clive

clive, 11 months ago to random

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: https://clivethompson.medium.com/its-time-to-subsidize-e-bikes-900a862b8e76

"Friend" link https://clivethompson.medium.com/its-time-to-subsidize-e-bikes-900a862b8e76?sk=dea9f07c0dab4be831ee50a197360f95

clive, 6 months ago to random

A bot that automatically does stock trades …

… by identifying trades being done by US politicians …

… who probably have inside (I.e. and thus basically illegal-to-act-upon) knowledge of market-moving government info …

… and doing the same trades

He’s up 20% since May 2022

https://www.threads.net/@quiverquantitative/post/CzcB-Gsgqow/?igshid=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

clive, 9 months ago to random

Every time someone talks to ChatGPT for 20 exchanges or so ...

... Microsoft's servers use a half-liter of freshwater to cool down

AI is thirsty

My essay on some implications of this: https://clivethompson.medium.com/ai-is-thirsty-37f99f24a26e

A "friend" link, in case you don't subscribe to Medium: https://clivethompson.medium.com/ai-is-thirsty-37f99f24a26e?sk=f5b2ea10c649a34236577139fecfd86a

clive, 5 days ago to random

If you haven't seen it yet, go check out @ernie's new search engine ...

... which automatically appends "&udm=14" to the end of your search query ...

... thereby triggering Google to give you your results with no AI answer at the top, and (for me, anyway) no ads

It's like google from 2004 or something

https://udm14.com

clive, 1 month ago to random

“A death certificate would say he died of sepsis from a bone infection, but my friend and I have a term for the illness that killed him: end-stage poverty. We needed to coin a phrase because so many of our patients die of the same thing.”

Excellent essay by a US doctor describing how many of her patients suffer (and die) not from their illnesses but from the wildly precarious economics of their lives

Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/11/opinion/doctor-safety-net-hospital.html?unlocked_article_code=1.jk0.4z6-.Jp89JtFlvuyi&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb

clive, 3 months ago to random

Fantastic -- if super-distressing -- article by Gisele Navarro about the horrible state of product reviews online

The tl;dr is that Google seems to overweight reviews from longstanding big journalism brands ...

... but many of those brands, like Popular Science, were long ago bought up by private equity or conglomerates, then hollowed out ...

... so they now produce crappy articles that are probably lying about their "test labs" to please Google

https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/

Read it! So good

clive, 7 months ago to random

"Let's Stop Calling It 'Content''

I first starting noticing the word "content" in the late 90s

Companies looking to put writing, animation, video or art on their web sites would call it "content"

It flattened innumerable forms of culture into a sort of goo, extruded from a tube

25 years on, the term "content" has metastasized, eating whole the way many people talk about -- think about -- culture.

Let's stop now

My essay: https://clivethompson.medium.com/lets-stop-calling-it-content-8410bf5f94a9

A free link: https://clivethompson.medium.com/lets-stop-calling-it-content-8410bf5f94a9?sk=7a2668c44c31a4359876cfcd25a5f2d0

clive, 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago) to random

I repeat this anecdote a lot so forgive me if you've heard it, but ...

... my Ukrainian-Canadian grandfather ran his dairy farm using a 1960s-era truck ...

which was by today's standards tiny: Lower-slung, small cab

But!

It was more usable than today's monstrosities

It had a longer bed than today's trucks; being lower-slung made loading/unloading easier

Again: He ran a whole-ass farm with this vehicle; drove over rough terrain

Few people need today's bloated, paramilitary trucks

clive, 11 months ago (edited 11 months ago) to random

Reddit's CEO is attacking Reddit moderators, calling them spoiled "landed gentry" who are messing up his service ...

