headlines

AI slop is insulting

It’s insulting to read your AI-generated blog post
please. writing is thinking. if you can’t be bothered to think for yourself, then don’t write. unfortunately, reading literacy is declining rapidly these days, and i’d argue that’s the easier part of the equation. on the other hand, it’s A Terrible Time to Be a Writer for many of us.

responses from LLMs are not facts, stopcitingai.com.

a dystopian present

Discord customer service data breach leaks user info and scanned photo IDs
Discord says 70,000 users may have had their government IDs leaked in breach
oh no… who would’ve thought giving our sensitive info out online could lead to data breaches? shocking. at this point, they should change the button from “submit” to “publish” on these forms. i can’t remember the last time i trusted a platform with my personal info that didn’t end up leaking it. this was inevitable the moment platforms started taking IDs as verification.

Meta will listen into AI conversations to personalize ads
i know that none of us are surprised, but shouldn’t we be? it’s sad that this is how the current state of the internet is.

OpenAI says over a million people talk to ChatGPT about suicide weekly
in light of how ChatGPT convinced a suicidal teen to not look for help.

Poison, Poison Everywhere
quite literally. the air is so polluted in many cities that it’s affecting people’s health. even rainwater is filled with microplastics now. the dystopian future is already here.

What if I don’t want videos of my hobby time available to the entire world?
i don’t want my personal life to be public, and i especially don’t want the things i do in my alone time to be publicly viewed. it’s creepy. i’ll be quoting from a user in the comments:

I find photos and videos to both be invasive and unwanted.

I’ve been a member and gyms where the owner will start taking videos and pictures of the class that ultimately end up on social media or in marketing material. I’m not ok with it and I get incredible uncomfortable when I’m in some weird position to do an exercise and a camera starts heading my way.
Any time an unwanted camera is around there is some level of anxiety that starts creeping up. Maybe this is, in part, why so many of today’s youth have anxiety disorders. How can anyone just relax if they have to worry about anything they might say or do being on camera, and then posted for the world to see.
I was at a party not too long ago where most people were 45+, and some kids that were too young to have phones. No one was on their phones, and people seemed free to dance and whatever. The second one person took out their phone to take a picture/video the vibe shifted drastically, and the owner of the house told them to put it away, so people could go back to enjoying themselves instead of being worried about an embarrassing picture of video that might surface later.

I’ve seen so many good times destroyed by cameras.

don’t believe in AGI

Andrej Karpathy — AGI is still a decade away
This Is How the AI Bubble Will Pop
The real deadline isn’t when AI outsmarts us — it’s when we stop using our own minds.
i’m already seeing signs of this happening. people are becoming overly reliant on AI for even the simplest tasks, leading to a decline in critical thinking and problem-solving skills. i also brought this up in the minimal means part of A Discipline of Subtraction.

This is Much More Dangerous Than You Think.

AI is Making Us Work More
You are the scariest monster in the woods

Just like a hammer, sword, or a rifle lying on a ground is nothing to be feared, so too is AI. It’s just an inanimate object; a tool, potentially. Now, if you equip humans with a hammer, or sword, or rifle, or AI then you’ve just made the scariest monster in the woods (that’s you) even more terrifying.

the heading is just a tongue-in-cheek reference to Pinocchio’s “Don’t Believe in T” song, don’t look too deep into it.

keep Android open

What We Talk About When We Talk About Sideloading
this builds upon Google requiring developer verification to install apps. we have the right to install whatever we want on our own devices. period.

Keep Android Open. also, GrapheneOS.

stories

city the animation backdrop — City The Animation via TMDB

absolute cinema. they really did “go out with a bang”.

slow month

Kaiju No. 8
it’s OK… not really memorable, but not bad either.

The Summer Hikaru Died
can’t wait for the next season, the story grows on me.

The Fragrant Flower Blooms with Dignity
aah… i can’t with the ending. a no BS lovebird story adapted with justice.

ongoing

Gachiakuta
still going strong, loving every minute of it.

Tougen Anki
still enjoying the weirdness of it all.

Ranma ½
the second season! i miss the characters’ dynamics.

One Punch Man
the third season. also known as “one frame man” these days.

