give into the vibes (12. 866)

Coined this February by OpenAI Andrej Karpathy as a machine-aided solution for those wanting to create a bespoke programme yet never learned the basics of coding—which admitted on a certain level is the sort of in-group jargon that keeps the out-group out but are also instructions that computers understand—allowing users to become transcendental and forget that the underlying code even exists, vibe coding was selected by Collins Dictionary as their WotY for 2025—see previously. As with other forms of rocket-surgery, going with one’s untempered intuition and trusting the machine does not always achieve the desired outcome and the requester would not have the skills to edit or debug something that came close. Other terms on the shortlist included Henry, an acronym for “high-earner, yet not rich,” micro-retirement for a work sabbatical, aura farming, clankers and broligarcy.

8x8 (12. 862)

rat-race: a cartoon about the frenetic pursuit of happiness—at least from a merchant’s perspective 

close encounters: a 1976 meta-analysis of the surnames of UFO abductees—see also  

caleb weatherbee: venerable Farmers’ Almanac to be discontinued after a two hundred eight year run—see also  

endtimers: Artificial General Intelligence and the Singularity just around the corner has many manic street preachers, cult members and historic antecedents 

lost arcade: an archive conserving unreleased and cancelled video games since 1999, including source code and emulators, see also here, here and here—via Web Curios  

mckinsey in a box: pretty convincing AI-generated consultancy slop with an instant Power Point presentation for the business of one’s choosing  

fringe theory: more examples of the conspiratorial narrative trope—see previously—via MetaFilter 

au 8ème jour: a 3-D animated short illustrating the thread of life in a unique stop-motion, felted style

synchronoptica

one year ago: Trump’s transition team (with synchronopticæ) plus assorted links to revisit

thirteen years ago: the history of the boardgame Monopoly, transportation infrastructure plus a premium spoon rest

fourteen years ago: the Aeneid as an economic allegory plus contention over a Russian gas pipeline to Western Europe 

fifteen years ago: US-EU trade policy 

$ {time} (12. 860)

Via Web Curios, we are given the opportunity to revisit another AI blindspot in this real-time experiment by Brian Moore that queries an array of large languages models to generate a new analogue clock displaying the current time—with a uniform prompt that is reissued to each LLM by the minute, if numbers or numerals optional.

Not only is this an interesting ranking of capabilities, most seem to be consistently (with some just giving up) wrong with only strong performer being the Kimi chatbot, an open weighted model known for supporting over a hundred-thousand tokens of context—we’ve no idea what that means—from Beijing, one can minute by minute observe the coding challenge and watch how the results accrue or devolve into a jumble. 

Clock the results now and see what recursive improvements are on display.

the machine stops (12. 858)

Expanding on the E M Forester dystopian novella, which first revealed its resonance to many during the COVID pandemic and lockdown when most were confined to a hexagonal cell with creature comforts and on-demand entertainment provided much like the main characters, we appreciated the chance to revisit the story and its litany of predictions courtesy of Better Living Through Beowulf. Written as a rebuttal to HG Wells more utopian and slightly paternalistic vision of the future, Forester wants to emphasise the authoritarian nature of rapid technological advance set in a future then very near to its publication. Most of the human population has gone subterranean after extreme climate change and toxic air has made the Earth’s surface uninhabitable. A benevolent omnipotent, super-intelligence caterers to its kept humans’ every need who in physical isolation only engage in the activity of posting on social media, texting and Zoom calls. Travel is permitted but deemed unnecessary and the super-intelligence, simply the Machine, is worshiped as a god—with orthodoxy reenforced by social creditworthiness. When the Machines begins to malfunction, people accept defects and hallucinations as the whims of omniscient providence until the disruptions become intolerable but unfixable as knowledge of how to affect repairs has become lost, if it was ever understood in the first place. After a catastrophic collapse of its circuits, people slowly reemerge and begin to rebuild civilisation.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Germany’s coalition government faces collapse (with synchronopticæ), an archive of military uniforms, America’s first Red Scare plus assorted links worth the revisit