... when in reality Reddit mods do over $3.4 million in free labor annually, as per a recent scholarly estimate

And that's a lowballed, conservative estimate

My essay on it here: https://clivethompson.medium.com/reddit-moderators-do-over-3-4-million-in-free-labor-every-year-d3571235c32c

A "friend" link in case you're not a Medium subscriber: https://clivethompson.medium.com/reddit-moderators-do-over-3-4-million-in-free-labor-every-year-d3571235c32c?sk=8526a9c3671885cce45a2bd3d1e36b82

clive, 10 months ago to random

I asked ChatGPT to recommend some of “the most interesting articles written by the journalist Clive Thompson”

Of the nine it listed …

… seven were ones I hadn’t written, and a few didn’t exist at all, by anyone

One was a pastiche

Only one was truly correct

This performance is so unbelievably terrible it’s almost charitable to call it “bullshit”

My essay, showing ChatGPT’s responses: https://clivethompson.medium.com/you-know-nothing-of-my-work-chatgpt-66d3ac542f3f?postPublishedType=repub

A “friend” link in case you’re not a Medium subscriber: https://clivethompson.medium.com/you-know-nothing-of-my-work-chatgpt-66d3ac542f3f?sk=8765f2e9dffa3d0151c66ce12a0ac2e6

clive, 6 days ago to random

Know any NYC students, or their parents?

The mayor closed the libraries on Sundays, and is set to close them Saturdays too -- citing budget constraints 📚

The budget's being debated right now!

So, if you live in NYC?

Here's a form that'll auto-send a letter to your city councillor telling them to vote to "keep the libraries open sundays": https://actionnetwork.org/letters/open-the-libraries-nyc/

Forward it to any students in NYC 🤘

Parents can use it too -- just rewrite the opening salutation to say "I'm a parent"

clive, 5 months ago to random

Man, the "dead internet" is arriving

@bhawthorne describes his recent experience searching for basic info online -- he looked for the temperature to roast hazelnuts, and got nothing but stochastic-parrot garbage: https://infosec.exchange/@bhawthorne/111601578642616056

He concludes:

"I think it may be time to download an archive copy of the 2022 Wikipedia before we lose all of our reference material. It was nice having all the world’s knowledge at my fingertips for a couple of decades, but that time seems to be past."

clive, 6 months ago to random

“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: https://clivethompson.medium.com/the-literary-style-of-alt-text-9f1595cd8f0c

A free “friend” link in case you don’t subscribe to Medium: https://clivethompson.medium.com/the-literary-style-of-alt-text-9f1595cd8f0c?sk=1d9cd685997cb08d8909da687a2d03cf

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.

clive, 10 months ago to random

Here’s my essay in praise of video-game piracy!

tl;dr — a new study estimates that 90% of classic video games aren’t in release any more

They’re vanishing from the marketplace at the pace of silent film and radio serials, despite being only a few decades old

Basically, the game industry (often understandably, mind you) doesn’t want to preserve older games

So, the only force that’s keeping this legacy alive?

Piracy!

My essay: https://clivethompson.medium.com/piracy-is-saving-video-game-history-a83d5b3700ff

“Friend” link https://clivethompson.medium.com/piracy-is-saving-video-game-history-a83d5b3700ff?sk=6a137aa6cd89229a86112844f0d6c809

clive, 5 months ago to random

Great piece on the Cybertruck’s design

… which distills every malign trend in US trucks: Massive weight, jacked-up height designed to lethally throw accident victims beneath it, noise baffling so perfect you can’t hear the outside world

Cars are rolling buckets of externalities: They greatly improve the life of their riders, while making the lives of everyone outside them worse

The Cybertruck is a tone poem to this impulse: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2023/12/02/how-to-build-a-car-that-kills-people-cybertruck-edition

clive, 8 months ago to random

Trump recently posted that America's top general should be put to death ...

... and it barely registered in daily news media

This, as Brian Klaas -- a scholar of political violence -- is truly bad. It's obviously horrific to have a leading presidential candidate, and former president, so nakedly endorse violence against top government figures ...

... but what's worse is growing numb to that

Klaas' essay: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/09/trump-milley-execution-incitement-violence/675435/

clive, 1 year ago to random

I built this tool a year ago but I feel like Mastodon folks would like it

The "Weird Old Book Finder"

Type in a search query, and it'll find one randomly-chosen public-domain book that matches the query -- and present it for immediate reading: https://weird-old-book-finder.glitch.me

Why only one book? To prevent the paradox of choice! Just start readin'

Can't promise every book will be weird, but most are

A longer essay on how/why I developed it: https://debugger.medium.com/a-search-engine-that-finds-you-weird-old-books-3a74fbb5f3d4

This was a search for "mastodon"

clive, 7 days ago (edited 7 days ago) to random

People of Mastodon!

