@clive@saturation.social cover

Writer, musician/songwriter, hobbyist coder. Contributing writer to New York Times Magazine and Wired. Author of "Coders". Blogging at clivethompson.medium.com, archive of writing at www.authory.com/clivethompson -- email: [email protected]; Signal: @clivethompson.98 -- #science #technology #coding #software #writing #literature #poetry [email protected]

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@clive@saturation.social avatar clive , to random

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

(I'm a programmer but have no experience with Assembly)

if this describes you or someone you know ...

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

[email protected] is the fastest

@kenSwinson@indieweb.social avatar kenSwinson , to random

I'm having a hard time putting words to my feelings right now, but thought I'd share this painting from some time ago.

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clive ,
@clive@saturation.social avatar

@kenSwinson

Beautiful!

@clive@saturation.social avatar clive , to random

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

@clive@saturation.social avatar clive , to random

Super piece by Adam Serwer, who reported on the everyday Minnesotans who are observing and protesting ICE's actions, while delivering food to their neighbors who are afraid to leave their houses

His key, bang-on point, is this: All assumptions the White House makes -- about how society works, how culture works, the nature of bravery and identity --- are completely wrong

it's why Trump's attack on Minnesota is foundering

The piece: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/01/the-neighbors-defending-minnesota-from-ice/685769/

Unpaywalled: https://archive.is/TRsdI

Screenshot reading: A second MAGA assumption is that the left is insincere in its values, and that principles of inclusion and unity are superficial forms of virtue signaling. White liberals might put a sign in their front yard saying IMMIGRANTS WELCOME, but they will abandon those immigrants at the first sensation of sustained pressure. And in Trump’s defense, this has turned out to be true of many liberals in positions of power—university administrators, attorneys at white-shoe law firms, political leaders. But it is not true of millions of ordinary Americans, who have poured into the streets in protest, spoken out against the administration, and, in Minnesota, resisted armed men in masks at the cost of their own life.
Screenshot reading: The MAGA faith in liberal weakness has been paired with the conviction that real men—Trump’s men—are conversely strong. Consider Miller’s bizarre meltdown while addressing Memphis police in October. “The gangbangers that you deal with—they think that they’re ruthless? They have no idea how ruthless we are. They think they’re tough? They have no idea how tough we are,” Miller said. “They think they’re hard-core? We are so much more hard-core than they are.” Around this time, Miller moved his family onto a military base—for safety reasons. The federal agents sent to Minnesota wear body armor and masks, and bear long guns and sidearms. But their skittishness and brutality are qualities associated with fear, not resolve. It takes far more courage to stare down the barrel of a gun while you’re armed with only a whistle and a phone than it does to point a gun at an unarmed protester.
Screenshot reading: Every social theory undergirding Trumpism has been broken on the steel of Minnesotan resolve. The multiracial community in Minneapolis was supposed to shatter. It did not. It held until Bovino was forced out of the Twin Cities with his long coat between his legs. The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they’re the ones who are alone. In Minnesota, all of the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at once. Minnesotans, not the armed thugs of ICE and the Border Patrol, are brave. Minnesotans have shown that their community is socially cohesive—because of its diversity and not in spite of it. Minnesotans have found and loved one another in a world atomized by social media, where empty men have tried to fill their lonely soul with lies about their own inherent superiority. Minnesotans have preserved everything worthwhile about “Western civilization,” while armed brutes try to tear it down by force.

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@clive@saturation.social avatar clive , to random

What's it like applying for a job for ICE?

Over at Slate, a writer -- who's both a US veteran and has a long record of being very vocally anti-ICE online -- went to an ICE recruitment expo

Link if you subscribe to Slate: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/01/ice-recruitment-minneapolis-shooting.html

Free link, if you don't: https://archive.is/791rH

the tl;dr is ...

... they offered her a job, in a process that seemed so haphazard and sloppy that she concludes they're not doing serious background checks

as she puts it ...

