iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Clive Thompson @clivethompson.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

UI/UX designer folks! I'm writing a Fast Company feature on how AI is changing design -- lots of AI tooling in Figma now, but also designers using coding LLMs, Claude code, etc You have experiences? Thoughts? Pro, con, both? Hit me up, I'd love to hear! (and boost) clive@clivethompson.net

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Don De Tina @donnyd.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Check out #2 on Linkfest: buttondown.com/clivethompso... by @clivethompson.bsky.social The MouthPad 👅 A computer mouse that you control with your tongue! www.augmental.tech?utm_source=c... Great for accessibility!

augmental.tech

MouthPad: the hands-free touchpad

A trackpad worn on the roof of the mouth: hands-free control of your devices, driven by the tongue. From Augmental.

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Clive Thompson @clivethompson.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

behold a programming language ... ... that demands you say "please" it's like something douglas adams would have invented i give you "INTERCAL" item #16 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free to read/subscribe: buttondown.com/clivethompso...

Screenshot of the Visual Studio Code editor, with a snippet of INTERCAL programming. It has lines like "DO , 1 <- #13", which appear to be assigning values to variables -- but it also has several lines that have the word "PLEASE", such as "PLEASE READ OUT , 1" and "PLEASE GIVE UP". The overall effect is pretty funny

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Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 17/08/2026

Better than handle bar mirrors is the one that clips to your glasses and so is stable with respect to your eye. @clivethompson.bsky.social wrote about it clivethompson.medium.com/my-new-cybor...

clivethompson.medium.com

My New Cyborg Vision

A tale of how quickly our minds begin to rely on new technologies

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Clive Thompson @clivethompson.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

"Fable" is a fun quick game with a lovely premise: you start off with a closeup of an animal ... ... and it slowly zooms out you try to guess it as soon as you can item #4 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free here: buttondown.com/clivethompso...

An animated gif that shows a closeup of an animal, so close you can't figure out at first what it is. It's just a grey, wrinkled surface. Beneath are three buttons labelled "echidna", "buffalo", and "fruit bat". As it slowly zooms out two black eyes appear, and you can see that it's the head of a buffalo, facing you

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Massimo (mirror) @rainmaker1973-m.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

In China, robots which are also solar panels, clean the other solar panels. Original post

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Clive Thompson @clivethompson.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

a plant that dies ... ... if you look at your phone fun project by designer @simonegiertz.bsky.social item #1 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free here: buttondown.com/clivethompso...

A photo of a bell jar with a plant inside. The bell jar has a thick wooden base with a slot inside it into which an iPhone has been slid. At the top of the bell jar is a wooden semicircle from which light is shining down on the plant. It looks both high tech and warm, The dark wood feels very lo fi

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Deb Chachra @debcha.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

A long time ago, @clivethompson.bsky.social wrote about it for WIRED: "The pleasure in reading a newsletter comes from the view into a unitary mind at work...Reading [Metafoundry] is like being plugged Oculus-style into her brain while she meditates on science and culture."

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Deb Chachra @debcha.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

As of this weekend, I've been based in Vancouver, BC for a year. To celebrate, I wrote a newsletter about @alexis-madrigal.bsky.social's THE PACIFIC CIRCUIT, having a garden, and some of the things I've been up to this past while: buttondown.com/metafoundry/...

buttondown.com

determinate tomatoes

on cities, matter, energy, roots, and dragonflies

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Menestune @menestune.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

When the local Barred Owls take baths, they seem to all make the same adorable noise. I would spell it "flumff". Tell me I'm wrong! (Hope you can hear the noises) #birds #owl #birb #nature #love #trailcam #Seattle #goodmorning #PNW #love #funnyanimals #nokings

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Clive Thompson @clivethompson.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

holy *crap* "One missing underscore in a Skyrim-themed username put an innocent Nova Scotia man in prison for 18 months" full story here: arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...

arstechnica.com

A missing underscore sent innocent man to prison for 18 months

When the first step goes wrong, bad results follow.

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Keri @keriqbaum.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Verify my age??? I used to think this was an awesome game:

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Brent Toderian @brenttoderian.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

Does replacing parking with bike-lanes hurt restaurant business? Of course not, as this new peer-reviewed STUDY of 15 years of Montreal data showed. ACTUALLY, downtown experienced significant restaurant growth after bike lanes were installed. @momentummag.bsky.social momentummag.com/do-bike-lane...

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aleha_84 @aleha84.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

Night stairs 2

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Clive Thompson @clivethompson.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

Hong Kong has 2,549 basketball courts the photographer Austin Bell has taken pictures of every single one his online gallery -- and his print book -- are *amazing* item #12 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free here: buttondown.com/clivethompso...

