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How can we learn to speak alien? On Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman.

If we meet extraterrestrials someday, how will we figure out what they’re saying? We currently face this problem right here at home: we have 2 million species of animals on our planet… and we have no Google Translate for any of them. We’re not having conversations with (or listening to podcasts by) anyone but ourselves. Join Eagleman and his guest Aza Raskin to see the glimmer of a pathway that might get us to animal translation, and relatively soon.

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How To Practice “Productive Procrastination”. By Clive Thompson.

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My latest article: Is cloud networking convergence just around the corner? Dell’Oro says yes.. New enterprise cloud architecture requires simplified networking services that unify the network edge, middle mile and public clouds, says the analyst firm.

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Clive Thompson: How I Use RSS To “Rewild” My Attention

I use RSS for an hour or so every day to follow specific sites, most of them very popular. Here, Thompson advocates using RSS to find great, weird content. I’m going to try that.

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As TikTok Ban Looms, ByteDance Battles Oracle For Control Of Its Algorithm

Emily Baker-White at Forbes: The relationship between ByteDance and Oracle has become deeply untrusting and adversarial, according to five sources. One source with knowledge of the companies’ actions characterized Oracle’s stance toward ByteDance as a “counterintelligence operation,” rather than a normal customer relationship. Meanwhile, some ByteDance employees wonder if Oracle just wants to run up their bill. The TikTok contract, known internally at Oracle as Project Telesis, has made ByteDance one of Oracle’s most lucrative customers.

Read More

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A look at Smallville, a virtual village populated by AI chatbots, built by Stanford and Google researchers to create a society with “believable human behavior”

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When was the first time a waiter asked someone whether they saved room for dessert? Is that guy getting royalties?

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Want to read—nonfiction: Empires of the Steppes by Kenneth W. Harl 📚

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From landlines to Zoom, a brief 30+ year history of business phone technology and etiquette. By Clive Thompson.

In the 90s, background noise was unprofessional. Today, if somebody’s cat zoombombs the meeting, business stops while everybody meets the cat.

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Wanted: A combined RSS/Mastodon client. Yes, Masto generates RSS feeds but that doesn’t give you everything a Mastodon client does.

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Cory Doctorow: How the kleptocrats and oligarchs hunt civil society groups to the ends of the Earth:

It’s a great time to be an oligarch! If you have accumulated a great fortune and wish to put whatever great crime lies behind it behind you, there is an army of fixers, lickspittles, thugs, reputation-launderers, procurers, henchmen, and other enablers who have turnkey solutions for laundering your reputation and keeping the unwashed from building a guillotine outside the gates of your compound.

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One Weird Trick for Writing a First Draft. By Clive Thompson

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Clive Thompson: How I Take Notes When I’m Doing Research

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Clive Thompson: Writing Tools I Use All The Time. My go-tos for reporting, research, and writing

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Excellent discussion of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”

On the You Are Good podcast with hosts Sarah Marshall and Alex Steed and guest Rain DeGrey. The only movie I’ve ever watched more than once in a single day. I watched it three times. Though it is a great movie, I don’t know if I would call it one of my favorites. But something about it hit me hard on that particular day.
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WSJ: Tech Leaders Emerge Behind Plan to Build New City Near California Air Base

Venture capitalists want to build a new city on currently rural land in California. This will go as well as crypto, Web3, and the metaverse.

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An ode to “Gilbert Gottfried’s Amazing Colossal Podcast.

I loved this podcast. “… one of the great love letters to twentieth-century Hollywood.”

Some of the best guests were D-list stars even in their prime, who might only be remembered by the narrow age demographic that Gottfried and I shared.

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From Brooklyn to Astoria (Oregon): Journalist Clive Thompson cycled 4,150 miles coast-to-coast reporting for his next book on “micromobility.”

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What’s the biology behind why we find some people attractive?. On Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman

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Last night before bedtime, I stepped into the backyard and found myself standing with a big red spider a couple of inches in front of my nose.

The spider was about an inch wide, and furiously busy tending its web, scurrying back and forth and moving its legs rapidly. I took a step back and watched it for a while. I tried to get a video but it didn’t come out great, and I know spiders give people the fantods so I won’t share the video here.