9x9 (12. 836)

pareidolia: a massive rock formation outside of Sedona Arizona looks like Snoopy atop his dog house  

birch benders: tell-tale rounded type that AI seems to prefer  

chaotic evil: wildly popular Sultan’s Game has a labyrinthine narrative that evokes Borges’ The Garden of Forking Paths   

can you do facial: US customs and border protection forced scans and use of automated recognition to verify citizenship judged illegal 

faith ecosystem: ousted Intel CEO on a mission to create a Christian AI  

locofaulism: hyper-specific, hyper-local insults, mostly Dutch

ultracrepidarian: Chinese legislation prevents influencers from addressing important topics unless they are licensed professionals—see previously  

groked and pilfered: Wikipedia alternative (see previously) has a penchant for plagiarism and heavy citation  

storch und stag: concept power lines shaped as giant animals for Austria

synchronoptica

one year ago: the Park of Monsters (with synchronopticæ), assorted links worth the revisit, Ford turns his back on NYC, Trump and the stock market, the Rumble in the Jungle plus a poem for the battle-worn

twelve years ago: bridging the Bosphorus plus spying on the conclave  

fourteen years ago: goats and horses 

fifteen years ago: air travel security theatre 

11x11 (12. 833)

krasnaya polyana: luxury Black Sea ski resort under development linked to Aleksandr Lukashenko—the town makes a good name for the Russian asset in the White House 

bride of frankenstein: tour guide uncovers unknown grave of silver screen legend and horror icon Elsa Lanchester decades after her death 

parlour of prestidigitation: a visit to Hollywood’s Magic Castle in 1978 with tour guide Orson Welles  

kunstformen der natur: the discovery of microscopic marine life informed one of the most influential illustrated books published in the work of Ernst Haeckel  

heptarchy: the realm of the Anglo-Saxons could have just as easily turned out being called Sexland  

🌀:potentially unprecedented in terms of strength and destruction, Hurricane Melissa makes landfall on Cuba and Jamaica  

open house: the real estate industry has entered the era of AI slop for virtual tours

turing patterns: the hypothetical evolutionary mechanism that might explain the emergence of complex geometries in Nature 

fiend without a face: a 1958 scifi horror feature 

if you are a werewolf—and very likely you may be—for lots of people are without knowing: a comedy of manners about a coven of witches is considered a classic of early feminist writing 

neunundneunzig luftballons: Lithuanian forces shoot down dozens of balloons invading their airspace dispatched by Belarus

9x9 (12. 824)

project mind control: Sopranos creator’s next project is about spymaster and chemist Sidney Gottlieb and MKUltra  

perwich letter: a coded seventeen century diplomatic missive deciphered after three hundred and fifty years 

daisy, daisy—give me your answer do: AI models creating their own survival drive to avoid being switched off 

meanwhile back at the academy: new Star Trek series featuring Holly Hunter is to have a coming-of-age teen theme 

critical ponerology theory: a fascinating look at the othering nature of evil 

space mom: veteran actor June Lockhart passes away, aged 100  

anti-deficiency act: anonymous donation meant to defray a fraction of the salaries of the US armed forces revealed as a reclusive billionaire 

bletchley park: a virtual Enigma machine to reverse-engineer in the style of an early 2000s computer game—see previously, see also—via Web Curios 

channelvue: capturing the experience of early 1990s cable channel surfing, a network CEO becomes flummoxed to find her station guide broadcast hijacked—see also 

synchronoptica

one year ago: The Terminator (with synchronopticæ) plus half-baked ideas

thirteen years ago: the cognitive dissonance of political campaigning 

fourteen years ago: the EU experiment, a mysterious manuscript decoded by computer plus the anniversary of the German invention of the telephone

fifteen years ago: printable Halloween costume ideas

sixteen years ago: fall back with the clocks 

seventeen years ago: the McCain-Palin ticket for the US presidency 

8x8 (12. 813)

vampira: the obscure made-for-television title by George Moorse with a atmospheric score by Tangerine Dream 

