We Love the Internet 2024/17: The Meta’s AI needs to speak with you edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• Meta’s AI Needs to Speak With You
• TikTok’s podcast boom might be a bust
• Meta and Open

Reference points:

• Love, Hate or Fear It, ​​TikTok Has Changed America

Longer reads:

• AI isn’t useless. But is it worth it?
• 8 Google Employees Invented Modern AI. Here’s the Inside Story
• The Man Who Killed Google Search

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• The Kids Who Hacked The CIA
• The Expert Behind Google’s Secret A.I. Writing Tool
• Snif & Snüf

Things to look at/read:

• The Hotel Guest Who Wouldn’t Leave

Animal corner:

• Never “Shush” A Husky
• My dog embarrased me in public
• nice week in poland
• rating bro’s life
• Crunchy apple

Tweets of the week:

• Told my ma I was going into the office today. She said “oh that’s nice you’ll get to see all your pals”.
• Grandpa Joe when Charlie shows him the golden ticket:
• Centaur-left
• My bladder:
• Scooby Doo telling Shaggy there’s a Ghost behind him

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• Empire of the ants: what insect supercolonies can teach us
• Jerry and Marge Go Large
• The Man Who Gossiped Too Much

sk

We Love the Internet 2024/16: The Welcome to me mountain edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• Welcome to Me Mountain
• ‘Very few have balls’: How American news lost its nerve
• Kids Media Is In Its Villain Era
• Billie Eilish Explains the ‘Huge Responsibility’ to Make New Album ‘Hit Me Hard and Soft’ Her Most Eco-Friendly Yet
• X’s New Video Strategy Is a Pivot to Nowhere

Reference points:

• Gen Z broke the marketing funnel

Longer reads:

• The Life and Death of Hollywood
• Schools Were Just Supposed To Block Porn. Instead They Sabotaged Homework and Censored Suicide Prevention Sites
• The Difficulties with Exporting Japan’s TV Dramas

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• This is a teenager. Let’s track hundreds of teens into adulthood using this huge dataset.
• This Beaver Dam is So Huge, You Can See It from Space

Things to look at/read:

• My Dates Aren’t Worth What They Cost
• William Hanson Is Emily Post for the TikTok Generation
• The Parents in My Classroom

Animal corner:

• The way he took that on his chest then thought i was gonna witness the naughtiest overhead kick there
• My daily chats with pickle
• I think she wants me to play with her bone.
• Trying to eat lunch with Bruce!
• When the thing that is supposed to make your life easier ends up being much harder than anticipated
• The most excited Baby Rolo this morning!

Tweets of the week:

• Update on the 4 lads in jeans just dropped
• Woke up to a larger than usual number of unread emails. Did I sleep through a major live site incident?
• “I hope you had the time of your life” looking ass
• the other toes that didn’t get stubbed
• When I ask for my receipt to be emailed instead of printed
• PUB. GAY PUB. THE MISSING WORD IS PUB.

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• From TED To PERNOCTATED, Scrabble’s Best Player Knows No Limits
• Park Chan-wook Gets the Picture He Wants
• The Squatters of Beverly Hills

sk

We Love the Internet 2024/15: The State of the Culture, 2024 edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• The State of the Culture, 2024
• How Vice lost the future
• ‘I’ve Never Seen It This Bad:’ Game Developers Explain the Huge Layoffs Hitting Riot, Epic, and More
• They are TV’s ghosts — networks that somehow survive with little reason to watch them anymore
• Axios Sees A.I. Coming, and Shifts Its Strategy

Reference points:

• The META Trending Trends: 2024
• The Curiosity Matrix: 9 Habits of Curious Minds

Longer reads:

• HBO Shows on Netflix. Xbox Games on PlayStation. Is Exclusivity Over?
• Is the Media Prepared for an Extinction-Level Event?
• Sure, It Won an Oscar. But Is It Criterion?
• The “Disney adult” industrial complex
• Why ‘Shogun’ (and the Rest of TV) Is Slightly Out of Focus

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• The Expert Behind Google’s Secret A.I. Writing Tool
• Why the era of cheap streaming is over
• How English Sounds to Japanese People
• I put 4 Million Suns in a Black Hole over New York
• This Invention Made Disney MILLIONS, but Then They LOST It!
• How to Create Kids Musical Videos Using AI

Things to look at/read:

• Meet the family
• No, Your Honor, You Can’t Call Yourself ‘High Justice’ on the Ballot in Chinese
• Gen Alpha says names like Amanda, Ashley, and Erica are the new ‘old people’ names
• This 1,700 Year Old Egg Never Broke—And Now It’s Further Stunning Scientists
• What to Do When You’ve “Got the Morbs”

Animal corner:

• When no one gives you belly rubs so you have to do it yourself…
• My poor baby
• His 👀 at the end
• Honestly…same.
• More OOGA

Tweets of the week:

• I think this will forever be the funniest message I have ever received
• Wait a minute
• Donald Duck when he falls in a puddle:
• RIP Joe Kinnear, the man who held one of the greatest press conferences in history

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• Why Are Pants So Big (Again)?
• The Rebirth of Ricky Martin
• Behind F1’s Velvet Curtain

sk

We Love the Internet 2024/14: The Against trendbait edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• Against trendbait
• How A.I. Chatbots Become Political
• in defense of the internet culture beat
• Stinge Watching Is the Opposite of Binge Watching
• Who makes money when AI reads the internet for us?
• What we know about the xz Utils backdoor that almost infected the world
• ‘2018 trend reports read eerily similar to the forecasts for 2024’
• Is “Social” an Enduring Category or Just a Phase?