An aerial picture of a large basketball court. It is very colorful and divide it into different geometric shapes, including dark blue triangles, light blue rectangles, and burnt orange circles and parallelograms. The is surrounded by a high white fence and has a forest of green trees on the left side and what looks like another smaller court on the right side. There are four people playing basketball, one is shooting the ball towards the hoop

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Emily Nussbaum @emilynussbaum.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

I don't think candidates have to be grown in a vat, but maybe marinate them in the vat for a couple of months

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Mark Sample @samplereality.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

Need a palate cleanser? Check out @alhambot.bsky.social's procedurally-generated tiles (not AI, just Python and math!)

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Clive Thompson @clivethompson.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

why do scriptwriters hate geologists?? an analysis of found that "geologists die at an alarming rate in the movies" about one third get killed before the credits roll item #9 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free here: buttondown.com/clivethompso... (steve buscemi as a geologist, below)

The actor Steve Buscemi in an orange space suit with no helmet, looking pensive

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Elf M. Sternberg @elfsternberg.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

A 15-year study of bike lanes shows that they have no negative impact on business. Neighborhoods that embraced bike lanes showed a measurable increase in foot traffic. momentummag.com/do-bike-lane...

momentummag.com

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Hannah Weinberger @trailanderror.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

I used to have a bumper sticker on my car (it was on so long it literally wore off) that said, “If I had ridden my bike today, this parking spot would be yours.” I think about it every time someone claims bike lanes are gratuitous investments that only serve people in spandex.

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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 08/07/2026

There's a revolution happening in urban transportation across the world. It's not EVs, not even autonomous EVs. It's got nothing to do with AI. No tech mogul is getting rich off it. Instead, the revolution is centered on an older, simpler technology: bicycles.

economist.com

Forget EVs. Cycling is revolutionising transport

Pedal power is booming, spinning up a new culture war

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Mike Masnick @masnick.com · 08/07/2026

Same people promoting this are screaming about Mamdani's grocery stores as "communism."

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Clive Thompson @clivethompson.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Excellent @jasonkoebler.bsky.social piece at @404media.co 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 www.404media.co/we-are-livin... (unpaywalled, just in case: archive.is/pNTQh) 1/2

404media.co

We Are Living in a ‘ChatGPT Flyer Pandemic’

"Hey if this is your flyer, I’m not going, I’m not donating, I’m not sharing. Don’t ask me."

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Clive Thompson @clivethompson.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

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: buttondown.com/clivethompso...

A large colorful chart entitled "Sumida penguins relationship Chart 2026". It shows tiny images of cartoons of perhaps 2 or three dozen Penguins together with a welter of colored lines illustrating relationships

A closeup of the chart showing Small round images of 7 Penguins with lines connecting them and describing their relationships. For example, there is a Penguin called "Ume" Who's described as “the type that Likes to take food back to her nest closed quotes and there is a multi directional arrow connecting her the arrow is labeled “married” with a heart, and it points to another Penguin named "Take", Who is described as "beefy and sweet." there is a blue arrow connecting Tako to another Penguin called "Kurama", and the arrow has a broken blue heart and the text reading "their romance seems to have run its course”.

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Clive Thompson @clivethompson.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

I was trying to type "alpha male" on my phone and I accidentally misspelled it as "aloha male" this is the best typo I've ever made

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Clive Thompson @clivethompson.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Doom running on ... ... an array of *e coli* cells (to be clear, the e coli is just the display, not the computation necessary to run the game lol) item #3 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free to read and subscribe to here: buttondown.com/clivethompso...

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Danny Williams @mrdannyw.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Rush hour. London

Shows a long queue two people wide of people on cycles. They are on a cycle track next to a main road. Offices down both sides of the road

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Madeleine Bonsma-Fisher, PhD @mbonsma.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

A guy in a minivan yelled at us (four people on two bikes), "You're taking up the whole road!" My husband, a quick thinker, yelled back, "How many people you got in there??"

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Ariaa® @ariaa.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Because you need to gaze upon a newborn whitecoat harp seal. 🤭🥰

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Robin @jesusurbanist.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

If you think e-bikes are a hazard for teenagers, wait until you hear about cars.

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Clive Thompson @clivethompson.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

behold "The Listening Museum" ... ... which has samples of the sounds of 36 famous clicky keyboards you can pick a model, type away, and hear the glorious noise item #2 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free here: buttondown.com/clivethompso...

