The Disney and OpenAI licensing partnership seems like a terrible idea, insofar as controlling IP representation and the risk of diluting branding — unless, of course, there are critical limitations for usage and context.
Tad alarmist of an article, but good effort for a warning bell against the generational risks of children using AI (I know, it’s always something):
Social-media feeds have already created echo chambers where people see only views they agree with (or love to hate). AI threatens to strengthen these echo chambers and lock children into them at an early age. […] Yes-bots threaten to create children not used to taking turns, who grow up into colleagues unable to compromise and partners unfamiliar with the give-and-take required in a relationship.
This tracks for adults, too.
In light of the Warner Bros dilemma, Jason L. Riley writes on the movie theater’s inevitable, unfortunate decline. And as much as we dread the day… it’s likely coming. Only a few generations will remember:
The ticket lines could be long. You had to arrive early for evening showings, particularly on weekends. But what resonated more than the setting was the shared experience. Watching “E.T.” or “Raiders of the Lost Ark” or “Superman” on a giant screen in a dark theater with total strangers offered a visceral thrill that could never be replicated in my living room.
Speaking of the Mad Men debacle on HBO Max, special effects wizard Todd Vaziri has an analytical post up about this.
It appears as though this represents the original photography, unaltered before digital visual effects got involved
The Verge on HBO’s poor execution of the “remastering” of Mad Men in 4k for streaming. It exemplifies bad stewardship of assets and ill-advised processes (missed cropping-out of production crew from scenes we’ve already seen properly sized for TV?). All the more reason to own a Blu-ray version.
Author Robin Sloan’s suggested gift guide is a reprieve from the usual banality and homogenous offerings found elsewhere. Focused on uniquely consumable, durable, and cosmic gifts (including, of course, books), this is probably one of the few relevant lists to pay attention to.
Though Dan Brooks’s take down of the “new, lonely vices” reads as more of an opinion piece, it certainly feels like a practical way to assess:
I hope some readers will agree that although the old vices had net negative effects on some people’s lives, their benefits—for those who pursued vice in moderation—went beyond instant gratification to something more valuable. To spend Saturday night at the bar is, in many cases, to spend time with friends and meet new people. To give in to one’s carnal urges is to experience increased oxytocin levels in the short term and, in certain cases, to find lasting companionship. And gambling at a casino, while it is almost never a smart investment, is at least an excuse to get out of the house, chat, and experience the particular type of empathy that comes from losing alongside strangers. Vice can bring people out of themselves to be with others, even if that means coming together to do what they probably should not.
That the new vices are so uniformly solitary suggests that the national character might become more solitary, too. This trend is unsettling, but perhaps more alarming is that large numbers of people could become so oblivious to the upside of vice as to decide that it is better pursued alone. I would hate to think that, in our collective understanding of sex and gambling and getting wasted, so many Americans would conclude that the endorphins are the only point.
Digital experiences continue to strive for the relentless pursuit of maximizing engaged user time, especially so with AI conversations:
Chatbot products […] are thus indeed a logical next step in the trajectory of Silicon Valley striving to create more addictive commercial software services for increasingly lonely consumers
🕗 Updated my Slimmest Wallet Pursuit recommendations page. New entry for the year, probably my end-game wallet unless something, somehow, comes out that’s significantly better, or we stop using cards altogether in the future. Save you the click: it’s the Tom Bihn Minimalist Wallet #1.
A genuinely hopeful take from Greg Storey on the malaise we all are (likely) feeling.
The late-70s malaise birthed MTV, punk, hip-hop, Silicon Valley, and the personal computer revolution. The Depression birthed New Deal reforms, the jazz golden age, and the technological leaps of wartime innovation. The 1890s gloom birthed the Progressive Era, Art Nouveau, and entirely new ways of thinking about society and power.
Brian Eno:
I remember an early review of one of my ambient records saying something like “No song, no beat, no melody, no movement”—and they weren’t being complimentary. But I think they were accurate, because this is a music of texture and sonic sensuality more than it is any of those things they were alluding to. I’m sure when the first abstract paintings appeared, people said, “No figure, no structure,” etc.… The point about melody and beat and lyric is that they exist to engage you in a very particular way.
Just discovered this post-war architectural collective of “buildings inspired by pyramids and mastabas that rise above the sandy, green expanse of a former farm” just outside the French Mediterranean coastline.