Reference points:

• Digital 2024: Global overview report
• Global foresight 2024
• 30 Useful Principles
• 15 Games That Revolutionized Video Game Graphics
• Every Best Picture Winner Ranked by How Good a Muppets Version Would Be

Longer reads:

• How the “Frontier” Became the Slogan of Uncontrolled AI
• Everybody Hates Cocomelon
• My McLuhan lecture on enshittification
• Meet generation stay-at-home: ‘You don’t need to pay to go clubbing: you can sit at home and watch it on your phone’
• Over Three Decades, Tech Obliterated Media
• The text file that runs the internet

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• The Deadliest Infectious Disease of All Time
• This Woman Deconstructs 100-Year-Old Books To Restore Them

Things to look at/read:

• The dating app paradox: Why dating apps may be worse than ever

Animal corner:

• Cyclist Shares How To Handle Raging Street Dogs Like A Professional
• Good boys but naughty theives.
• Chimps checking out my husbands Prosthetic Leg!!!
• What is that sound??????
• The first watching it on the big screen && I think it made it too real for him

Tweets of the week:

• Matthew 19:26
• tony pulis playing four centre-backs across the backline in the 2010s
• Honestly don’t know how to earn that 5th star
• staying at an airbnb and look at the previous guys search history

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• Inventing the Perfect College Applicant For $120,000 a year
• A Teen’s Fatal Plunge Into the London Underworld
• The Ballad of Ray Suzuki: The Secret Life of Early Pitchfork and the Most Notorious Review Ever “Written”
• The Lure of Divorce

sk

We Love the Internet 2024/13: The Researching an old sitcom with AI edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• The Mr. Beastification of entertainment

Reference points:

• Researching An Old Sitcom With AI
• Generation Anxiety: smartphones have created a gen Z mental health crisis – but there are ways to fix it
• The Great American novels
• Weather forecasts have become much more accurate; we now need to make them available to everyone

Longer reads:

• The Oral History of Pitchfork
• How Quinta Brunson Hacked the Sitcom
• n+1’s top twenty in twenty years
• United States v. Apple

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• Dog poo golf
• The 15 Greatest Documentaries
• 3D Printed Full-Size Macintosh
• The 15 greatest documentaries

Things to look at/read:

• An Oral History of the Old Blue Last
• The film fans who refuse to surrender to streaming: ‘One day you’ll barter bread for our DVDs’

Animal corner:

• Alice enjoying her hole
• Manyu Spa Day!

Tweets of the week:

• Jesus to Judas at the Last Supper
• Pay day and last day at work for 10 days

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• He complained about late night noise. Then a city-wide row erupted
• Ready Player One — Elusive Brewing in Wokingham, Berkshire

sk

We Love the Internet 2024/12: The Behold, truckbot edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• Hollywood Contraction Hits Entertainment Executive Jobs: “This Is A Full-Scale Depression”
• “It’s a Silent Fire”: Decaying Digital Movie and TV Show Files Are a Hollywood Crisis

Reference points:

• What makes an album the greatest of all time?

Longer reads:

• ‘Very few have balls’: How American news lost its nerve

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• Zooming into the Vela Supernova Remnant
• Pub Choir sings ‘Creep’ (Radiohead)

Things to look at/read:

• Behold, TruckBot
• Britain’s bitter bread battle: what a £5 sourdough loaf tells us about health, wealth and class

Animal corner:

• A new series: Oliver and Eleanor morning love
• My dog’s reaction when food falls on the floor
• He really tried his best
• What must the neighbours think

Tweets of the week:

• Now the story of a wealthy family who lost everything, and the one son who had no choice but to keep them all together
• Hank Marvin says he’s not touring in London again as he’s fed up with being offered a sandwich every time he introduces himself.
• an all time “shoot your shot” moment
• Absolutely thought this was Tilda Swinton in a new role where she plays a wrestler

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• How Jesse Plemons Came to Star in, Well, Pretty Much Everything

sk

We Love the Internet 2024/11: The End of the MrBeast era edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• The end of the MrBeast era
• Tech Fanboys Have a New Hero
• Five of this year’s Pulitzer finalists are AI-powered

Reference points:

• Pessimists archive – bicycle

Longer reads:

• Can Reddit Survive Its Own IPO?

