- Sorry to lead with a depressing one, but sometimes we live in a depressing world and it can’t be helped: Rest of World covers the bombing and rebuilding of a Gazan tech hub.
- A beautiful article on the struggles of geologists to truly comprehend the vastity of deep time
- An absolutely legendary Youtube algorithm pull: “Viva la Vida” played on a Dutch mechanical funfair organ. It’s so jaunty!
- Charli XCX has a Substack now. Sure, why not.
- StellarCatalog.com. I love how astronomers go full-tilt into the sci-fi æsthetic whenever they design websites.
- Google Gemini AI time machine. I spent an embarrassing amount of time playing around with this. Historical accuracy’s a bit questionable and the output text keeps leaking into the image, but still!
- On that note, this piece in Wired about the potential for an AI bubble is the rare nuanced take that comes close to how i feel. Let the damned thing pop already so we can all shut up about it and start treating machine learning like a normal technology, instead of either the Great Satan or the Machine God!
- We rarely lose technology
- Said piece taught me about the Sloot Digital Coding System, invented by a Dutch engineer who claimed that his new algorithm could represent an entire feature film with eight kilobytes(!!!) of data. Shortly before he signed a contract to sell it, he died of a heart attack. Spooky!
- The ancient Roman Lycurgus Cup shines red when lit from behind and green when lit from before.
- “The Book” claims to be “the ultimate guide to rebuilding civilisation”, and it’s yours from only £99.00. What a steal!
- List of individual body parts. Amazing stuff here.
- Cynthia Plaster Caster, a “recovering groupie” who made plaster casts of celebrity cocks for nearly fifty years. What an icon(?)
- “Welcome to the Lighthouse Directory, providing information and links for more than 24,600 of the world's lighthouses.”
- I’ll leave you with a feel-good human-interest story: please give a round of applause to Splash, America’s first search-and-rescue otter!
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