Garbage Day uses Jimothy to trace how virality works on the internet of 2026. Related: this story on how the algorithm has prevented us from producing a single “song of the summer.”
UW–Madison communication professor Catalina Toma argues that technology-mediated communication more often supports human connection and well-being than harms it, provided people use it intentionally.
I watched “Obsession” with my teenager last night, and dare I say, I liked it as a little genre story, a morality play about romance, relationships and consent. I also enjoyed the practical horror effects.🍿
A colleague hosted a nice discussion of the work of David Dylan Thomas, who advocates for using human-centered design concepts to bring humanity back to tech. New and novel approaches abound, especially on whether and how to let engagement metrics drive decisions on design teams.
This is a pretty good Tiktok breaking down the historical, cultural and religious meanings invoked in the “computah” memes. An important rule of the internet: the best memes are intertextual.
Scheduled send as alibi? Nice try, Costanza.
Parents wanting stakes lower than a smartphone: consider a kid-friendly Wi-Fi landline, which looks and works like an old corded phone but runs over your internet connection, giving kids the independence to get connected safely. Alternatively, get a VOIP phone through your ISP for ~$10/mo.
Finished reading: We’ll Prescribe You a Cat by Syou Ishida 📚
The Atlantic takes on the prevalence of the “it’s not X, it’s Y” construction in AI-generated writing, highlighting the semantic roles in sentence construction that differentiate ideas for clarity. Chatbots seem to like this construction, despite how clunky it sounds to the human ear.
Henry Rollins and Ian Mackaye have taken on a critical calling: preserving the legacy of The Cramps for posterity.
Finished reading: Yesteryear A Novel by Caro Claire Burke 📚
rss.chat is a new, free social network service that uses RSS to create a federated social feed that looks and feels a lot like OG Twitter. See also: the launch of HyperTexting, another RSS-based app that centralizes the open web in a way that feels a little like Google Reader (complimentary).
Clothing technology: tracing a history of pockets from ancient coin purses to tie-on pouches to today.
A cool article from Cap Times on how language translation serves as a trust-builder for local government in an era of mistrust.
With global temps at peak in several areas of the world, the BBC covers how critical tech infrastructure is impacted by high heat.
If you’re looking to be depressed, see this early research from Business Insider on the social implications of GLP-1 usage and how it may impact relationships in the home and workplace.
Dan Hon made me laugh with “carbon-based chauvinism.”
I found this piece from an anthology celebrating 50 years of women’s studies, which explores the intersection of scholarship and publishing practices over time.
I too am dismayed at the sudden lack of cottage cheese in the local supermarket (I take mine as a snack, dusted with EBTB). The shortage hits hardest in the lactose-free section, where six of us appear to be competing for five tubs, and I have started to recognize their faces.
Among other disappointing SCOTUS announcements today: Supreme Court Rejects Lawsuit Alleging Roundup Weedkiller Caused Cancer. In a previous life, I worked in the same college as a cancer researcher who developed twenty years of conclusive research that Roundup causes cancer in dogs by studying Scottish terriers. Scotties, it turns out, tend to be susceptible to bladder cancer, and thus make good candidates for related research when cancer is present. For several years, I got to witness a veritable army of Scottie dogs dressed in bowties and plaid jovially trotting in and out of our veterinary research hospital to seed her research during their cancer treatments in West Lafayette.
What I learned during that time is that a great deal of veterinary research is about looking for health patterns across species. While not all carcinogens act identically across species, most known cancer-causing agents affect both dogs and people in similar ways. Because dogs share our homes and have similar biological responses to toxins, scientists track canine cancers as an early-warning system for human health risks and to research viable interventions to treat them.
In any case, while I don’t know the ins and outs of the specific laws in play here, this is a disappointing outcome when it comes to the science.