Culture on dan.heskett

Nintendo Loves You: No Plans To Abandon Physical Media Because 'Fans Enjoy It'

Tue, 27 Oct 2026 10:11:00 -0400

“There is a big enough percentage of the gaming public that likes to buy something physical, for all kinds of reasons. Ownership rights are far more robust that way (for now).”

Go Fast, Turn Left: The Anderson Speedway & Indiana's Data Centers

Tue, 27 Oct 2026 10:10:00 -0400

“Yet the Speedway carries itself with earned, if aged, pride.”

The End of the Internet

Tue, 27 Oct 2026 10:09:00 -0400

“Community, sadly, doesn’t scale; any platform that is available to everyone starts out special and spirals from there.”

Malcolm Gladwell: Cops Are Violent Because The US Doesn't Have Enough Cops

Mon, 26 Oct 2026 05:00:00 -0400

“The drop-off in police staffing is due to the cops themselves.”

Where the Forest Went

Mon, 26 Oct 2026 04:45:00 -0400

“The Tonawanda Seneca Nation is currently fighting a plan to build a data center next to their woods.”

The Mother Museum

Mon, 26 Oct 2026 04:35:00 -0400

“Despite the claims of collectors, a skull can only belong to its own person, not a museum or any other buyer on the market.”

Blocks: Die Schweiz 1:1 in Minecraft

Mon, 26 Oct 2026 04:30:00 -0400

“Das Matterhorn ist genau so hoch und so steil wie das echte.”

Framing the News: Anti-Piracy Press Release Turned a 2016 Raid Into a 2026 Story

Sun, 25 Oct 2026 18:10:00 -0400

“After some digging, we can now confirm that this case isn’t recent at all.”

Charnel Heart

Sun, 25 Oct 2026 17:50:00 -0400

“Those bones had more vivacity than I did.”

Pluralistic: Critique and writing

Fri, 23 Oct 2026 22:34:00 -0400

“…getting editorial notes on your work is distinctly inferior to offering criticism of other writers’ work.”

Adversarial interoperability is a team sport

Thu, 22 Oct 2026 15:28:00 -0400

“But the real, meaty examples of enshittification can’t be addressed on an individual level – they require systemic fixes.”

Apocalypse Now and Then

Thu, 22 Oct 2026 15:26:00 -0400

“But AI is colonisation of a kind few of us can even imagine.”

Have You Been to the Sixth-Worst McDonald's in America?

Wed, 21 Oct 2026 17:15:00 -0400

“This is a well-appointed McDonald’s,” Ike remarked with surprise.

The death of history's most successful publisher

Wed, 21 Oct 2026 17:14:00 -0400

“Google has a scorching case of main character syndrome, and nowhere is that more obvious than in its AI-fueled transformation into web-scale parasite.”

What the West can learn from AI optimists in the rest of the world

Tue, 20 Oct 2026 07:47:00 -0400

“In the West, fear of AI has helped turn pessimism into a cultural virtue.”

Feeding the Revolution

Tue, 20 Oct 2026 07:45:00 -0400

“The food we ate was built for movement, the same way we were.”

Tishomingo Burn Ban

Tue, 20 Oct 2026 07:43:00 -0400

“I think he must have been very lonely.”

Rep. Ritchie Torres Announces Congressional Legislation To Protect Video Game Ownership: 'If You Pay For It, You Own It'

Sun, 18 Oct 2026 06:25:00 -0400

“A game that can be taken away the moment a company pulls the plug is not a purchase.”

Woman arrested after blocking delivery robot in Philadelphia confrontation

Sun, 18 Oct 2026 05:55:00 -0400

“I think it’s my First Amendment right to publicly demonstrate on a sidewalk to protest against delivery robots.”

How the Elizabeth Holmes Doc 'You Can See Everything' Is Deceiving You

Sun, 18 Oct 2026 05:40:00 -0400

“We form an emotional impression first, then we build a belief around it, and then we go looking for facts that support it.”

The more we rely on tech, the more we deskill our bodies

Sun, 18 Oct 2026 05:30:00 -0400

“We have fallen into habits that are steadily deskilling the human body, eroding capacities honed by evolution…”

How labor rights rescued Ultima from a monopolist

Tue, 13 Oct 2026 07:10:00 -0400

“EA killed off Ultima in 2000, and it has languished since, despite an ardent fandom.”

A Billionaire Is Fueling a Rat Explosion in a Chicago Park in the Stupidest Way Possible

Fri, 09 Oct 2026 19:01:00 -0400

“We’ve never dealt with a situation where it’s like feed for hire.”

No Man Is an Island

Fri, 09 Oct 2026 18:53:00 -0400

“Without community, you don’t get isolated individuals each working on their own things: you get nothing.”

Margaret Hamilton, computing pioneer who led software development for the Apollo program, dies at 90

Fri, 09 Oct 2026 10:03:00 -0400

“Looking back, we were the luckiest people in the world; there was no choice but to be pioneers.”

Warner/Chappell Sinks Lindsay Ellis' Two-Hour Cruise Video Over A Few Seconds Of Karaoke

Mon, 05 Oct 2026 16:10:00 -0400

“That is… not how any of this is supposed to work.”

A Place Among the Fiddlers

Mon, 05 Oct 2026 10:15:00 -0400

“…the prestige of being judged a ‘winner at Galax’ far outweighs any monetary award.”