My Hero Academia
the final season! it’s absolutely going to be amazing.

huh, i thought i stepped into a lot more worlds than these… seems like a slow month for me.

pieces

card image for the chapter five of the orbit series — Losing the Questions

finally formalized my yearly reflections into a series, this year is the fifth chapter. in addition, there’s also another one called Solus, which is a more personal series on myself as a person and my life through solitude. start with the first chapter, titled An Outsider Inside Myself.

fully present

Opting Out of the Algorithm
this is the second chapter in my Solus series. i think many people can relate to the feeling, but never really put it into words or reflect upon it. i hope more people can be aware of it, and actually take the first step to being present and mindful every day.

Slow social media
a lighter take on the same topic about social media. i like the idea of a platform limiting the number of posts or comments per day, as its users would be a lot more thoughtful about what they want to share.

Smartphones and being present
unfortunately, it’s getting harder to not be on our phones these days. especially with everything from seeing the menu to paying the bill being digital now. not to mention, infinite scroll and short form videos are essentially a slot machine for our brains.

Smartphones manipulate our emotions and trigger our reflexes
it’s not really the smartphones themselves, but the apps and algorithms that are designed and programmed by humans. we have the equivalent of slot machines in everyone’s pocket 24/7 with essentially no way to turn it off.

to close this part, let me just drop meow.camera here.

design and taste

Boring is good
boring that gets out of the way is good, not the boring that is repetitive and tedious. too many products fall into the latter category. too many interfaces are cluttered and distracting.

You Had No Taste Before AI
taste is subjective, and it changes over time. so then, What is “good taste” in software engineering? in a sense, principles are subjective too, and leaning on them dogmatically (without thought) is a sort of laziness. additionally, tinkering is a great way to develop good taste.

Xcode is the Worst Piece of Professional Software I Have Ever Used
i have a feeling the only reason developers are still using Apple is because they have no choice other than the smartphone duopoly. otherwise, it might just be a case of Stockholm Syndrome.

What Happened to Apple’s Legendary Attention to Detail?
i tried nearly all Apple devices once, and i never got the feeling of “this is it”. it’s always been mediocre at best, and i don’t see how Apple has maintained its cult-like following for so long. they even screwed up the keyboard input…

research

Depression Levels Are Associated with Reduced Capacity to Learn to Actively Avoid Aversive Events in Young Adults
depression is more like a sense of apathy and emptiness with no apparent cause or end in sight, it makes sense that people with depression wouldn’t be able to learn to avoid aversive events.

The health benefits of sunlight may outweigh the risk of skin cancer
no way… i just wrote about my Core Supplements and opted to avoid sunlight altogether, opting for vitamin D supplements instead. i had a feeling avoiding sunlight altogether wasn’t the best idea, i just didn’t know what the trade-offs were.

Imaging Ultraweak Photon Emission from Living and Dead Mice and from Plants under Stress Click (paper)
wow, this is wild. we might be able to realize the “scanning for life forms” quite literally in the future.

Huntington’s disease successfully treated for first time
incredible win. it’s still early days, but a nice story to see these days.

Loneliness increases death risk by 32%
i haven’t dug through all the sources yet, but i have a feeling this might be correlational rather than causal or even reverse causation. someone with health issues might be more likely to have higher isolation and therefore be more lonely. keep in mind loneliness is not the same as being alone.

Faulty mitochondria cause deadly diseases: fixing them is about to get a lot easier
amazing to see how far gene editing (and CRISPR-like tools) has come. hopefully this will lead to more breakthroughs in treating genetic diseases.

How electricity can heal wounds three times as fast
i didn’t know this was a thing, and i didn’t know about microcurrent electrical neuromuscular stimulator devices until now.

The Brain Navigates New Spaces by ‘Flickering’ Between Reality and Old Mental Maps
this seems to support deja vu and the idea that dreams are rehearsals for real life.

How the Brain’s Activity, Energy Use, and Blood Flow Change as People Fall Asleep
sleep is an important part of our lives, and one thing that’s clear to me is that there is no such thing as sleep debt and “catching up on sleep”. you need to get enough sleep every day, consistently. sleep deprivation can cause serious permanent brain damage.

technical

If you are good at code review, you will be good at using AI agents
well… if you’re good at code review, you will also be good at not using AI agents.

Greatest irony of the AI age: Humans being increasingly hired to clean AI slop
ironic, but not surprising. AI is just another tool.

Comprehension Debt: The Ticking Time Bomb of LLM-Generated Code
not quite related to AI directly, but i touched on this topic in the complexity inertia part from The Virtue of Simplicity. relying fully on AI-generated code is a recipe for disaster in the long run.