I'm researching the growth of ebikes ...

... in cities around the US

I've talked to many people who love them!

But also want to include the perspective of folks who have concerns ...

... i.e. about the speed and weight of ebikes in accidents with pedestrians or other cyclists, and the like

If anyone has thoughts they wanna share, ping me! I'm all ears: clive@clivethompson.net

Pass this along if you know anyone else with perspective they want to share

#fedibikes

clive, 9 months ago to random

Amazon is crawling with travel guides written by AI -- vague, crappy, and pushed up in search results by astroturfed fake five-star reviews: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/05/travel/amazon-guidebooks-artificial-intelligence.html?unlocked_article_code=Gmcb6fkRXSAX7JUdbTpFyhH1lSBWBcI0RuiXgcku3gVTdQV7s_SPvl1tKw76F_txTehAmHdU0bZ3PUoPyH0h-dybeb8_bGL7UzysZynt-SFcx9yByC4wr37_65cVodjr_Z-sRcqUfioeOsUAKJpEECejhG2SlL4jPCoaBG8PFnu_YLKDXA0hkzvhrJnGuD5kw59N8Bz7T7D7UOeJXLkowJnnoB6IDt6bHn6XiBvlH--t6M_9xmGCkNlYdtiiScdbS3ebGG5C3xKkCxwacaT96yLi9NK5dx9YHwhHSPdoVJPqslvVGAwQFvpSQvDvgHZGOFxW09EeUVAHYZl6uI-aSYS0_UfYhcXjDi6J2-M1oFlpWg&smid=url-share

That's a "gift" link so you don't need to be a New York Times subscriber to read it

It's a great investigation, and highlights the real problem, which is ...

... unsurprisingly by now, Amazon seemingly does little-to-nothing to stop this

The site is just soiled top to bottom with fake crap in every category

clive, 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago) to denver

Denver people!

I'm writing a piece for Mother Jone about how Denver is subsidizing the price of buying an e-bike ...

... and what impact these programs (several other cities are doing 'em now too) have on urban mobility

I'd love to talk to someone in Denver who bought an ebike using Denver's subsidies

Any Mastodon people know someone who fits that bill?

If so, tell 'em to ping me -- love to hear their experience!

I'm clive@clivethompson.net, feel free to forward my email

#Denver #ebikes

clive, 10 months ago to random

When I get some time free I'm gonna program a version of Pac-Man where you play as the fruit

Tight close-up on the part of the maze where you appear

When you appear, you have no control over anything

All you do is wait

And wonder

If you're going to get eaten

You can hear, in the distance, the sounds of the game; see the ghosts go by; hear the approach of Pac-Man, hear him fade further away

If you don't get eaten in that round, you score one point

If you do get eaten, the game's over

clive, 4 months ago to random

Fascinating story here

Apple changed its podcasting rules — if someone doesn’t listen to a podcast for five episodes, Apple will turn off automatic downloads

Some big podcasts saw their download numbers drop by perhaps 40% — with potentially massive repercussions to come from their advertisers and sponsors

A wild and unsettling example of the bubbliness of the podcast market, and of apples outsize control

https://www.semafor.com/article/01/14/2024/the-incredible-shrinking-podcast-industry

clive, 9 months ago to random

An argument for taxing vehicles by weight, including EVs: https://slate.com/business/2023/01/electric-cars-hummer-ev-tax-fees-weight-joe-biden.html

clive, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago) to random

Superb thread here in which @shauna posts her notes from reading Jessie Singer’s book “There Are No Accidents”

It’s about how corporate interests create dangerous/lethal products — from automobiles to addictive medicines and more — then capture the regulators, so that reasonable precautions around their use are tossed out …

… then, when people are injured or killed, they say, “whoops just an accident”

Read the whole thread!

https://social.coop/@shauna/110187830523238194

clive, 5 months ago to random

Here's Alvin and the Chipmunks singing "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" ... except slowed down to 16 RPM:

https://soundcloud.com/alvin-thechipmunkson16sp/have-yourself-a-merry-little-christmas

Make sure to read all the listener annotations on the song's timeline 😅