With the backlash to data centers, Flock and AI glasses, a mass opposition to big tech is underway. Silicon Valley is in denial.

Fri, 02 Oct 2026 08:36:00 -0400

“Americans overwhelmingly hate data centers.”

Utah man sues Candace Owens, alleging false links to Charlie Kirk assassination

Fri, 02 Oct 2026 08:32:00 -0400

“The documented presence in the crowd at the precise moment the stairwell photographs were taken rendered it physically impossible for Hild to be the individual depicted.”

The Metric Is Not The Mission: The Digital Climate

Fri, 02 Oct 2026 08:28:00 -0400

“A recommendation algorithm that prioritizes engagement is not malfunctioning when it amplifies emotionally charged content. It is doing precisely what it was designed to do.”

The Work

Fri, 02 Oct 2026 08:26:00 -0400

“If you don’t believe your own bullshit, the fans aren’t going to believe your bullshit”

Victory! California Appeals Court Refuses to Revive Surveillance Tech CEO's Meritless Lawsuit Against Journalist

Thu, 01 Oct 2026 07:48:00 -0400

“The First Amendment protects Poulson’s publications.”

Google rolls out pay-per-value AI licensing program to publishers

Thu, 01 Oct 2026 07:39:00 -0400

“Payments are based more on value than raw usage, meaning Google only pays when it judges that a piece of content has meaningfully contributed to an AI-generated response.”

I Deliberately Bet Like a Problem Gambler. DraftKings Made Me a VIP.

Tue, 29 Sep 2026 11:18:00 -0400

“Take a loss? Now take a beat.”

You Are No Longer Invited to Dinner

Tue, 29 Sep 2026 11:16:00 -0400

“The share of Americans who say they host friends or family at their home at least monthly has fallen from 42 percent in 1975 to 12 percent in 2026.”

A Tale of Two Trap Houses: Being Cuckooed Ruined My Friend's Life. But Did It Then Help Save Him?

Tue, 29 Sep 2026 11:10:00 -0400

“Over the 2000s and 2010s, wave after wave of gangs fanned out from Britain’s drug supply hubs – London, Liverpool and Birmingham.”

A Tale of Two Trap Houses: Being Cuckooed Ruined My Friend's Life, but Did It Then Help Save Him?

Fri, 25 Sep 2026 10:15:00 -0400

“Community safety teams, who rescued 80 tenants in London in 2005, were the first to call the tactic ‘cuckooing’.”

The Claude Delusion

Tue, 22 Sep 2026 00:19:00 -0400

“These outputs have an unconvincing lack of texture. The smoothness of AI-generated prose and media makes it unbearably banal.”

Shetland's Most Wanted

Fri, 18 Sep 2026 22:04:00 -0400

“Stuart Hill, 83, says he can control the weather, the colour of his urine and put on weight during a hunger strike. He has been to prison four times and will die on 28 May 2069, unless he changes his mind.”

Then They Came for the Ostriches

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 12:50:00 -0400

“Every event called for interpretation, an attempt to see through to hidden endgames.”

Denuvo Sues Game Cracker 'voices38' for Bypassing its Anti-Tamper DRM

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 22:53:00 -0400

“Defendant has bypassed DRM restrictions in copyrighted works, removing protections that allow copyright owners to restrict who may access their works, and allowing for pirated versions of those copyrighted works.”

Chinese AI-Generated Micro Dramas Surge to 128,000 in First Quarter

Tue, 15 Sep 2026 23:35:00 -0400

“The number of Chinese-made micro dramas surged in the first three months of this year to 128,000, according to the China Netcasting Services Assn. More than 95% of them were made with AI.”

Everybody pees

Tue, 15 Sep 2026 23:15:00 -0400

“The mere fact of dealing with people as mass statistical abstractions – hundreds of thousands of Amazon workers, billions of social media users – turns the majority of the world’s other humans into phantasms”

Negativland, Culture Jamming, and the Art of Making Something New

Tue, 15 Sep 2026 23:05:00 -0400

“The thread that goes through all of our work is that we are always responding to and describing American culture.”

On Tour with the Eclipse Chasers

Tue, 15 Sep 2026 10:20:00 -0400

“Totality is in a league of its own. Totality is what they are chasing.”

The Dominican Baseball Factory

Thu, 10 Sep 2026 20:48:00 -0400

“Major League Baseball knows how dirty the business is here, but it’s not doing anything to stop it.”

Google Earth's AI experiment lasted 24 hours. The damage to trust will linger

Thu, 10 Sep 2026 20:44:00 -0400

“No benefit of integrating generative AI into Google Earth is worth the harm and the doubt it creates.”

Why Is Everyone In Tech So Sad?

Thu, 10 Sep 2026 20:38:00 -0400

“The best-educated and highest-earning Americans, who can have whatever they want, have chosen the office for the same reason that devout Christians attend church on Sundays: It’s where they feel most themselves.”

Blizzard employees have ratified their first union contracts

Thu, 10 Sep 2026 01:10:00 -0400

“the right to be ‘recalled’ into open positions at any Blizzard bargaining unit for 14 months”

Now it's China's experts who are gig workers training AI

Thu, 10 Sep 2026 01:05:00 -0400

“It usually takes a few hours to complete a task, which earns them 100 to 500 yuan ($15 to $74), they say.”