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@clive@saturation.social avatar clive , to random

behold the gorgeous "aerial embroidery" of Victoria Rose Richards

it's the landscape as seen from a plane, except as stitchwork

Item #1 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free to read/subscribe to here: https://buttondown.com/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-42-phytomining-adversarial-poetry-and/

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@clive@saturation.social avatar clive , to random

I have a collection of ee cummings’ collected poems

you can flip it open at random and it’s nearly always at minimum interesting, often fantastic

here’s a random page

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@clive@saturation.social avatar clive , to random

so apparently sea slugs eat a lot of algae ...

... and some have figured out how to incorporate the algae's plastids into their own bodies ...

... so the sea slugs photosynthesize

they can live for months off the sun -- an animal acting like a plant

weird and awesome

item #6 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free here: https://buttondown.com/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-40-the-chthulucene-doom-on-a-satellite/

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@clive@saturation.social avatar clive , to random

Interestingly, younger Americans are significantly more likely to dislike data centers than older ones

and dislike is bipartisan

This from a Heatmap story (paywalled): https://heatmap.news/energy/data-centers-left-right-opposition

Screenshot reading: We here at Heatmap have gone to great lengths to better understand why this opposition is so widespread. In August, our data intelligence platform Heatmap Pro conducted polling to figure out how Americans feel about the billions of dollars being poured into data centers for cloud computing and AT development. We found that the dislike is incredibly strong — less than half of Americans are willing to support a data center near them. The frustrations with these facilities are also poised to increase over generations, as data centers are most underwater with the younger cohorts, aged 18 to 49, who may be more familiar with AL

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@jerry@infosec.exchange avatar jerry , to random

The republican fundraising spam texts have taken a decidedly dark turn.

clive ,
@clive@saturation.social avatar

@jerry

I'm weirdly taken by the final injunction

stop=end

the way they did that without spaces between the symbol and words, kind of want that on a t-shirt now

@clive@saturation.social avatar clive , to random

I'm working on a magazine piece about how -- and if -- AI coding tools are altering the work of software development

if you're a dev, love to get your 2 cents on it -- whether you use 'em; absolutely avoid them and hate them; anything in between

Also: Very interested to hear from new CS grads -- whether you feel the advent of AI coding tools is affecting the job market for you

hit me up at [email protected]!

(and please boost this if it's relevant to your followers)

@clive@saturation.social avatar clive , to random

behold the "HTML bomb"

it's a defensive counterattack on AI web-scrapers that persistently scrape and rescrape your web site, even when you tell them not to

the bomb file looks like a tiny HTML page, but when scraped -- or even requested by a regular browser ...

... it unpacks into a huge-ass 10-gig HTML page ...

... which quickly crashes any browser or scraper

Item #6 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free to read and subscribe to here: https://buttondown.com/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-37-wind-theft-an-html-bomb-and-the-rice/

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@clive@saturation.social avatar clive , to random

Speaking of Wired's excellent coverage:

They just reported on a Department of Homeland Security memo that went out to local police forces ...

... urging them to consider even the most innocuous and bog-standard protest activity as dangerous ...

... like skateboarding, or walkigng around "on foot"

no joke

The story: https://www.wired.com/story/dhs-tells-police-that-common-protest-activities-are-violent-tactics/

Unpaywalled: https://archive.is/4Dgw5

An excerpt:

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clive OP ,
@clive@saturation.social avatar

@junesim63

Ugh ugh

@clive@saturation.social avatar clive , to random

There is nothing I love more than research finding that coffee is good for your health

in this case, a four-decade-long study of 50,000 women

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2025/06/16/coffee-healthy-aging-women/84225332007/

@clive@saturation.social avatar clive , to random

I always find this chart by Hannah Ritchie -- of Our World In Data -- deeply informative of how disjointed is our sense of personal risk

https://x.com/_HannahRitchie/status/1133703638432526337

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@clive@saturation.social avatar clive , to random

That hideous rally that Trump held at Fort Bragg? Where soldiers cheered while Trump attacked his political opponents?