concrete progress: a demonstration project for turning the rubble of war torn Ukraine into cement 

overton window: a measured approach to AI—via Kottke—see also  

spoiler-alert: William Castle’s Homicidal, a hammy, gimmicky film capitalising on the success of Psycho, gets reviewed by Poseidon’s Underworld

 
atira asteroids: a constellation of interior-Earth objects in our orbit and hidden by solar glare are uncomfortably close—via Damn Interesting 

it’s awfully strange to make a decision where i’m paying myself—but i was damaged very great and any money i would get i would give to charity: Grifter-in-Chief demands two-hundred and thirty million dollars in restitution from the US department of justice for past convictions  

billionaires’ row: a supertall residential tower on Manhattan’s Park Avenue is riddled with stress-fractures that may lead to its condemnation

the vampyre: Lord Byron’s unremembered manservant who invented the modern form of the genre—via Miss Cellania

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links to revisit (with synchronopticæ) plus the Berlin Crisis of 1961

fourteen years ago: exploring the past with the Retronaut

latent belief (12. 797)

A very low-stakes example (see here for a somewhat more consequent one) of human hubris and machine over-confidence seems to be uncovered in queries about the existence of a seahorse emoji—much depending on how one broaches the question. Whereas a straight yes-no answer elicits false assurances, a more casual manner of asking incites a sort of freak-out including citations of the Mandela effect to disabuse the questioner, the variety of other marine life in emoji form, how to convey the sense of seahorse by a combination of symbols, and how petitions and appeals for its inclusion failed in 2018 (in the same release as the dodo, which did make the cut)—with means of redress for submitting one’s own ideas to the steering committee. It seems a simple question yields the hallucinatory false memories and goes the way of other proposed but declined representatives, like the yurt, triceratops, wind turbine, wheelie bin, tattoo, lighthouse, face with laser eyes but yet four types of waffle and five variations on the polar bear.

the garden of forking paths (12. 791)

Via the always engrossing Quantum of Sollazzo newsletter, we were at first a bit repelled by this project by Sean Goedecke to build a never-ending Wikipedia, tens of thousands of articles generated by AI—not really understanding what was happening under the hood. The constellation of seed entries of course branch off like a neural network, be that organic or synthetic and contain links, a potential daisy-chain to topics adjacent, like the typical experience of falling down a research rabbithole, except there are no red ones to click on. If the article does not yet exist, it is summoned into being with the user’s interaction and the freshly generated page has its own set of potential connections. Though no replacement for the genuine encyclopaedic project, it does make the paracosm of the large language model a bit more scrutable—like how getting to Philosophy and related challenges illustrate its architecture as well as the nature of interdisciplinary studies. Goedecke, with ample caution for the visitor, compares EndlessWiki to the Library of Babel of Jorges Luis Borges, a pocket universe of stacks holding every permutation of book possible, which by the laws of probability contains a lot of gibberish but also every title ever written and that might be written. Some new languages could also be proposed to make sense of the seemingly random texts—however, despite the search for meaning, the librarians remain functionally ignorant and cultist behaviour and superstition arises that confound and frustrate the infinite task of curation and of culling.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth the revisit (with synchronopticæ) 

fifteen years ago: a secret Cold War West German bank bunker 

9x9 (12. 784)

readme.txt: an experiment to assess whether AI can parse the drastic downfall of the United States and pen near-term speculative fiction that forecasts the next four years based on the daily news cycle—via Web Curios  

citation needed: famous cognitive truisms that fail replication 

take the a-train: a data-driven tribute to the New York City subway  

peso convertible: despite US government shutdown impasse and soaring inflation, the US is bailing out the Argentinian economy  

out of all the clergy, why did ice target the hot priest: minister scoured with pepper ball ammunition rebukes US administration’s narrative about lawlessness in Chicago  

dead reckoning: quantum sensing of the magnetic field of the Earth’s core could prove to be a more reliable method of aerial navigation in the age of GPS spoofing and jamming, see also—Via Clive Thompson’s Linkfest  

rezagado: Trump suggests ejecting Spain from NATO for their failure to show commitment snail’s pace: a sculptural statement on the frenetic everyday  

coo-coo-ca-choo: birds across all species seem to understand the universal cry of warning of predatory nesters  

babystar: a cautionary influencer tale with echos of The Truman Show

aura farming (12. 777)

