If there is a place where precision and nuance matter, boy howdy, it's contracts. You don't want the language simplified, you want a human with expertise and experience to explain all the ways you might be at risk of getting fucked (derogatory) and what your points of leverage are.

I went to the cottage and came back convinced that we need shows like Heated Rivalry more than ever. "Sometimes the most radical thing you can do is to have a good time on purpose." newsletter.sachajudd.com/archive/a-tr... Thanks @carlylane.bsky.social & @readingtheend.bsky.social for their posts.

✨✨✨ Fansplaining's 2025 year in review! ✨✨✨ Over on Tumblr, a few thoughts about the (bleak) state of cultural—and especially fandom-related—coverage in the mainstream media, followed by a full rundown of the fantastic writing we've been able to publish this year: www.tumblr.com/fansplaining...

Funny Numbers xkcd.com/3184/

If you want to understand the future of online life instead of complaining about it, start here.

Yet more absolutely brilliant stuff about fandom and the Internet: what women want, hockey and gay sex.

Happy Harry Styles Return to those of us who celebrate. youtu.be/EaMtVAqJzOs?...

I went to the cottage and came back convinced that we need shows like Heated Rivalry more than ever. "Sometimes the most radical thing you can do is to have a good time on purpose." newsletter.sachajudd.com/archive/a-tr... Thanks @carlylane.bsky.social & @readingtheend.bsky.social for their posts.

give jacob tierney all the awards. heated rivalry is a perfect six hours of television 🏒

This is a great example of how genAI steals from us all on multiple levels. It's stolen a promotional spot for real books and authors, it's stolen a job from an actual journalist who could have compiled this, it's stolen an opportunity for parents to be recommended good NZ books for their kids

Omg Chris Nolan really made him design and build a nuclear bomh

enjoying christmas the same way i did at age ten

my sister smashing it on the fandom related gifts

pavlova hours

sorry but any steve rogers who goes back in time knowing bucky is a prisoner of hydra and instead of moving heaven and earth to free him moves to the midwest and knocks up peggy is no captain america of mine. keep it

what is up with these temu cops?? second in a week? www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/crime/man...

Many of you will have started your christmas breaks, but trust me, this 30mins is worth it. @sachajudd.com's closing from #FFConf is now live. It's not your usual nostalgia/look at what it was, but real meaty inspiration as to what we can do now. Treat yourself! www.youtube.com/watch?v=29-s...

i did not WANT to have to spend my break writing a heated rivalry essay but AS IT TURNS OUT…

“As it turns out” is absolutely killing me here

please let “bugs bunnying” become the slang for manipulating an LLM into ignoring its guardrails, i have never seen a more succinct and evocative term for it

🐐 #letsgopens

New Zealand just recorded its first-ever day of zero coal- or gas-fired electricity. In fact two days, 20 & 21 December. (Still some co-gen, about 1.8%.)

“Back in June, medical researchers discovered a similar racial bias in large language model (LLM) psychiatric diagnostic tools. In that case, results showed AI tools often proposed “inferior treatment” plans for Black patients whenever their race was explicitly known.”

Browsing the web is still awesome because I started with this fanciful, wildly expensive ($31) can of calamari I saw while shopping: (tinned fish has taken the best graphic design mantle from weed products)

The name "Popular Science" doesn't mean we shift our coverage depending on public opinion. It means we cover relevant subjects that are rigorously researched, reliable, and grounded in reality. And trans lives are grounded in reality. We see y'all. No matter what. www.popsci.com/science/tran...

I love alt text. Not only does it make images accessible, I be having fun with the descriptions. Extra space for my lil jokes

drop your knives out rankings 👀 🕵️‍♂️

"AI citations often point to nothing. They’re citations to the idea of a citation. References to the concept of research. Footnotes in a dream." Excellent, useful article.

If you want to watch it with an audience @virgcatt.bsky.social you can for free at the end of Feb.

"Profits collapsed. Newsroom morale soared." Amazing piece from @joannastern.bsky.social www.wsj.com/tech/ai/anth...

"There’s a future where we’re not all trapped between either swiping and scrolling til our eyes bleed, or not having social media at all. But we have to decide that’s what we want and do something about it." newsletter.sachajudd.com/archive/the-...

i just found out americans don’t have christmas crackers and now i don’t know what to do with myself. this is possibly worse than when i found out they don’t butter their sandwiches.

"Just in the nick of time, New Zealand’s trans youth—and the people who love them and care for them—can breathe a sigh of relief" 🥰 This is the heart of it. Everyone who knows and loves a trans kid knows how vital—as in literally life-saving—this injunction feels (and will hopefully continue to be)

Are these the same companies that told us the robot could do it?

I saw this, I thought of you, I think it's worth your time. newsletter.sachajudd.com/archive/the-...

Fukuyama just constantly swinging big to outdo his own record of being the wrongest guy ever, kinda have to hand it to him for effort alone

Social toy store gives christmas kai and toys for whānau fighting the cost of living.

"We have traded the rich, unpredictable discovery of traditional browsing for curated, homogenised answers that limit user control and dilute the web's unique diversity." newsletter.sachajudd.com/archive/cura...

I just sighed so hard a penguin fell over in Antarctica www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/securit...

Now that it's public: RIP FluTracking, which I understand only cost $50k per year to administer, yet provided incredibly valuable and irreplaceable information on levels of influenza-like-illness. What an utterly dim decision.

"Right now, giant, ad-based networks created by six men that everyone begrudgingly uses with diminishing emotional returns, control the vast majority of the web." So delighted to share this great interview with Sari Azout from Sublime. newsletter.sachajudd.com/archive/cura...

If people really believed that you needed to engage on conservative-dominated platforms to be effective they’d be active on Truth Social, Rumble, and Kick. They are not. They just don’t like X as much anymore and they want it to be your fault

be strong and take heart

just absolutely heartbroken about what’s happened in sydney

“I’m not understanding the anti-big tech subtext in a show I’m literally not watching because I now have the attention span of an iPad kid”

Crashed out so hard about THAT needle-drop in #HeatedRivalry episode 4 that I wrote an entire article about it. www.slashfilm.com/2050452/heat...

Everywhere I go I meet creative, intelligent, hard working people with great ideas who can't begin to implement them because they don't have the necessary capital. So much wealth has been hoarded and accumulated it prevents any real economic growth. The problem isn't lack of ideas jesus christ.

mike remains one of the best writers i know 💕

this is what i mean about closed platforms and hostility to linking out. a post on LI with no outbound link (putting the "read more" in the comments) gets me a few hundred impressions in the first hours. a post with a link gets 4. platforms want you still and scrolling - go SURFING again.

I do firmly believe that if you're an individual or company that is NOT over-indexing on AI right now, you have the competitive advantage. Unfortunately I do not have high hopes that the industry will recognize that until significant damage has been done.