Notices by Clive Thompson (clive@saturation.social)

I was reading a piece about Lindsey Graham and it mentioned him appearing 63 times on "Meet the Press" ...

... and I realized I've never in my entire life sat down to watch "Meet the Press".

What's ... what's it like?

I am not sure I've even seen a dang *clip* of it

mind you, I have -- for good and for ill, and possibly surprisingly a lot of the latter --- structured my entire epistemological apparatus around never engaging with *any* TV news or commentary

like, slamming the laptop lid shut if something accidentally starts autoplaying

it's not even so much a decision as an autoimmune function

Excellent @jasonkoebler piece in @404mediaco about the cultural shift in real-world and online flyers ...

... as people start posting AI-generated ones that all have the same bland creepy look

https://www.404media.co/we-are-living-in-a-chatgpt-flyer-pandemic/

(unpaywalled just in case: https://archive.is/pNTQh)

the penguins in a japanese zoo have *very* complex romantic lives

poly groupings, broken hearts, lots of side-eye and drams

so the zoo made a chart of it

item #5 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free here: https://buttondown.com/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-46-curse-tablets-a-robot-cellist-and-why/

@skinnylatte

i’ve never seen them before until you pointed them out, they do look like big fluffy potatoes!

back in the beforetimes when I was on Twitter, for years I ran a poetry bot

it'd take a huge corpus of lines I'd written -- *very* loosely in emulation of Basho and several lyric poets of antiquity -- and pick three at random, publishing four times a day

after I left Twitter in 2022, I turned it off

but now I just relaunched the bot ...

... on mastodon!

le voila: @clivebot

Behold a seven-segment clock display ...

... that runs pneumatically

it alternately sucks in and then releases the segments, so they appear as divots in a rubbery surface

very organic!

item #6 in my latest Linkfest newsletter, free to read/subscribe to here: https://buttondown.com/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-44-microchimerism-sonic-boom-duct-tape/

someone made a translator

it that takes a regular English sentence ...

... and translates it to LinkedIn-speak

it's unsettlingly good

Item #3 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free to read/subscribe here: https://buttondown.com/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-44-microchimerism-sonic-boom-duct-tape/

I'd been reading about the surge in prices for computer RAM, but only paying partial attention

but *wow* the increases are huge!

last july 2025 I built a new PC for myself, with 32 gigs of RAM from Microcenter -- the RAM was $83.22

i just googled the precise SKU info from my receipt, and the same RAM configuration is now $379

https://www.microcenter.com/product/664095/gskill-ripjaws-s5-32gb-(2-x-16gb)-ddr5-6000-pc5-48000-cl36-dual-channel-desktop-memory-kit-f5-6000j3636f16gx2-rs5k-black

that's an increase of over 4X in 9-10 months

Behold the "challenge coin" that the federal government is handing out to employees who worked on the deportations and detentions around Minneapolis this winter

it is both predictable -- the sort of garish video-game conflict imagery in which Trump's administration revels -- and grotesque

for people who don't like being called "fascist", their imagery is squarely and risibly in that camp

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/staff-at-minnesota-deportation-hub-received-obscene-trump-themed-challenge-coins-adorned-with-skulls

NASA's photo galley from yesterday's lunar fly-by are bonkers gorgeous

full gallery here: https://www.nasa.gov/gallery/lunar-flyby/

Hey kids

check out the live stream of the Artemis 2 mission -- they're about as close to the moon as they'll ever be

pretty wild

https://www.youtube.com/live/6RwfNBtepa4

Artemis 2 is flying behind the moon right now, so the NASA livestream is dead ...

... but in about 30 minutes they'll pass out from behind the moon and we'll hear the moment they re-establish contact with houston

if you tune into that livestream (link at the top of this thread) you'll hear it

it'll be fun!

Behold the gorgeous daily art produced by @csilverman

... which he draws using the Notes app on an iphone

its drawing toolset is awfully limited, but he pushes it to a dizzying limit

item #1 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free to read and subscribe to here: https://buttondown.com/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-43-archaeoacoustics-nocotourism-and-the/

@kims

this is wild!

(UPDATE: I think i've got this one answered, thank you everyone!)

People of mastodon!

Super weird question, but ...

... is anyone out there conversant in Assembly for a 1960s-era IBM 7090, or machines of that lineage?

I'm working on an article that includes some Assembly of that vintage ...

... and want to make sure I'm describing what it does correctly

if this describes you or someone you know ...

... hit me up, I'd love to tap your expertise!

clive@clivethompson.net is the fastest

people, PEOPLE

some hot *hot* new gossip just dropped about Cantor's infinity proof

turns out he stole it

https://boingboing.net/2026/02/25/newly-found-letters-show-georg-cantor-stole-his-famous-infinity-proof.html

"It’s time to declare the Interstate mission complete"

this is a good way of thinking about how to seriously rethink the way the US spends transportation money: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2026-2-16-weve-been-fighting-the-wrong-transportation-fight

An interesting piece here noting that in the Epstein files, quite a few of the rich elites insisted that climate change either a) wasn't happening or b) would be good because the mass deaths would help depopulate the world, a classic argument of ecofacism

https://www.fastcompany.com/91490280/epstein-files-how-ultra-wealthy-peddle-climate-denialism

If you haven't read @anildash's fantastic essay on Markdown -- its history, its impact, and what it tells us about truly useful bottom-up innovation -- then you really should

here 'tis: https://www.anildash.com/2026/01/09/how-markdown-took-over-the-world/