Link roundup - good vibes

Lots of cuteness, and the silliest AI that's ever existed

Instead of starting with a photo, I thought I’d experiment this time by starting with a video~

Interesting stories

1. Behind the scenes of “Love Is Blind”

None of this wound up on the air. Instead, viewers saw the couple sitting stiffly on their bed, having a tense argument in which Ruhl moodily told her fiancé that she didn’t trust “anything right now.” What she was talking about, both parties agree, was her fear that the production team had been messing with them. Once Thompson realized that he’d been set up, he pulled his own microphone off and threw it. To viewers, however, it looked like a dramatic lovers’ spat: Ruhl was jealous of Thompson talking to other women at the barbecue.

2. Why men are “rawdogging” flights

Visually, you are kind of impaired. You only get to look at the seat in front of you, to your right or left if you're at the window. All you hear is that drumming sound of the engine. It's just white noise.

3. How to draw things using simple shapes. There’s no sense in me pulling a quote from this one—it’s mostly drawings.

4. Fifty things Sasha Chapin knows. I’m not going to pull quote this one either, since that would require me picking a favorite thing of this list of fifty.

5. You are not serious people

That day, in the lecture hall, none of us were serious. We were all doing a little pantomime on the theme of science. The speaker pretended to show us some results and the we pretended to think about them. As long as we all hit our marks and said our lines, the content didn’t matter… This was the kind of thing that eventually drove me out of academia. I love playing pretend and I love doing science, but not at the same time.

Source

Interesting posts — from ACX

Since the last time I posted a link roundup, the Substack AstralCodexTen has had an impressive number of interesting posts, so I decided to split them out into a section of their own:

1. Suffering is part of the human condition, except when it isn't

2. Explaining social movements through the game theory of desperate lifeboat survival

3. Nobody can make you feel genetically inferior without your consent

4. Book review: Treating inner demons like they’re literal

Politics & law

Source

1. The Democrats' new sunny vibes. I admit it: For the first time in a long while (and despite my disappointment in the White House’s failure to course-correct earlier), I’m feeling excited and optimistic about USA’s upcoming election. If you’re an American, make sure to confirm your voter registration!

2. Criminal law in three easy cases. This is one of my favorite links this month, a stellar and easy-to-understand intro to certain basic aspects about how law works.

3. How the SCOTUS presidential immunity decision has a gigantic loophole

4. How SCOTUS overstepped its jurisdiction

Writing

1. “The only writing advice you’ll ever need to survive eldritch horrors”. This one is absolutely short and sweet.

And then, when you finally returned to the apartment, he stared at the goo in your hair, and you realized with dismay (and maybe a little unhinged hilarity?) where he assumed the glop had come from, but before you could explain, he said he’d had enough of your lies and broke up with you.

2. “A guide on how to meet the deity of many faces”

Source

Videos

1. The spectacular failure of the Star Wars hotel

2. Kanye West was never good

3. Folding Ideas releases another video I could never have expected, and I love it. I don’t know how to describe the topic of this video in a succinct or catchy manner. Just watch it!

The Golden Gate Bridge Obsessed AI

So Anthropic released a version of their LLM Claude that is obsessed with the Golden Gate Bridge, and some of its responses are hilarious. There wasn’t any one article about this LLM that I wanted to share, so instead, here’s a selection of funny exchanges.

Cute

1. Ranking shelter dogs based on how nicely they take their treats. This is seriously the cutest.

2. Corgis skateboarding

3. Ferrets look dead when they’re asleep

4. Squirrel massage

5. Wombat boop

6. Cats sleep-talking. This is also seriously the cutest.

Archive.is links

(In case the internet archive dies)

• archive.is/l2KjZ = https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/05/27/is-love-is-blind-a-toxic-workplace

• archive.is/gWu53 = https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/conspiracy-of-silence-to-protect-joe-biden.html