Allegedly architect Jean Balladur’s work (officially titled La Grande Motte) was disparaged as architectural pollution, but this looks anything but. It’s got that dreamy mid century flavor of futurism, and stark contrast with the surrounding green landscapes is catnip for aesthetics.
CW&T have been on a roll lately with a few up cycled products, and their latest — the HELIX_BALL_DROP_TESTER_V17 — is dialed into their time theme, using imperfect materials from the Time Since Launch device. The inconsistencies in the time it takes the ball to descend from iteration to iteration is also interesting; perhaps, the point being, it is your own custom measurement of time for an activity, like breath work, meditation, a pause from work, a moment to gather yourself.
An updated Skyline wallpaper collection from Basic Apple Guy was released today, and looking nice. Was sporting one from last month and I’ve been enjoying the colors, will upgrade to this!
“Anything that lasts 10 years, 20 years, it has to be new. And most of those are not received well at the start.”
This interview is funny because yes, Death Stranding 1 received mixed reviews upon release, but has since been held in very high regard as a completely new experience (albeit spiritual success to Metal Gear).
It’s okay for its sequel to be anticipated and even praised ahead of time — continued success is a good thing for a videogame studio, but I get what Kojima is after: he wants his art to be off-kilter to provide something fresh, which is hard to do. We can only hope Death Stranding 2 can be both experimentally wild (what a true fanbase is hoping for anyway), while simultaneously yielding blockbuster revenues.
A truly random, critical meta analysis of Sam Altman’s kitchen as he unconventionally fixes a meal for the Lunch with FT editorial series.
Wonderfully sincere piece by Annie Mueller on reevaluating perspective:
Calcification occurs when you don’t pay attention. The tissues harden in place. Things get dry and brittle. Another word for calcification is death. Change is life. Be open, and don’t be afraid to ask others to be open, too.
Moment of non-political distraction: Racket has a thoughtful piece on dive bars and glass block windows (ranking them, natch). Highlighting one of my faves in NE Minneapolis (Knight Cap):
Big glass block window? Yes. Nearly-as-big off-center sign? Sadly, also yes.
False spring came early to the midwest. Had to dig quite a trench out of this heavy, semi-wet hazard in the morning. Also nice to see Noah Kolina, photographer up in Lumberland, NY, saw a similar “ice storm”.
I’ve tried all the Mac launcher utilities over the years, including the legendary Quicksilver (RIP, even though they still seem to have a site up for it…), and keep coming back to Launchbar, currently in its sixth version. It’s a complete package — buy once, has all the features it says it has, no AI (a bonus), and is exceptionally fast with file/folder actioning. Comparatively, Raycast is bloated and burdened with a focus on enterprise accounts. Alfred is suitable, but feels archaic and neglected in 2025.
If you know, you know. Minnesota’s legendary dive bar frozen pizza brand of choice › Racket has a piece on how Doug Flicker builds new installments for Heggies pizzas.
…the brand-new Italian Beef pizza that’s already hitting bars and grocery stores? Flicker says he perfected it over three months, toying with five or six different beef brands, several cheese blends, and a handful of giardiniera recipes. The standard-issue Heggies sauce got tweaked “a tiny bit, but not too much.”
Kottke has a rundown on the recently released 4K restoration of Seven Samurai. Funny he mentions getting a Blu-ray player and returning to physical media… I just bought a handful of favorites from Criterion a few weeks ago. Feels good to have a real backup in case, you know, the worst happens.
Derek Thompson’s interrogation into adult loneliness corresponds with a wavelength that connects to what’s going on politically, with capitalism/branding, and probably the future of the human race. It’s an astounding change in our species.
Om Malik predicts a major evolution of the browser:
While browsers are so ubiquitous that it may be hard to imagine life without them, the truth is that we humans have had to adapt to what has been a document-centric web experience. We have been forced to adapt to technological constraints, rather than technology truly adapting to human needs.
I’m seeing more and more of this concern amongst friends and coworkers, and journalists/artists in particular are flabbergasted:
Cinema, theatre and great novel writing has always had the power to entrance, to get us to suspend our disbelief. But we knew where the border between fantasy and reality ran. Now with AI we are entering a world where those lines will be harder to discern – and many people just don’t care.
We once distinguished reality from fantasy and used this difference for high art: interpret authors’ perspectives to embrace emotion, challenge thought, and employ critical analysis. Perhaps I’m lamenting the loss of preference for older formats. Though long-form television remains popular, the proliferation of ultra-short-form video and the lack of authorship or authenticity are the new norm.