It turns out the soldiers in attendance were pre-screened for their political views ...

... and the ones on stage were screened so none would be allowed who were "fat" ...

... and everyone on stage was male

The story from Military.com: https://www.military.com/daily-news/2025/06/11/bragg-soldiers-who-cheered-trumps-political-attacks-while-uniform-were-checked-allegiance-appearance.html

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@clive@saturation.social avatar clive , to random

Among the many dangerous things the Trump administration is doing ...

... this one's a doozy:

the executive order giving his political appointees the power to determine what are "correct" scientific findings, and "the power to 'discipline' anyone who violates the way the administration views science"

Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/03/climate/executive-order-gold-standard-science.html?unlocked_article_code=1.MU8.OyDj.Zg9c1rftvl0c&smid=url-share

@clive@saturation.social avatar clive , to random

Flock -- an automatic license-plate-reading service -- is adding tons of data sources ...

... so police could, upon scanning your license, get linked to tons more info about your life, relationships, etc

where did Flock get these additional sources of info?

they're using standard people-lookup tools and data brokers, but also ...

... info from data breaches

so great

@404mediaco has the story: https://www.404media.co/license-plate-reader-company-flock-is-building-a-massive-people-lookup-tool-leak-shows/

unpaywalled version: https://archive.is/GmuUk

@clive@saturation.social avatar clive , to random

New coinage just dropped, folks

"enshittogenic"

as in ...

... when the ecology of the online world loses crucial stabilizers, such that enshittification has not yet happened, but the conditions are ripe for it

@pluralistic on his new podcast series "Who Broke the Internet?"

https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/08/who-broke-the-internet/

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@clive@saturation.social avatar clive , to random

This is an op-ed by a professor at West Point, describing the Trump/Hegseth crackdown on any sort of instruction that questions power ...

gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/08/opinion/west-point-trump-military.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Fk8.nAsH.FJBUeCyms015&smid=url-share

I highlighted this part here -- they just completely disbanded the sociology major

sociology and anthropology are really, really hated by Trump and his fellow travellers

they hate anything that seeks to examine the fabric of society

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@stux@mstdn.social avatar stux , to random
clive ,
@clive@saturation.social avatar

@stux

nature is healing

@clive@saturation.social avatar clive , to random

China is sharing its rare moon rocks -- collected from the far side of the moon and returned to earth -- with scientific agencies from six different countries, including the US

the rocks are "a shared treasure for all humanity", as China's space-agency chief said

gotta say, it's always cool to see scientists collaborating around the world and across borders

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp8v691qmg5o?utm_source=semafor

clive OP ,
@clive@saturation.social avatar

@f800gecko @kangaroo5383

agreed

like, I doubt many Americans realize that China has built and is operating its own space station ...

... while the 30-year-old ISS is crumbling and will soon be decommissioned

@clive@saturation.social avatar clive , to random

"Conservatives hate complexity"

a superb post by @pluralistic that distills a core aspect of why right-wing ideas about how to manage things like the economy, immigration and our personal lives collide so rapidly with reality

key passage here, but do read the whole thing

https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/24/hermit-kingdom/

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@clive@saturation.social avatar clive , to random

US border officials are so twitchy and paranoid that they detained and imprisoned two German teenagers ...

... even though they'd applied for -- and received -- their electronic approval for a five-week visit

Why were they detained? Because they hadn't booked accommodations for their full five weeks

they'd figured they'd travel around a bit and make decisions on the fly ... like tourists do all the time, in most normal and free countries

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/german-tourists-deported-hawaii-cbp-b2736655.html

@clive@saturation.social avatar clive , to random

someone hacked crosswalk buttons in three California cities so they play deepfakes of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk

Zuckerberg: "It’s normal to feel uncomfortable or even violated as we forcefully insert AI into every, every facet of your conscious experience."

