one of the most mesmerizing musical performances I have ever seen. A phenomenally gifted artist, and by all accounts a nice guy. Someone worthy of remembrance. www.theguardian.com/music/2024/d...

Re-watching Modernism, Inc. (now streaming on Prime), a beautifully crafted documentary about Elliot Noyes and his outsized impact on twentieth century design, and the Bauhaus-ification of corporate America. www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8Ts...

Sure, why not? Hello BlueSky. I'm Alex, currently working as a UXer at Google, writing books and things, and hacking away at my five-string banjo. I'm interested in the history of technology, bluegrass music, and the uncanny valley of life with a Labradoodle.