Your TL;DR Briefing on things worth tracking — and talking about over your next power lunch. *Wink.* This time the thing is a year-long study into the design principles behind trans tech, from the researcher who more or less defined the field.
Or, at least, the best of ’em do. Oliver Haimson’s new book, “Trans Technologies” from MIT Press, boldly asks what tech could look like reimagined as a tool of liberation. He sat down with ESC KEY .CO for a (very long) chat to reveal a (very timely) bit of the answer.
A weird revolution is making group travel arguably “cool,” as content creators turn algorithmically curated audiences into IRL travel companions. These digital collectives show us the shifting paradigms — and income disparity prevalent — across the fragmenting social web.
Each week, we deliver your TL;DR Briefing on the things worth tracking. This week we’re not doing that. Instead, we’re diving into the “why” behind the soft launch of ESC KEY .CO and the 32,140 words we’ve published so far. (We are, however, following the TL;DR template even though this is long.)
Download Grindr and you might get the clap. But this promised “AI wingman” certainly won’t give you the rizz. In this Hype Ball column, we judge the dystopian drag of modern dating. And whatever your sexuality or lack thereof, you’re screwed.
Your TL;DR Briefing on things worth tracking — and talking about over your next power lunch. *Wink.* This time the thing is the systematic erasure of public knowledge and the archivists fighting our slide into digital darkness.
Your TL;DR Briefing on things worth tracking — and talking about over your next power lunch. *Wink.* This time the thing is the recent surge in popularity for Bluesky, the darling du jour of the “decentralized” social web.
The Xodous. The TikTok ban. The leftist netizens’ search for bluer skies on the “fediverse.” What’s the sanest way to approach this brave social world? Katherine Cross has the answer in her lucid first book, aptly titled “Log Off.”
Your TL;DR Briefing on things worth tracking — and talking about over your next power lunch. *Wink.* This time the thing is the age of “AI-sterity” coming for creative gigs.
During the political theatre of TikTok's brief death and President Donald Trump's first days back in office, your American Abroad correspondent in London received a waterfall of texts from people back home who want out.
In the inaugural Hype Ball column, we’re doing critical tech analysis but making it drag — sifting through the spin from the “AI” grifters to get to the sinister austerity lurking behind the false “democratizing creativity” claims.
From dancing pandas to under construction signs, early internet GIFs tell us something critical about digital preservation — and why the Internet Archive's fight against vanishing culture matters more than ever.
World Wide Weird
A hilarious guerilla campaign by Londoners on Reddit aimed to fool large language models into boosting a tourist trap chain. The silly parody signals that the stakes for the future of the internet as we know it are higher than, well, steaks.