@clive@saturation.social

· 3w ago

this point -- by @pluralistic@mamot.fr -- is basically all anyone needs to know about the endless openai's-agents-hacked-into-hugging-face discourse https://pluralistic.net/2026/09/12/god-in-the-box/ the whole post is worth reading, go check it out!

pluralistic.net

Pluralistic: LLMs are real, AI is fake (12 Sep 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

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Clive Thompson @clive@saturation.social

· 1mo ago

do you rewatch TV shows? or reread books? rewatch movies, obsessively play the same video game? there's a term for that: "volitional reconsumption" ... and the psychology behind why we find it so pleasant is really interesting item #6 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free to read/subscribe to here: https://buttondown.com/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-48-the-mouthpad-volitional-reconsumption/

Linkfest #48: The MouthPad, "Volitional Reconsumption", and The Genetics of Giant Pumpkins

buttondown.com

Linkfest #48: The MouthPad, "Volitional Reconsumption", and The Genetics of Giant Pumpkins

Hello there! It’s time for "the opposite of doomscrolling” — my latest “Linkfest”, in which I slowly and patiently distill vats of science, culture and...

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Clive Thompson @clive@saturation.social

· 3mo ago

Boosted by @GroupNebula563@mastodon.social

the penguins in a japanese zoo have *very* complex romantic lives poly groupings, broken hearts, lots of side-eye and drams so the zoo made a chart of it item #5 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free here: https://buttondown.com/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-46-curse-tablets-a-robot-cellist-and-why/

Linkfest #46: "Curse Tablets", a Robot Cellist, and Why Geologists Always Die In Movies

buttondown.com

Linkfest #46: "Curse Tablets", a Robot Cellist, and Why Geologists Always Die In Movies

Hello there! Time for "the opposite of doomscrolling” — my latest “Linkfest”, for which I sift through the endless vinyl-crates of the Internet, hunting for...

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Clive Thompson @clive@saturation.social

· 1mo ago

Boosted by @kims@mas.to

here, @pluralistic@mamot.fr perfectly distils the mechanics of why, to beat back enshittification ... ... we need true competition which, as Cory has pointed out for years now, why we need antitrust enforcement https://pluralistic.net/2026/08/25/gammamax/#felony-contempt-of-business-model

pluralistic.net

Pluralistic: The age of disinvention (25 Aug 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

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Clive Thompson @clive@saturation.social

· 4mo ago

back in the beforetimes when I was on Twitter, for years I ran a poetry bot it'd take a huge corpus of lines I'd written -- *very* loosely in emulation of Basho and several lyric poets of antiquity -- and pick three at random, publishing four times a day after I left Twitter in 2022, I turned it off but now I just relaunched the bot ... ... on mastodon! le voila: @clivebot@saturation.social

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Clive Thompson @clive@saturation.social

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@jasonkoebler@mastodon.social @404mediaco@mastodon.social this comment by a designer is spot on

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Clive Thompson @clive@saturation.social

· 4mo ago

okay people

it's your lucky day 🍀

it's time for "the opposite of doomscrolling"

my latest Linkfest newsletter just dropped

free to read/subscribe to here: https://buttondown.com/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-44-hallucinopedia-salmon-on-cocaine-and/

this issue includes:

🎈 tin blimp
🧱 famous album covers done in lego
🪈 medieval version of "Take On Me"
🧩 “Uncrossy”, the game
🎶 newborn babies can predict musical rhythm
🌊 $2.1 million to buy a waterfall
📸 pinhole camera made from pasta
🚬 synth made from discarded vapes
📻 WKRP is real now
👒 bread hats

and more!

Linkfest #45: Hallucinopedia, Salmon on Cocaine, and How Phil Collins Accidentally Invented Gated Reverb

buttondown.com

Linkfest #45: Hallucinopedia, Salmon on Cocaine, and How Phil Collins Accidentally Invented Gated Reverb

Hello there! Time for "the opposite of doomscrolling” — my latest “Linkfest”, in which I scroll through the endless Borgesian microfiche of the Internet,...

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Clive Thompson @clive@saturation.social

· 3mo ago

okay people 😀 it's your lucky day 🍀 it's time for "the opposite of doomscrolling" 🌞 the latest edition of my newsletter "The Linkfest" has dropped 📬 free to read and subscribe to here: https://buttondown.com/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-46-curse-tablets-a-robot-cellist-and-why/ this issue includes: 🪴 Iphone-case terrarium 🌩️ "Weathergotchi" 🦠 running Doom on e coli cells 🔭 telescope ranchers 🐧 chart of polyamorous penguin relationships 🤖 robot cellist 😈 ancient roman "curse tablets" ☠️ why so many geologists die in movies 💼 doomjobbing and much more!

buttondown.com

Linkfest #46: "Curse Tablets", a Robot Cellist, and Why Geologists Always Die In Movies

Hello there! Time for "the opposite of doomscrolling” — my latest “Linkfest”, for which I sift through the endless vinyl-crates of the Internet, hunting for...

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Clive Thompson @clive@saturation.social

· 3mo ago

Accenture examined the massive use of AI tokens by its employees and found that a big chunk wasn't coders ... ... it was nontechnical staff using AI to turn PDFs into images and markdown terrific scoop at @404mediaco@mastodon.social: https://www.404media.co/the-tokenpocalypse-is-here-companies-are-scrambling-to-stop-spending-so-much-on-ai/ unpaywalled just in case: https://archive.is/c6DSo

The Tokenpocalypse Is Here: Companies Are Scrambling To Stop Spending So Much on AI

404 Media

The Tokenpocalypse Is Here: Companies Are Scrambling To Stop Spending So Much on AI

Leaked audio from Accenture says a big source of AI token ‘chewing’ is people just converting PDFs to presentation slides.