A Story About Bypassing Air Canada’s In-flight Network Restrictions
interesting exploratory technical write-up, i like these kinds of articles.

How I Reversed Amazon’s Kindle Web Obfuscation Because Their App Sucked
another interesting technical write-up! this is such a good way to learn as well.

The Programmer Identity Crisis
the most salient point from this article is seeing coworkers having to review an author taking no responsibility for their code and just blaming the AI for it, which should’ve been a people problem in the first place.

Code like a surgeon
a piece that builds upon The Mythical Man-Month, a book on software engineering from 1975 that feels more important now than ever.

AI can code, but it can’t build software
writing code isn’t the same as delivering [working] software. there’s a lot more to it than just writing code.

Why the open social web matters now
putting this here in the technical part first so that at least the technical audience will be aware and try to help smooth it out first. the main problem with these things are adoption, and getting the average user to switch would be hard if it isn’t convenient enough.

food for thought

Beyond the Front Page: A Personal Guide to Hacker News
i think this is a good introductory guide for people new to Hacker News. HN does look a bit bare bones and intimidating at first, but it’s quite a gem once you get the hang of it.

Always invite Anna
it’s hard to find more people like Alexei as i grow older. i can relate to Anna a bit more, so i’m making it explicit to my close friends about my situation, not just any acquaintance.

Friendship Begins at Home
introspection and self-awareness are the prerequisites to loving yourself.

Work is Not School: Surviving Institutional Stupidity
i kinda have to learn this the hard way, but at least i’m aware of it now.

NIRS fire destroys government’s cloud storage system, no backups available | G-Drive Fire Destroys 125,000 Officials’ Data
and that… is why you always have backups, preferably offline and far away from the main site.

Orcas are bringing humans gifts
i find this oddly terrifying, somehow.

Human washing machine pods coming to Japanese hotels
Japan never ceases to amaze me. i wonder how comfortable and effective it is though.

America Is Sliding Toward Illiteracy
i don’t think it’s just America, and mainly due to the rise of short-form content and declining attention spans. people just don’t read as much as they used to, even the elderly…

Meet the real screen addicts: the elderly (archive)
screen addiction is quite possibly the biggest pandemic humanity has ever seen. it’s everywhere, and it’s only getting worse.

The explosion of choice
or the illusion of freedom as i would like to call it.

Samsung makes ads on $3,499 smart fridges official with upcoming software update
this guarantees i will never buy a Samsung appliance. i learned my lesson with their TVs and fridges already.

Nearly 90% of Windows Games now run on Linux
wow, honestly this might be the tipping point for me to switch to Linux full-time. i can’t think of anything else that holds me back on Windows more than the possibility of gaming and just laziness to start from scratch again.

tracks

Love Attribute feat. Hatsune Miku by PinocchioP

i may not be fluent in Japanese (yet), but this song speaks to me on so many levels. a song about the faults and tribulations of love, not as a perfect and infallible thing it’s most often portrayed as.

also, there seems to be a lot of wordplay in the lyrics that i won’t fully understand, at least without the help of a native speaker for now. like this one for example:

「弱い（yowai）」には愛（ai）が入ってるけど、「強い（tuyoi）」には愛（ai）が入ってない。「救えない（sukuenai）」には愛（ai）が入ってるけど、「救う（sukuu）」には愛（ai）が入ってない。愛するのは、こんなに悲しいことなのか…

or that they deliberately used a certain kanji in the MV

あえて「ヰ」と表現しているあたり、
ぽっかり空いた心の穴を埋めて欲しい
みたいな表現に聞こえる。

another dimention

第n次元 (feat. Kasane Teto) by 32ki

this may not be the highlighted track of the month, but it’s one of my personal favorites that came out on the month! yes, i may have a slight bias towards Teto vocals, but the lyrics, too!

PLAY ft. Miku by Giga

this came out before Dimention No.n, and i can’t help but see the resemblance in both MVs. also, every “Giga ft. Miku” is just something else…

they had no business going this hard

Beyond the way ft.Miku・Rin・Len by Giga

Beyond the way 【3DMV】 by Vivid BAD SQUAD × 初音ミク

both the MVs are so cool. there’s also the full version of the song from Vivid BAD SQUAD.

ULTRA C ft.Rin・Len by Giga & TeddyLoid

ULTRA C 【3DMV】 by Vivid BAD SQUAD × 初音ミク

the Rin and Len duo from Giga feels so iconic, perhaps stemming from BRING IT ON 7 years ago. yes, there’s also the full version from Vivid BAD SQUAD as well.