Musk: "You know, people keep saying, ‘cancer is bad,’ but have you ever tried being a cancer? It’s fucking awesome."

https://www.theverge.com/news/647830/crosswalk-hack-musk-zuckerberg-voices-california

(Via @mathewi 's newsletter: https://newsletter.mathewingram.com/churchill-urged-the-us-to-hit-moscow-with-an-atomic-bomb/ )

@clive@saturation.social avatar clive , to random

so there's a company that makes AI that will call your elderly parent every day to check on them ...

... I was going to add, "if you can't be bothered" ...

... but I guess if I were to steel-man the argument of this AI's creator, the goal of the AI is to fill in on the days when, say, you're at work etc and can't

but honestly it still feels like this is gonna be used by people who can't be bothered

https://www.404media.co/i-tested-the-ai-that-calls-your-elderly-parents-if-you-cant-bothered/

@clive@saturation.social avatar clive , to random
@molly0xfff@hachyderm.io avatar molly0xfff , to random

Trump has directed the Department of Justice to stop pursuing crypto fraud, dismantling the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team and ordering the Market Integrity and Major Frauds Unit to cease cryptocurrency enforcement.

clive ,
@clive@saturation.social avatar

@molly0xfff

woof, that is quite a brief

it's rabbit season

@clive@saturation.social avatar clive , to random

Keyboard.io makes high-end angled and "split" keyboards

they wrote a letter to customers explaining how Trump's new tariffs will affect them

it's bad news for them -- prices have already shot up, and new tariffs Trump is threatening would double prices

their description of "why building something as complex as a keyboard is an inherently cross-border enterprise" is really interesting

they have to ship wood to China! that sort of wood isn't readily available there

https://shop.keyboard.io/blogs/news/an-open-letter-to-u-s-customers

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@clive@saturation.social avatar clive , to random

So it turns out that Michael "Reply All" Waltz, Trump's national-security advisor -- the guy who accidentally invited the editor of The Atlantic into a Signal chat to reveal top-secret military plans in realtime ...

... also had left his Venmo "friends" list comppletely public

Wired discovered this and reported it, whereupon the account went instantly private: https://www.wired.com/story/michael-waltz-left-his-venmo-public/

(in other news, Wired continues to kill it)

https://www.wired.com/story/michael-waltz-left-his-venmo-public/

Unpaywalled: https://archive.is/G68KW

@clive@saturation.social avatar clive , to random

Wired surveyed 730 software developers about whether they use AI to help do their work, and what they think about it

very cool results

check out the whole spread: https://www.wired.com/story/how-software-engineers-coders-actually-use-ai/

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@clive@saturation.social avatar clive , to random
@clive@saturation.social avatar clive , to random

In addition to formal government institutions, Musk is also trying to tear apart Wikipedia

That is almost certainly, as this analysis notes, because Wikipedia is "a last bastion of shared reality" ...

... and Musk, in contrast, only wants online sources that repeat his sort of conspiratorial blather

The piece: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/02/elon-musk-wikipedia/681577/

Unpaywalled: https://archive.is/1mjMq

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@clive@saturation.social avatar clive , to random

US media has traditionally been far more clear-eyed about antidemocratic purges abroad

so here's an exercise in how a US correspondent might describe the events of the last week in Washington, were it occurring overseas

https://www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/musk-s-junta-establishes-him-as-head-of-government

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@clive@saturation.social avatar clive , to random

Software folks

Wired is running a short survey asking about whether you ever use AI in your coding

if you're interested, give 'em your feedback: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScxqxzbjQvfD9xIcrub3d2n1yDWreJJL5PxGYpfjaw9fgnDuA/viewform

@clive@saturation.social avatar clive , to random

Via the Algorithmic Sabotage Research Group ( @asrg ) ...

... here's a list of code designed to poison the well for AI web-scrapers

https://tldr.nettime.org/@asrg/113867412641585520

(thanks to @peterfr for pointing this one out!)

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@clive@saturation.social avatar clive , to random

A hacker developed an "infinite maze" to trap web-crawlers/scrapers from AI companies

basically, if the server code detects that a web crawler from an AI firm is trying to scrape the site ...