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Clive Thompson @clive@saturation.social

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@mwichary@mastodon.online @beep@follow.ethanmarcotte.com Yes, it’s a great comparison! It reminds me of Evgeny Morozov’s comparison — back during the early rise of social media — of everyday tech privacy incursions to greenhouse gases Or as he put it; rarely is one *individual* bit of personal data grabbed by a huge firm a privacy problem for you, me, or society — but in massive aggregate it changes the atmosphere of daily life similar thing here

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Clive Thompson @clive@saturation.social

· 3mo ago

what could possibly go wrong https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/07/01/science/spudcells-synthetic-cell.html?unlocked_article_code=1.uVA.3u_u.U4--YC2GN8OJ&smid=url-share (gift link)

nytimes.com

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Clive Thompson @clive@saturation.social

· 3mo ago

Doom running on ...

... an array of *e coli* cells

(to be clear, the e coli is just the display, not the computation necessary to run the game lol)

item #3 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free to read and subscribe to here: https://buttondown.com/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-46-curse-tablets-a-robot-cellist-and-why/

buttondown.com

Linkfest #46: "Curse Tablets", a Robot Cellist, and Why Geologists Always Die In Movies

Hello there! Time for "the opposite of doomscrolling” — my latest “Linkfest”, for which I sift through the endless vinyl-crates of the Internet, hunting for...

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Clive Thompson @clive@saturation.social

· 4mo ago

btw, NYC area music folks !!🎶

I've been remiss in flacking my gigs here

but hey now! 📣

if you're around today ...

... at 6 pm my band Lipstick Driver is throwing it down at Mama Tried, out in Brooklyn

come on by, it will be glorious noise 🎸 , we've written a buncha new songs

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Clive Thompson @clive@saturation.social

· 3mo ago

behold "The Listening Museum" ...

... which has samples of the sounds of 36 famous clicky keyboards

you can pick a model, type away, and hear the glorious noise

item #2 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free here: https://buttondown.com/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-46-curse-tablets-a-robot-cellist-and-why/

buttondown.com

Linkfest #46: "Curse Tablets", a Robot Cellist, and Why Geologists Always Die In Movies

Hello there! Time for "the opposite of doomscrolling” — my latest “Linkfest”, for which I sift through the endless vinyl-crates of the Internet, hunting for...

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Clive Thompson @clive@saturation.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

I am not sure I've even seen a dang *clip* of it mind you, I have -- for good and for ill, and possibly surprisingly a lot of the latter --- structured my entire epistemological apparatus around never engaging with *any* TV news or commentary like, slamming the laptop lid shut if something accidentally starts autoplaying it's not even so much a decision as an autoimmune function

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Clive Thompson @clive@saturation.social

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@Bette@mstdn.social @kimlockhartga@beige.party this is making me want to issue my own lazyweb query to identify a children's book from the 70s the name of which I can't remember but am fascinated by ... .... and which no amount of googling has led to me uncover

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Clive Thompson @clive@saturation.social

· 2mo ago

Replying to

@meganL@mas.to @jasonkoebler@mastodon.social @404mediaco@mastodon.social 100%

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Clive Thompson @clive@saturation.social

· 4mo ago

they're sampling the smell of old libraries ...

... so they can preserve it archivally -- and recreate it when needed

archival smell-o-vision, more or less

item #4 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free here: https://buttondown.com/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-44-microchimerism-sonic-boom-duct-tape/

Linkfest #44: Microchimerism, Sonic-Boom Duct Tape, and the Hidden Tetris Champion

buttondown.com

Linkfest #44: Microchimerism, Sonic-Boom Duct Tape, and the Hidden Tetris Champion

Hello there! It’s time again for "the opposite of doomscrolling” — my latest Linkfest, for which I have sifted through the entire dang Internet, top to...

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Clive Thompson @clive@saturation.social

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org damn, get your hands on of those vapes and IT IS ON that payphone project is llt, yeah

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Clive Thompson @clive@saturation.social

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@dec23k@mastodon.ie @Bette@mstdn.social @kimlockhartga@beige.party I like it!

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Clive Thompson @clive@saturation.social

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@PlasticJohnny@mastodon.ie @jasonkoebler@mastodon.social @404mediaco@mastodon.social yes, precisely! a taxidimery-ed imitation of the original

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Clive Thompson @clive@saturation.social

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@gcvsa@mstdn.plus a surprising omission!

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Clive Thompson @clive@saturation.social

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@Guillotine_Jones@beige.party @DenOfEarth@mas.to 😂

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Clive Thompson @clive@saturation.social

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@falcennial@mastodon.social you are kind! so glad you like it

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Clive Thompson @clive@saturation.social

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@CanuckistanBob@cosocial.ca this is incredibly interesting, thank you for sharing

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Clive Thompson @clive@saturation.social

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@marisa@mastodon.scot @clivebot@saturation.social Honestly it fits in far better here on Mastodon than it ever did on Twitter

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Clive Thompson @clive@saturation.social

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@stefan@stefanbohacek.online @clivebot@saturation.social relatedly, wow has it gotten easier to host/serve bots since I did my first one back on twitter way more infrastructure supporting it

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Clive Thompson @clive@saturation.social

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@maximum_mew@indieweb.social @clivebot@saturation.social woooo I was missing it

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Clive Thompson @clive@saturation.social

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@irwin@saturation.social @MikeTRose@saturation.social hell yeah

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Clive Thompson @clive@saturation.social

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@MikeTRose@saturation.social @irwin@saturation.social So sorry for the outage! but yeah it's good to be back, and good (so far, and hopefully on an ongoing basis) to be running the hosting ourselves

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