I GOT YOU! ft.Miku・Rin・Len by Giga

this song is fire. i think it might be a sponsored song from Pokemon, but damn is it not the catchiest song about Pokemon i’ve ever heard.

PinocchioPeak

(Not) A Devil feat. Hatsune Miku by DECO*27 x PinocchioP

when two GOATed producers collab, you’re bound to get a banger.

Reincarnation Apple feat. Hatsune Miku by PinocchioP

blessed finds

Retry! 【初音ミク・重音テト】 by hiroki.

Teto the 31st🎉🎃🧟ft. Kasane Teto, Ui by はろける・HALLO CEL

she is unstoppable

勇気のReason by Ado

0 by ロス

和解Say Yo! by Ado

MAGIC by Ado

back to back bangers on her birthday month. happy 23rd, Ado!

clips

I study patience in a lab. Here’s what I’ve found.

a video about patience from a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, and it’s less than three minutes. they’re really targeting a specific audience here, i feel. if there’s one thing to take away from this video, it has to be this

patience facilitates goal pursuit

happening

AI Slop Is Destroying The Internet

I bought a friend - Friend AI Pin

The Absolute State of Crunchyroll

Why we need to cut down these trees

React wants to win you back…

Why’d it have to be Meta? - Meta Ray-Ban Display

Food Theory: Why Is Protein EVERYWHERE?

Quit social media | Dr. Cal Newport | TEDxTysons

The Politics of One Piece

good to know

We simulated if you can really reach anyone in 6 steps

Common Moon Mistakes

Why America Builds These Instead of Roundabouts

How I View the US After 13 Years Living in Europe

How exactly do inhalers work? - Anna Rothschild

explaining the entirety of japanese grammar in under 11 minutes

How to Always Keep Your Room Clean & Organized

Twin study reveals being funny is probably trauma

The Physics of Euler’s Formula | Laplace Transform Prelude

Are vampire bats dangerous? - Imran Razik

Why don’t we send our trash to space? - Jim Bentley and Imogen Ellen Napper

What’s the best way to lift people out of poverty?

Mars Used to Be Blue… Then Something Happened

Japan Serves This RAW… And (somehow) it’s LEGAL

Anime That Don’t Waste Your Time.

the human anatomy

23 Everyday Habits Destroying Your Skin

You’ve Been Hurting Your Back Your Whole Life

Why Your Training Shake is Feeding Your Liver, Not Your Gains

Kidney Stones: The Most PAINFUL Condition on Earth?

How To Prevent Colon Cancer

Humans Are Evolving Out of These Muscles

Why Your Brain Floats

therapy session

Your Home Is Not A Storage Unit

Game Theory: A Simple Strategy That Will Change Your Life Forever

the art of continuing anyway

I’m Politely Begging You to Write Nonfiction

cinematic documentaries

How My Aircraft Carrier Survived A WWII Kamikaze Attack

Dragonflies Are Not What You Think

Why Simple Everyday Objects Are Impossible to Make

You’re Being Lied To About Nuclear Waste | Truth Complex

Inside The $50 Billion Museum Economy

The Frog That Unleashed the World’s Most Lethal Pathogen

entertaining

Hermitcraft 10 is Finished

Hermitcraft 10: Episode 42 - THE TANGLER

Hermitcraft 10: Episode 43 - THE LAST DAY!

The Worst "Health" Videos For Kids 🤯

The Crazy Sh*t Americans Say In My Comment Section

Our Nerdiest Upgrade Yet - AMD $5000 Ultimate Tech Upgrade

Comedians Meet Voice Acting Royalty | Crowd Control [Full Episode]

Ado 5th Anniversary and 23rd Birthday Celebration LIVE

music videos

i didn’t include these in the tracks part, mainly because these are more for the visuals than the music itself. meaning, i watched instead of listened to them for the month.

SKY-HI – At The Last / THE FIRST TAKE

SB19 - DAM / THE FIRST TAKE

最新話／和ぬか【Music Video】

YOASOBI「劇上」Official Music Video

幾田りら「Actor」Official Music Video

reflections

this harvest is heavy on pieces and clips. it was a slow month for stories and tracks, as i spent most of my time reading and writing instead. i’m trying to be more present and mindful these days, and it feels good to slow down and reflect on things more deeply.