July 2025 blend of links

It’s a good thing I have this format of posts, otherwise this blog may suffer from a lack of regular updates. I have a few drafts currently in the works, and I hope the slower pace of August will allow for some quality time for writing. Also, aren’t there way too many things happening at the same time? It’s hard to keep up: it’s tough to write about something and not end up talking about five other topics. In the meantime, while I work on some sort of editorial discipline, please enjoy these links.

Canon Canovision 8 TV ad (1989)・Now pretty convinced that this is the greatest TV ad of all time. (via Daniel Benneworth-Gray)

Notable People・“The map is showing birthplaces of the most ‘notable people’ around the world. Data has been processed to show only one person for each unique geographic location with the highest notability rank.” (via Vsauce)

IAMWHATIAM, new single announcement by Tiga・Tiga, the Canadian DJ and musician, on top of being a very, very important artist in my life through his own music and his great tastes extensively shared throughout the years (social media, music label, podcasts, &c.), may be the funniest musical artist since Bowie; that’s why it’s already his second appearance on this blog. His new song is pretty good, but this is how it was introduced: “Tiga is back stalking the grid with IAMWHATIAM, his first solo single released in the shadow of humanity’s Faustian Subscription to large language models and fifth-generation Smart Pencils. […] These days, you gotta feel the rhythm and starve the algorithm. It is the final revolutionary act, no more and no less than the price of Absolute Brain Freedom.”

Tooooools.app・The kind of tool to keep in your bookmarks folder, to forget about it, and to joyfully rediscover years later. Nice-looking UI too. I like the Dithering effect a lot, although the Scatter tool makes Safari crash on my Mac. (via Dense Discovery)

When Google’s slop meets webslop, search stops・This post by Cory Doctorow was a great source of inspiration for my recent A.I.-search rant.

Lettervoxd・Rarely used words found in movie subtitles, and I don’t need to say any more because you already clicked that link, obviously. (via Rodrigo Guedin)

Photos: The Scale of China’s Solar-Power Projects・Surreal-looking landscapes, that I could seriously have mistaken for CGI from a movie like Dune or something. (via Kottke)

Cockatoos start sipping from Sydney’s drinking fountains after mastering series of complex moves・But yeah, sure, continue to fear AGI or the rise of sentient robots in the near future while we literally have a raptor-turning-door-knob moment right under our noses.

EditGPT・My go-to proofreading tool: it’s really good, and it works exactly like I want it to, UI-wise, unlike A.I. chatbots. At work, I use a Pro subscription, and it’s worth every cent, especially once you take the time to fine-tune the editing process prompts.

Everyone says they want opinionated design until they get it・Matt Birchler on the new design direction for software at Apple: “The new design system is pretty darn opinionated. This is not just a neutral system where devs lead the way in terms of design trends, nor is it another slight refinement to the OS design they’ve been iterating one since iOS 7, it’s got a clear opinion on what software design is for the next 10 years should look like.” (via Kushaiah Felisilda)

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