Elizabeth Tai

Category: Link Blog

Links to interesting articles I’ve come across.

  • Interesting podcast: Multipolarity? Schmultipolarity!

    An interesting debate about imperialism, capitalism and why there’s a move towards a multipolar world. Justin Podur and Sam Gindin discussed this with such civility. We need more grounded debates like this.

  • “A Righteous Smokescreen”

    Why do some Americans have such bad geography skills? Why do they knows so little of the world outside America. The book, “A Righteous Smokescreen: Postwar America and the Politics of Cultural Globalization” by Sam Lebovic, attempts to explain the phenomenon.

  • Weekend Tales #2

    Dealing with digital burnout and a bumper issue with 12 recommended reads! 📧 To read, subscribe to the blog.

  • The sorry state of social media

    A good post by SelfAwarePatterns about Threads and why social media is mostly crummy these days.

  • Google: All your content are belong to us

    In a move that surprised absolutely nobody, Google has changed its privacy policy to declare that they will scrape up anything you post online to train their AI tools. How should writers and artists protect their content from now on?

  • Leaving the cult of wokeness

    Africa Brooke’s open letter, “Why I’m leaving the cult of wokeness” gave voice to what many have hidden in their hearts, too afraid to speak up.

  • Monday Notes: AI

    Monday Notes: AI

    Originally posted on K E Garland: Recently, I used Lensa to generate some artificial intelligence (AI) photos. I’d seen a couple of celebrities do it and thought why not? So, I uploaded 15 photos, and two hours later these appeared. They’re beautiful, right? I was amazed. It was mystifying to see how the app captured…

  • Return of the personal blog

    Return of the personal blog

    It’s time to own the spaces where we dwell online.

  • Artificial Intelligence Will Do What We Ask. That’s a Problem.

    Some interesting quotes from the article: “The current way we do AI puts a lot of burden on the designers to understand what the consequences of the incentives they give their systems are,” said Hadfield-Menell. “And one of the things we’re learning is that a lot of engineers have made mistakes.” A major aspect of…

  • A beautiful tiny home

    I adore tiny homes. There’s something very soothing about the ability to live in small spaces. This one is especially wonderful because she has a beautiful garden too. Honestly, this place doesn’t feel small at all! Her TINY HOUSE is the size of a garage, & it’s really cute! – YouTube

  • Pluralistic: Tiktok’s enshittification

    Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. Cory Doctorow in https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/

  • The enshittification of social media

    Cory Doctorow, in his article, Social Quitting, highlights how social media have life cycles. One day, they were sparsely populated fringe services, the next day, every­one you knew was using them and you had to sign up to stay in touch. Then, just as quickly, they imploded, turning into ghost towns, then punchlines, then forgotten…

  • From self-hosted WordPress to WordPress.com

    Thanks to the dominance of SEO optimised posts about WordPress from all manner of companies, any blog posts about wordpress.com is very, very difficult to find. Especially those about moving from self-hosted WordPress to WordPress.com. Here are some I discovered and kept for posterity: “…was surprised that they offer WordPress.org hosting. I always thought that…

  • Twitter misleads

    How Twitter misleads us about how many people have left — and what to do about it Social feeds are engines for distorting social understanding. Here’s how to push back against the algorithm. https://natematias.medium.com/how-twitter-misleads-us-about-how-many-people-have-left-and-what-to-do-about-it-bba484b6fed6

  • Algorithms and creativity

    “In the absence of an algorithm there is only your own creative compass.” In the #Fediverse I discovered people like @ewen who understood the impacts algorithms had on creativity. I felt the same sense of suffocation as a writer. In other spaces besides #Mastodon such as #Twitter nobody really understood my angst against it and…

  • Solarpunk fiction

    Learned about a new science fiction genre today – Solar Punk “Solarpunk stories take place in futures where humanity, technology, and nature live in harmony rather than in conflict.” TBH, it sounds a lot like Star Trek which makes me think I will love this genre! Who are the authors in this genre?

  • ChatGPT and tech writers

    Are tech writers going to lose their jobs? How can they adapt? https://passo.uno/openai-tech-writing-howto/

  • Disconnecting from the electric grid

    “On May 22, 2022, I began an experiment. I unplugged everything in my apartment, with the goal of drawing zero power from the electric grid for one month. I had no idea how I would make it past a few days… As I type these words in January, I’m in my eighth month.” https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/01/i-disconnected-from-the-electric-grid-for-8-months-in-manhattan/

  • Third party apps cut off from Twitter

    “It feels like the time is right for a truly universal timeline.”– @chockenberry (the creator of Twitterrific) https://furbo.org/2023/01/15/the-shit-show/