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clive@saturation.social
clive@saturation.social

Clive Thompson

(@clive@saturation.social)

Mo 31.10.2022

Beiträge: 14.426Folgt: 5.908Folgende: 16.857

Writer, musician/songwriter, hobbyist coder. Contributing writer to New York Times Magazine and Wired. Author of "Coders". Blogging at clivethompson.medium.com, archive of writing at www.authory.com/clivethompson clive@clivethompson.net

Blogging

medium.com/@clivethompson

Music

lipstickdriver.bandcamp.com

Writing archive

authory.com/clivethompson

Newsletter

buttondown.email/clivethompson

Clive Thompson

Clive Thompson
@clive@saturation.social

Föderation EN Sa 22.02.2025 21:35:32

I’m at a March in NYC to support congestion pricing

This is one of the times when the classic chant — “whose streets? our streets“ — is not just a metaphoric but literal lol

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Clive Thompson

Clive Thompson
@clive@saturation.social

Föderation EN Do 06.02.2025 20:46:53

In addition to formal government institutions, Musk is also trying to tear apart Wikipedia

That is almost certainly, as this analysis notes, because Wikipedia is "a last bastion of shared reality" ...

... and Musk, in contrast, only wants online sources that repeat his sort of conspiratorial blather

The piece: theatlantic.com/technology/arc

Unpaywalled: archive.is/1mjMq

A screenshot reading: "Wikipedia is certainly not immune to bad information, disagreement, or political warfare, but its openness and transparency rules have made it a remarkably reliable platform in a decidedly unreliable age. Evidence that it’s an outright propaganda arm of the left, or of any political party, is thin. In fact, one of the most notable things about the site is how it has steered relatively clear of the profit-driven algorithmic mayhem that has flooded search engines and social-media platforms with bad or politically fraught information. If anything, the site, which is operated by a nonprofit and maintained by volunteers, has become more of a refuge in a fractured online landscape than an ideological prison—a “last bastion of shared reality,” as the writer Alexis Madrigal once called it. And that seems to be precisely why it’s under attack." The final two sentence are highlit

(Medien: 1)

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Clive Thompson

Clive Thompson
@clive@saturation.social

Föderation EN So 02.02.2025 22:58:51

Over at @WIRED, reporters like Vittoria Elliott are doing excellent work documenting Musk's takeover of the federal government

In this piece, she tracks down the names of the people Musk has installed at various agencies

these guys are all 19 to 24 year old engineers -- one is a Thiel fellow

Story here: wired.com/story/elon-musk-gove

Unpaywalled: archive.is/L2C7d

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Clive Thompson

Clive Thompson
@clive@saturation.social

Föderation EN Do 23.01.2025 19:06:27

A hacker developed an "infinite maze" to trap web-crawlers/scrapers from AI companies

basically, if the server code detects that a web crawler from an AI firm is trying to scrape the site ...

... the code begins spinning up an infinite, nesting warren of new sham pages, filled with random text

so the crawler gets stuck crawling and scraping endless and meaningless pages

fun @jasonkoebler piece at @404mediaco

404media.co/email/7a39d947-4a4

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Clive Thompson

Clive Thompson
@clive@saturation.social

Föderation EN Fr 17.01.2025 17:31:24

It is *morbidly* fascinating to see the world through the paranoid eyes of Marc Andreessen in this Q&A

deep inside the interview he drops this comment

As he sees it, executives at multiple tech firms felt they were at risk of “full-blown violent riots” by their own employees

Yowsa

Gift link: nytimes.com/2025/01/17/opinion

Screenshot reading: “And then of course, Covid hits, which was a giant radicalizing moment. And at that point, we had lived through eight years of what was increasingly clearly a social revolution. Very clearly, companies are basically being hijacked to engines of social ti change, social rev tion. The employee base is going feral. here were cases in the Trump era where multiple companies I know felt like they were hours away from full-blown violent riots on their own campuses by their own employees.” The final sentence in that quote is highlighted in blue

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Clive Thompson

Clive Thompson
@clive@saturation.social

Föderation EN Sa 30.11.2024 00:59:36

Begun, the clout-farming wars have mashable.com/article/blueksy-h

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Clive Thompson

Clive Thompson
@clive@saturation.social

Föderation EN Mi 19.06.2024 17:57:47

A terrific investigation at @WIRED finds that Perplexity scrapes and (sometimes with bullshit added) summarizes web sites that it has been explicitly told, by those web site owners, not to visit

wired.com/story/perplexity-is-

Excellent work by @dmehro and @timmarchman

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Clive Thompson

Clive Thompson
@clive@saturation.social

Föderation EN Mi 01.05.2024 14:18:02

“How could so many people accidentally start a campaign for President of Iceland?”

A truly wild tale of UX gone awry: uxdesign.cc/how-do-you-acciden

Via @baldur

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Clive Thompson

Clive Thompson
@clive@saturation.social

Föderation EN Do 02.11.2023 17:14:24

“The Literary Style of Alt-Text”

For years, I didn’t add alt-text to my online images

But I’ve started doing it all the time now — being on Mastodon is what showed me how important it is!

Along the way, I’ve started noticing …

…. what an oddly *literary* activity it is

Here’s an image I wrote alt-text for when I blogged a few weeks ago, below

My essay on alt-texting: clivethompson.medium.com/the-l

A free “friend” link in case you don’t subscribe to Medium: clivethompson.medium.com/the-l

A cyclist going rapidly down a city street. The photo is taken from the side, and the cyclist is in the center of the image, heading towards our right. In behind the cyclist we see a bus stop and a brightly lit store. Interestingly, despite the fact that the cyclist is moving quickly, they are unblurred and crisp in the photo - while the background is blurred. The ultimate effect is curious: It's as if the store were moving quickly, while the cyclist was standing still

A screenshot of a story written by the author, describing how he wrote alt-text for the attached photo. I reads: And at first I just wrote a simple description, something like "a cyclist going down the street." Then I added more details, including that the cyclist is in the center of the picture, and behind them are a bus stop and a brightly lit store, and that the cyclist is moving quickly. But as I was writing that last clause - "the cyclist is moving quickly" - I realized something curious about the composition of the photo: The cyclist is crisp, while the background is blurred. That's not an easy effect for the photographer to achieve! And it' precisely what gives the image its power. So I wound up writing the alt-text thusly ... “A cyclist going rapidly down a city street. The photo is taken from the side, and the cyclist is in the center of the image, heading towards our right. In behind the cyclist we see a bus stop and a brightly lit store. Interestingly, despite the fact that the cyclist is moving quickly, they are unblurred and crisp in the photo - while the background is blurred. The ultimate effect is curious: It's as if the store were moving quickly, while the cyclist was standing still” One could critique this alt-text for being too damn long. Fair enough! And there's something a bit narcissistic about me focusing on the internal experience I have while puzzling over how best to describe this image.

(Medien: 2)

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Clive Thompson

Clive Thompson
@clive@saturation.social

Föderation · Di 27.06.2023 02:00:54

Denver last year offered subsidies for buying electric bikes

Their first 600 were snapped up in 10 minutes. Demand was *huge*

Denver ended up issuing over 4,700 (about 2,300 of which went to low-income residents)

Research shows it reduced car-miles driven in the city by 100K a week

My takeaway?

We should have ebike subsidies *everywhere*, and *now*. Cheaper than electric car subsidies, and arguably even more catalytic

My essay: clivethompson.medium.com/its-t

"Friend" link clivethompson.medium.com/its-t

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