In retrospect, changing reliable and pretty cheap wires for shitty, unreliable wireless and Bluetooth was kind of the technology endgame for everything.

You wouldn't think so. There's a general sense that being "good with computers" means you're capable of adapting to ever-shifting tools sats and platforms. That sense is sort of nonsensical. Once you have a user interface workflow in muscle memory, it should be reasonable to expect it to persist.

Good article, and good on EZ for (in character) promoting it despite not being entirely complimentary. A tangential rant on “We need something that says you can’t make shit worse like this.” Indeed. Making things work in software is hard. Not breaking things that already work is actually easy! 🧵

#graphicdujour Note that this shows CO2, not total CO2 plus CO2-equivalent. The decline is mostly due to substitution of gas for oil, and fugitive methane releases cancel some of the improvement; how much is a matter somewhat in dispute and somewhat a matter of interpretation.

Kind of funny, I didn't call some stuff I did for work AI, because I thought "machine learning" or "algorithm" would be a more meaningful way to describe it. Ten years later "can we make this better with AI" but of course now they mean "talking computer AI" not "does useful things AI".

I think there is a world in which AI creations could be called art. But like on the same tier as a print from Bed Bath and Beyond or IKEA. I feel a tinge of annoyance when people post those creations and get compliments like it’s an achievement. It’s an adult posting their hand turkey.

#graphicdujour via @pik-potsdam.bsky.social

Thinking about the Wosconsin town named “Prairie du Chien”. Wikipedia says it’s named after a native chief whose name meant “dog”. Google AI treats this as authoritative. But I wonder. Did indigenous people even know dogs? Prairie du Chêne would mean “oak prairie. Would make a lot more sense. 1/N

When I say the US has bet its post-pandemic economy on AI while China has bet its on green energy, this is what I mean: Here, AI related companies account for 75% of S&P 500 returns since ChatGPT's launch. In China, green tech accounts for one quarter of GDP growth.

1/ A longtime Wired editor just wrote a mush-brained essay about how he totally missed the political rot of Silicon Valley (& still doesn't get it). But in the late 1990s, a Wired journalist warned of a toxic ideology bubbling up from tech. Paulina Borsook has largely been erased. Let's change that

Doh! 🤦‍♂️

More comedy from Facebook

“If she weighs the same as a duck…”

And that's good, right? Line go up?

Some of the science takes around here lately are mis-takes.

Landmark obvious result.

A few weeks ago I had a medical resident at a pediatrics practice recommend that I ask Chat GPT about my newborn daughter's symptoms when she gets sick

Getting followed by accounts claiming to be beautiful young women, following thousands, followed by three or four people, with a few innocuous liberal leaning posts and a pretty picture or two. Almost certainly not who they are. Not sure of the purpose of this charade, as all my posts are public.

for all people mock it wikipedia is genuinely one of the wonders of the modern world

Apparently real. Odds of avoiding a collapse of civilization this century continue to decline.

This is the way.

I don’t want instructions in video form. Write it out so I can skim to the info I need and be on my way.

“down the looking glass”??? — “Do these benefits outweigh the concerns that people have?” Gebbie says. “I think pretty quickly they will. We are already down the looking glass at this point.” — Anyway, eww, this is through a rabbit hole we don’t want to go down. www.wired.com/story/meta-s...

The reason people go to rugged places to commune with natural beauty isn’t that natural beauty can’t exist in mild, pleasant places. But practically every acre of all those mild places have been taken by humans for economic activity and are barren of natural beauty on that account.

It’s impossible to overstate how much ai is melting brains

The basic physics of atmospheric CO2 capture show it will always be insanely energy intensive, no matter how you do it. We're talking "entire energy output of humanity dedicated purely to CO2 capture for a century" kind of scale. Physics doesn't care how clever you think future generations will be.

Everything we've made will break, buildings and streets will crumble, and cities will be abandoned. But the CO₂ we emit into the atmosphere will persist for centuries, and the climatic impacts will last longer than human civilization has existed. This is our legacy for the future.

Just found out that George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, written around 1948, describes a "versificator" that composes the words for songs "entirely by mechanicsl means" simonwillison.net/2025/Jul/6/n...

#graphicdujour I may have posted this one before. One to keep in mind, both in America and elsewhere. (Canada is probably the orange dot just below France.)

Apropos of nothing I suppose, I find myself recalling how horrified I was when the Smothers Brothers show was abruptly cancalled.

I’m confident to say at this point the whole Poilievre strategy is not to show something that would draw people to the CPC out of trust but instead continue to try and poison people with hate and frustration into his column. Same playbook since day one. #cdnpoli

Sometimes it's nice to remember that even Marcus Aurelius was like "you don't have to comment on everything bro"

Pythagoras day comes but once a century! 25/9/16 !

Gotta say it’s kinda unsettling being an American citizen in Canada watching the absolute dismantlement of the fundamentals of democracy and seeing some of the same demagoguery and views being expressed up here.

I am surprised McD’s can’t do arithmetic. The sustainable population of ruminants would not remotely supply the demand for their burgers. If they care about the workd they ought to be investing in legume products and legume burger recipes.

Paper claims “ Over the past 35 years, deforestation has accounted for approximately 74% of the ~ 21 mm dry season−1 decline and 16.5% of the 2°C rise in maximum surface air temperature” in Amazon basin. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#graphicdujour North Pacific summer season surface temperature

I lived in Texas for ten years, was an active member of the Texas Folklore Society and traveled around the state extensively. I met another Canadian who had seen a half hour documentary about Texas on the CBC, and he couldn't stop spewing oversimplifications about Texas that he was 100% sure of.

“The Left” and “the Right” aren’t real. They’re made-up clubs, invented and sold to the public by the people in power… and by the loudest people with the most to gain.

Imagine being the kind of person with the chutzpah to "explain" to Margaret Atwood what Margaret Atwood meant in The Handmaid's Tale

I think shit went sideways when boys replaced garage band culture with online gaming culture. Rock n roll really can save a young man's soul.

We are already in an incipient grey slime economy but it could get much worse. I think people who think “growth” is the only important metric of an economy are going to have a terrible comeuppance but unfortunately they are taking the rest of us down with them.

Never heard of the guy before yesterday, but today Facebook shoved him into my feed. In the video he was claiming there was overwhelming historical evidence for the resurrection so therefore the bible is literally true especially the parts he liked.

This is a really stupid idea but I still want the pin.

It’s incredibly important, arguably now more than ever, to be able to spot bullshit and treat it accordingly. And it’s a lot harder to do that when the press, by and large, has abandoned its duty to do so, putting the job on us like a doctor saying “Google your symptoms.”