Resonance | James’ Coffee Blog
Ah, the circle of life!
Link tags: reading
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When All You Have Is a Robots.txt Hammer – Pixel Envy
I write here for you, not for the benefit of building the machines producing a firehose of spam, scams, and slop. The artificial intelligence companies have already violated the expectations of even a public web. Regardless of the benefits they have created — and I do believe there are benefits to these technologies — they have behaved unethically. Defensive action is the only control a publisher can assume right now.
I Am An AI Hater | moser’s frame shop
I wanted to quote an excerpt of this post, but honestly I couldn’t choose just one part—the whole thing is perfect. You should read it for the beauty of the language alone.
(This is Anthony Moser’s first blog post. I fear he has created his Citizen Kane.)
This website is for humans - localghost
This website is for humans, and LLMs are not welcome here.
Cosigned.
Curate your own newspaper with RSS
I’m almost certainly preaching to the choir here because I bet you’re reading these very words in a feed reader, but what Molly White has written here is too good not to share:
RSS offers readers and writers a path away from unreliable, manipulative, and hostile platforms and intermediaries. In a media landscape dominated by algorithmic feeds that aim to manipulate and extract, sometimes the most radical thing you can do is choose to read what you want, when you want, without anyone watching over your shoulder.
A human review | Trys Mudford
Following on from my earlier link about AI etiquette, what Trys experienced here is utterly deflating:
I spent a couple of hours working through my notes and writing up a review before sending it to my manager, awaiting their equivalent review for me.
However, the review I received back was, quite simply, quintessential AI slop.
When slopagandists talk about “AI” boosting productivity, this is the kind of shite they’re talking about.
It’s rude to show AI output to people | Alex Martsinovich
For the longest time, writing was more expensive than reading. If you encountered a body of written text, you could be sure that at the very least, a human spent some time writing it down. The text used to have an innate proof-of-thought, a basic token of humanity.
Now, AI has made text very, very, very cheap. … Any text can be AI slop. If you read it, you’re injured in this war. You engaged and replied – you’re as good as dead. The dead internet is not just dead it’s poisoned.
I think that realistically, our main weapon in this war is AI etiquette.
Better typography with text-wrap pretty | WebKit
Everything you ever wanted to know about text-wrap: pretty in CSS.
Justified Text: Better Than Expected? – Cloud Four
Some interesting experiments in web typography here.
Daring Fireball: Kottke on the Art and Power of Hypertextual Writing
Hypertext links are an information-density multiplier.
The way I’ve long thought about it is that traditional writing — like for print — feels two-dimensional. Writing for the web adds a third dimension. It’s not an equal dimension, though. It doesn’t turn writing from a flat plane into a full three-dimensional cube. It’s still primarily about the same two dimensions as old-fashioned writing. What hypertext links provide is an extra layer of depth. Just the fact that the links are there — even if you, the reader, don’t follow them — makes a sentence read slightly differently. It adds meaning in a way that is unique to the web as a medium for prose.
Introducing TODS – a typographic and OpenType default stylesheet | Clagnut by Richard Rutter
This is a very handy piece of work by Rich:
The idea is to set sensible typographic defaults for use on prose (a column of text), making particular use of the font features provided by OpenType. The main principle is that it can be used as starting point for all projects, so doesn’t include design-specific aspects such as font choice, type scale or layout (including how you might like to set the line-length).
75 Best Sci-Fi Books of All Time - What Is The Best Science Fiction Book Ever Written?
This is a damned fine list.
The 21 best science fiction books of all time – according to New Scientist writers | New Scientist
I’ve read 16 of these and some of the others are on my to-read list. It’s a pretty good selection, although the winking inclusion of God Emperor Of Dune by the SEO guy verges on trolling.
How it feels to get an AI email from a friend
My reaction to this surprised me: I was repelled
I imagine this is what it feels like when you’re on a phone call with someone and towards the end of the call you hear a distinct flushing sound.
Curious Reading Club
I think this is a terrific idea from Bobbie—be one of 25 people to get a brand new hardcover non-fiction book in the mail for just $25 and then join in the discussion afterwards.
Alas, it’s not available in the UK but US friends, check it out.
Muscular imagination
Robin Sloan on The Culture:
The Culture is a utopia: a future you might actually want to live in. It offers a coherent political vision. This isn’t subtle or allegorical; on the page, citizens of the Culture very frequently articulate and defend their values. (Their enthusiasm for their own politics is considered annoying by most other civilizations.)
Coherent political vision doesn’t require a lot, just some sense of “this is what we ought to do”, yet it is absent from plenty of science fiction that dwells only in the realm of the cautionary tale.
I don’t have much patience left for that genre. I mean … we have been, at this point, amply cautioned.
Vision, on the other hand: I can’t get enough.
Against Disruption: On the Bulletpointization of Books ‹ Literary Hub
It seems to me that there is a fundamental discrepancy between the way readers interact with books and the way the hack-your-brain tech community does. A wide swath of the ruling class sees books as data-intake vehicles for optimizing knowledge rather than, you know, things to intellectually engage with.
In a world where tech billionaires dominate so much of our culture, it’s troubling to see books treated like mere vessels for self-betterment the way that cold-water therapy and Fitbits are. Some of us enjoy fiction.
A holy communion | daverupert.com
You and I are partaking in something magical.
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