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SJSCentralTX @sjscentraltx.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

Got this tidbit from my electric utility today - my electric usage last week totaled $0. I used AC. I did laundry. Charged my car. Cooked food. Ran the dishwasher. The solar panels on my roof worked overtime in the hot sun.

Great news from my electric utility: usage last week was less than $1. Previous week (overcast and raining) was $2. Solar. It makes electricity. No emissions.

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🎃Scarlett the Vampire Slayer🎃 @dialancea.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

Half Life 3 is looking good!

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Brent Toderian @brenttoderian.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

“In London cyclists now outnumber cars in the City by 2 to 1. Paris, where they now outnumber motorists across the whole city, is catching up with Europe’s traditional bike capitals, Amsterdam & Copenhagen…In Copenhagen, bikes account for almost half of commuter trips to work/school.” @economist.com

economist.com

Forget EVs. Cycling is revolutionising transport

Pedal power is booming, spinning up a new culture war

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Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 03/07/2026

That's brilliant. You can unlock the next level by getting some good panniers. @clivethompson.bsky.social makes the case here clivethompson.medium.com/cyclists-get... Being able to carry a week's shopping, a dog, a whole picnic or a carry on suitcase is liberating.

clivethompson.medium.com

Cyclists, Get A Pannier Bag

It transforms your bike into a machine for hauling tons of stuff

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Clive Thompson @clivethompson.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

behold "Violent Checkers" ... ... where you shoot checkers pieces at each other to try and destroy them really fun! designed/built by @benjedwards.com item #11 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free to read and subscribe to here: buttondown.com/clivethompso...

An animated gif showing how "Violent Checkers" works. It shows a checkers board in its Beginning state, with the red checkers on the bottom and the Black checkers on the top. A mouse touches a red piece and pulls backwards, creating a vector arrow that points from the red checker to a black checker. Then suddenly the player lets go and red checker zips forward and slams into the black checker and destroys it. For the next move, the other player drags on a black piece, creating a vector arrow pointing towards a red piece. then the player lets go and the black piece shoots forward and bounces off the red piece, and the collisions move several pieces around, almost like curling stones or billiard balls.

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Bernie Michalik @berniemichalik.ca · 01/07/2026

Also a superb new example of what else you can run Doom on!

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Clive Thompson @clivethompson.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

behold an ancient "curse tablet" greeks and romans wrote them to try and bring bad fortune upon their enemies one of them cursed a prominent lawyer: "I bind the tongue and soul and speech that he is practicing" item #8 in my latest Linkfest newsletter, free here: buttondown.com/clivethompso...

A withered old grey rectangular object that looks possibly like a piece of old buckled wood, or some sort of ancient cloth. It has characters written in scratch marks on it

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alexvonwitzleben.bsky.social @alexvonwitzleben.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

The Dutch infrastructure authority completed a systematic assessment in 2023 identifying 420 kilometres of barriers oriented within 45 degrees of south-facing, suitable for bifacial #solarpanel installation without structural modification or planning procedures beyond normal road authority approval

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 30/06/2026

absolutely vital to win the senate this november. need to basically blockade judicial confirmations for the next two years.

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Bernie Michalik @berniemichalik.ca · 30/06/2026

A great example of why people hate data centers....

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Brent Toderian @brenttoderian.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

This iconic Fabian Todorovic cartoon is still one of the best I’ve seen at illustrating the remarkable amount of space we surrender to cars, leaving little space left for everyone and everything else. The text added later makes the bonus point that many drivers still manage to complain about it.

Iconic cartoon showing a single driver in a wide car taking up most of the street space. With many people crammed into the bus, bike and pedestrian space left over. Someone later added a voice box with the driver saying “Damn those bike paths and bus lanes taking all the space!”

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Clive Thompson @clivethompson.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

"Current Rothko" is a website where you type in your location ... ... and it shows you a Rothko that (in theory) matches your current weather who knew Rothko was so relevant to a heat wave? item #7 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter, free here: buttondown.com/clivethompso...

A dark, minimalist webpage titled “Current Rothko” displays a large reproduction of Mark Rothko’s Orange, Red, Orange (1961) centered on the screen. A left sidebar shows the user’s location (New York), current weather (88°F, clear sky), time of day (afternoon, 4:15 PM), a mood register labeled “radiant,” and a list of world cities with their local times. Beneath the painting, the caption reads: “Orange, Red, Orange, 1961” followed by the text, “Full sun overhead — the orange field carries the same vivid hour.”

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mean things I say to myself @meantomyself.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

Old enough to recognize this as a data center

Lockable floppy disk holder from the late 20th century

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