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Following the AI and crypto money
Molly White is launching an initiative to track political donations related to AI and crypto.
Continuing to track only crypto would mean missing half the story. The same operatives are running both campaigns. Josh Vlasto, longtime adviser and spokesperson for Fairshake — the cryptocurrency super PAC network responsible for the bulk of crypto’s 2024 spending — is now simultaneously heading Leading the Future, a pro-AI super PAC network.1 Chris Lehane, the political consultant and Coinbase board member who helped establish Fairshake and famously told Coinbase employees who questioned whether a crypto voter bloc existed that they would simply invent one,2 is now also an OpenAI executive and one of the people behind the Leading the Future PAC network.3 The same venture capital firms are funding both: Andreessen Horowitz, a crypto heavyweight in the 2024 elections, is now splitting its political spending across crypto and AI PACs.
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Like a rolling stone
A weird and amusing web site: click various sides of a rock face and click release to let it roll, making beats as it goes.
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The bots have overtaken humans on the net
With AI agents everywhere, bots now outnumber humans on the internet.
The rise is attributed to the continued proliferation of AI agents, largely autonomous programs that use tools that collaborate with high-level programs and data, with little human feedback.
Cloudflare, which has a feature to display bot versus human-generated search requests, says 57.4% of requests are now initiated by bots, compared with 42.6% coming from humans.
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German discovers the American South
Freddy from Germany is on a whirlwind trip through the American South, to the delight of everyone.
That said, words aren’t always enough to fully convey the South’s cultural significance. Just ask X user Freddy (@FreddyLA7), a German soccer fan tweeting his way through the South en route to Texas for Germany’s upcoming match against Curaçao in the 2026 World Cup.
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Comparisons, a study
Russell Samora performed an analysis on 200,000 works to find how common or unique a comparison was. The article presents an amusing and engaging read, providing charts and illustrations.
Most adjectives’ shape have a similar skewed distribution, with some key distinctions:
- Gentler slopes tell us there are no dominant idioms.
- Many have a couple go-to nouns, then a long tail.
- The clichés are obvious, marked by a single tall spike that overshadows the others.
While some writers reach for a novel comparison to make it their own, most just want one that’s reliable and accessible.
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Haiku, a generative music album
Haiku is software that creates a generative album of music. No two listens are the same.
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Artists transform vacant hospital
Super cool project where 70 artists transformed a vacant hospital into something interesting.
Through July 31, visitors experience an alternative vision for communal healing, all through the lens of 70 artists. Dubbed the Hospital of Emotions, the pop-up exhibition converts 80 rooms into temporary installations based on eight themes: joy, love, fear, anger, hope, sadness, compassion, and resilience. Among the participating artists are Lisa Waud, whose lush florals spill across an operating room, and Greg Corbino, who built a barren forest from cardboard.