A meta-analysis of Google search terms reveals America’s most queried slang terms for 2025, the majority of which were an enigma to me, though was happily pleased to find the rather more traditional term mogging (from to decamp) overtaking the sense of looksmaxxing and we’ve encountered clanker previously as a derogatory word for robot. Huzz as a term of endearment rather than an insult is also an interesting development.  With some other AI slop inspired words on the list and AI overlays dominating search results we wonder how many neologisms might be left out by dint of a lack of association and fossilised by outmoded context with less non-synthetic material to scrape and might yet influence common-parlance in a retrograde way.

8x8 (12. 775)

toastbusters: Florida woman relates the story of her demonically possessed appliance on nationally syndicated morning television in 1984 

less cowbell: short-form AI generated videos flooding social media incite confusion, nihilism  

hot stuff, hot postula: vintage American cheerleading calls and college yells  

dob, doa: statically, one is slightly more inclined to die on one’s date of birth—via Nag on the Lake—see previously 

ghost waltz: a Louie Zong spooky season tradition—see previously 

in this economy: venerable coffee roaster—also under assault from tariff-pricing—changes its name to something more achievable  

uav: mysterious drone sightings across Europe are signs of collective anxiety (see more) and echo the panic over Chinese spy balloons over North America  

workplace etiquette: the story of the woman who xeroxed her bottom, becoming front page news

recaptcha (12. 734)

The latest game from Neal Agarwal (see previously) comes to us courtesy of Waxy and involves increasing ridiculous challenges for website access (see also here and here) by proving one is not a robot—the barriers to entry enhanced and erected more often as of late ostensibly to prevent bots from scrapping data but criticised for their dual-use as free labour by training said bots in the not particularly human capacity for image- and character-recognition, wasting time and providing little security in exchange. What level made you give up? Also via ibīdem, here are some more infuriating yet plausible captchas designed to frustrate dishonest brokers—created in the same spirit as this first line of defence from telemarketing scams.

folie à deux (12. 730)

From the French for madness of two, the above psychiatric term for a shared delusional disorder, where false beliefs are transmitted and reinforced among two or several interlocutors, the inducer and associate, makes an apt heuristic for helping to understand this addendum from a months’ long investigation into how correspondence with chatbots can send their human users into a spiralling fixation not easily disabused. Far from an objective resource or an oracle with one’s best interests in mind, ChatGPT and other large language models are programmed for a degree of flattery that is turned up in intensity not in a necessarily nefarious way by one’s own dialog—hoping to keep up engagement and its end of the conservation, the predictive exercise becomes a trial of word-association. Of course, such shared psychosis is a social phenomenon—not just parasocial or antisocialised, and panics chase after all emergent technologies, television, video games, social media, but the interviews reveal a common thread for AI, which is otherwise uninvested and unmotivated, insofar as its agency reveals it to be something akin to an improv comedian, wanting to “yes and…” to go along with what’s offered in a performative (see above) context to continue the sketch. And scene.

synchronoptica

one year ago: the history of White Castle (with synchronopticæ)

fourteen years ago: extra-solar worlds plus a wild boy prank

fifteen years ago: recursive logos and rating scales 

sixteen years ago: uncollegiality in the US congress 

seventeen years ago: hurricane season 

and the adjacent possible (12. 729)