... the code begins spinning up an infinite, nesting warren of new sham pages, filled with random text

so the crawler gets stuck crawling and scraping endless and meaningless pages

fun @jasonkoebler piece at @404mediaco

https://www.404media.co/email/7a39d947-4a4a-42bc-bbcf-3379f112c999/?ref=daily-stories-newsletter

@clive@saturation.social avatar clive , to random

Behold the AI slop that google served up when these folks asked it "does corn get digested"

I just checked that query, and it now serves up this story itself, bien sur

but overall I agree with the deck to the headline

"slopaggedon cometh"

https://futurism.com/google-image-corn-ai-slop

@clive@saturation.social avatar clive , to random

Back last spring I visited Denver ...

... where the city was two years into a fascinating experiment:

Subsidizing residents who wanted to buy an e-bike

Turns out the program was exceptionally successful

People rode 'em 26 miles a week on average, rode them year-round ...

... removing 6 million miles of car-driving each year. Cleaner air, healthier residents getting exercise

And: way cheaper than subsidizing electric cars

My piece on it for Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/01/e-bike-subsidy-programs-denver-states-walkable-cities-urban-infrastructure/

@clive@saturation.social avatar clive , to random

You know about disposable vapes?

many brands are powered by the same lithium-ion cells that are used to make huge battery packs for electric cars or ebikes

but with vapes, they're just ... thrown out

Chris Doel got 130 dead vapes, took the batteries out, and used them to create a new rechargeable battery pack for his ebike

It worked great

His question: "Why they hell are they being thrown away after one use?"

Item #6 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter: https://buttondown.com/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-28-neolithic-octopuses-weeping-trees-and/

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@clive@saturation.social avatar clive , to random

Ed Zitron went to Amazon and bought its best-selling laptop — a $238 machine running Microsoft S, a hobbled version designed to limit what a user can do

The laptop is janky, slow, awful — and the internet it opens onto is a shitshow of upselling, slop, and con schemes, where the walled gardens are preferable mostly because they offer an illusion of order

His point: for most people, computing is psychologically abusive

He’s right

Read the whole thing!

https://www.wheresyoured.at/never-forgive-them/

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@clive@saturation.social avatar clive , to random

Since there’s been a resurgence lately of the “mastodon is mostly just for folks who use Linux” thing …

… i’m now curious about my community here

(i’m offering intentionally crude and ungranular options in this poll)

“I use Linux …”

(Please boost!)

clive OP ,
@clive@saturation.social avatar

@nixCraft

Yep

In our household we have a Roku, that thing is 100% linux

@nixCraft@mastodon.social avatar nixCraft , to random

credit https://www.nasserjunior.com/comics

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clive ,
@clive@saturation.social avatar

@nixCraft

man, I've never done any professional programming, just a hobbyist

(which is a good thing for me and for the world 😅 )

but this is the thing that has always struck me about software

showstopping errors can be so hilariously banal

@owlislost@nerdculture.de avatar owlislost , to bookstodon group

Hiya ! What are you ? I am listening to Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll and I just started reading The Free People’s Village by Sim Kern, which is engaging so far. How ‘bout you? bookstodon@a.gup.pe icon bookstodon group

clive ,
@clive@saturation.social avatar

@owlislost bookstodon@a.gup.pe icon bookstodon group

Stephanie McCarter’s new translation of Ovid’s “The Metamorphoses”

absolutely phenomenal, and takes as first principle the fact – long ignored, or at least severely underplayed, by generations of academics — that it’s a massive epic poem about sexual assault

@clive@saturation.social avatar clive , 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://www.weirdoldbookfinder.net/

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"

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clive OP ,
@clive@saturation.social avatar

@aral

that usually happens if someone is running a VPN, I’ve found

The project uses it to Google books API, and I think that API sometimes gets tripped up by VPNs so I temporarily turn mine off when I’m using it