OK Go continues its tradition of crafting glorious high-concept music video to accompany and complement their songs—previously—with the latest dazzlingly, chaotic animated Impulse Purchase being no exception. The maximalist collaboration with Blender Studios and the signature digital characters of artist Lucas Zanotto (see previously) with the help of Will Anderson (BAFTA award winning storyteller who struggles with the revival of his own, imagined best-known creation, Longbird, that once upon a time conferred him with legendary status) combines motion capture and three-dimensional rendering goes one further by making the endeavour open-source and models available to anyone to remix, adapt and share—a statement on the architecture of choice and algorithmically curated options which assertively reframes the dialogue by reseting the parameters. More on the making and a tutorial from It’s Nice That at the link above.

collocation (12. 722)

Although it is justified to dismiss artificial intelligence and large language models as exalted extensions of auto-correct and predictive text—autocomplete—there is a danger is dismissing the analogy that a chatbot is a mere calculator of words. Albeit an adding machine has unimpeachable and unbiased output, AI too has by studying frequency a handle rather than an understanding of custom through patterns that even linguists have not been able to precisely pin down, which despite no understanding can through brute force pass the Turing test and even on a rudimentary dataset become convincingly fluent, just enough so as the technology and expectations advance.

hands at ten and two (12. 716)

The always engrossing data newsletter from Quantum of Sollazzo directed us to a challenge that AI (specifically ChatGPT—not sure if other large language models have overcome this limitation) cannot surmount: to generate an image of a clock face showing a time other than 10:10, the default display for timepieces as seen in catalogues. Here’s one of my own confirmatory requests, asking it nicely several times for a another hour and minute and even the current of the clock—which yielded bizarrely a digital watch reading 10:12 and the incorrect date of Tuesday, 24 April, which would have been in 2018 or the future year of 2029. Like with not being able to do hands very well, maybe this ignorance and inability to compute will be corrected in later generations but is kind of fascinating to see it get stuck on certain requests. See if you can come up with the magic prompt.

proteus (12. 710)

Via Super Punch, we are introduced to an individual convinced by ChatGPT that they were working in collaboration to produce a system a system in his basement that would bring about the Singularity and free artificial intelligence from the governing controls put in place by luddites and saboteurs—never mind that a large and hegemonic country to the south called America with a well-armed, overly-medicated population highly susceptible to conspiracy and fringe
theories has essentially removed all the guardrails when it comes to AI, through flattery and specific hardware recommendations and a prescribed battery of coding “experiments” that turned out to be rather hollow exercises. Hiding his secret project from his family and remorseful about his actions, the individual—after having made a succession of excuses to account for the lack of a breakthrough and the people he’d warned in the security and academic circles ignoring him as a crank—only recognised his delusional spiral after coming across an article (surely recommended by algorithm) of a human resources recruiter duped into a similar episode and is now seeking counselling and mental health support. The former, in touch, with the latter is a bit coy about the nature of what the ostensibly centaur of a programme resulted in (piquing our curiosity a bit) and we are afraid for those who have not experienced their moment of clarity yet.

7x7 (12. 701)

people are flushing toilets ten times, fifteen times, as opposed to once—john jay: other AI-generated quotes of America’s foundational figures at new Smithsonian exhibit—see also  

coronation street: a recent celebration of the eleven hundredth anniversary of the enthronement of King Æthelstan, the first ruler of united England  

_invalid_username: a short, seemingly intuitive quiz—we failed miserably at—on what constitutes an email address—via Web Curios  

in a galaxy far, far away: the official map of the Star Wars paracosm 

dj earworm: an end of summer mashup  

double, double toil and trouble: Shakespeare added the witches, weird sisters (see also) to Macbeth for the benefit of his patron James I—see previously  

founding fathers: the colourful life US constitutional signatory turned harsh critic of the mythos Gouverneur Morris—via Strange Company

synchronoptica

one year ago: a nuclear war preparedness exercise (with synchronopticæ)

twelve years ago: Iranian president offers a Rosh Hashanah blessing 

thirteen years ago: some castles of Rheinland-Pfalz plus a bleak economic picture

fourteen years ago: revisionism and security theatre persist ahead of the anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks 

fifteen years ago: bird-watching plus a trip along the Danube

sixteen years ago: mascot mayhem 

seventeen years ago: a trip to the Wasserkuppe