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• The Largest Cities Throughout History: Every Year
• YO WTF! There is a version of basketball where they hit each other with German Suplexes

Things to look at/read:

• Surprise: An ‘Extraterrestrial’ Gadget Was Something More Familiar

Animal corner:

• When your great dane is getting ready for a future in the circus!
• Potato got a new box….
• my poor dog this morning

Tweets of the week:

• She’s dancing like the lass in that Doncaster pub
• BEHOLD: the final boss of rail replacement buses. 10 hours and 40 minutes
• me trying the water of life in dune
• My eyes see OPPENHEIMER
• [Bene Gesserit voice]: no worries if not!
• I’m gonna tap that dragon’s ass larry
• Why does the Rock look like he’s playing Gregg Wallace in a biopic?
• Are you travelling by @SouthernRailUK this weekend? My friend Lucie desperately needs your help.

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• ‘I know someone who played noughts and crosses on one’: meet the top surgeon who burnt his initials on a patient’s liver
• The Unravelling of an Expert on Serial Killers

sk

We Love the Internet 2024/10: The Titledrops edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• TinyLetter, in memoriam

Reference points:

• Titledrops
• The 100 Fights That Shaped Action Cinema

Longer reads:

• Guest host Hank Green makes Nilay Patel explain why websites have a future

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• Dinosaurs Park
• The Visual Effects of Godzilla Minus One
• How the Dutch SOLVED Street Design

Things to look at/read:

• The 100-Year Extinction Panic Is Back, Right on Schedule
• Sad Willy Wonka and Missing Kate Middleton Took Over This Week

Animal corner:

• She did, in fact, really like the melted cheese chip
• Siganme para descubrir mas talento por alli suelto
• Every. Single. Time.
• Puppies taste sparkling water for the first time!

Tweets of the week:

• The big ballon to cement house technique. Built in one day.
• anyone know how to turn off closed captions for racing events? it’s a bit distracting
• telling my kids this was Paul Atreides
• i guess we’ll never know
• Chippy tea tonight

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• The Curmudgeon of Rivington Street
• Uncovering the higher truth of Jay Shetty

sk

We Love the Internet 2024/09: The How the media industry keeps losing the future edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• How the Media Industry Keeps Losing the Future
• How Twitch lost its way
• Do Nielsen Ratings Really Reflect What People Want From Streamers?
• Shane Smith and the Final Collapse of Vice News

Reference points:

• 50 Years Later: Remembering How the Future Looked in 1974

Longer reads:

• Coming of age at the dawn of the social internet
• Is AI the death of IP?
• The Tremendous Yet Troubled State of Gaming in 2024

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• Election guessr
• The 100 Greatest Movie Insults of All Time

Things to look at/read:

• 20 Types Of Pizza Around The World
• These Japanese beef croquettes are so popular there’s a 43-year waitlist
• Playing the Pretty Boy: Ryan Gosling, Jacob Elordi, and More Redefine the Himbo

Animal corner:

• Such a good boy
• I almost lost an eye for this pup cup
• Always orange cat
• Why sit like a cat when you can sit like a human?

Tweets of the week:

• what did they mean by this
• Me liking all the Willy Wonka and Kate Middleton tweets
• Does Wes Anderson know about this?
• One of the absolute hardest dabs in cinema history.
• when you hear the code word that was implanted during brainwashing & must kill the President
• When you successfully win a game of solitaire on Windows 98:
• Ah yes the two genders: secret service agent or vampire

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• The tyranny of the algorithm: why every coffee shop looks the same
• A Brief History of the United States’ Accents and Dialects
• The Woman Who Spent Five Hundred Days in a Cave

sk

We Love the Internet 2024/08: The Diva score edition

Part 1: For the day job

Things to think about:

• Why Americans Suddenly Stopped Hanging Out
• The Duolingo effect: How keeping the ‘streak’ is changing people’s behavior
• Instagram’s Uneasy Rise as a News Site

Reference points:

• Diva score
• The Unpredictable But Entirely Possible Events That Could Throw 2024 Into Turmoil
• ‘True Detective: Night Country’ and the Curse of the Six-Episode Season

Longer reads:

• Signs and Portents
• Do Anything, Say Anything

Part 2: For the lunch-break

Things to play with/watch/listen to:

• How Kim Jong Un Travels
• This is simply epic

Things to look at/read:

• There’s a Reason McDonald’s Coke Tastes Better Than All Others
• No One Is Safe From a Dakota Johnson Press Tour
• The Barcode Engineered Its Own Downfall

Animal corner:

• Baby Rosco trying to steal a whole bag of frozen chicken
• Everyone needs a self emptying trash can
• When you fail the start on mario kart
• ask and you shall reciece
• Another day of Orange cat activities
• the moment he realizes he was caught

Tweets of the week:

• Had the audacity to deviate from my usual black clothing and wear a grey knitted tunic and just got asked how the Crusades went.
• See you in court buddy
• This is the Hilarious Ross Matthews.
• Can you imagine being called Pontius, becoming a Pilates instructor and NOT calling your business Pontius Pilates? Inexplicable.
• Mick Harford giving Harry Styles a Trebor Extra Strong mint before kickoff is the most Kenilworth Road thing I’ve ever seen
• They should have these at the club for guys like me who don’t know how to dance good

Part 3: For the weekend

Longer reads:

• How to Build an Empire (Taylor’s Version)
• Multigenerational Living Often Makes Sense. That Doesn’t Make It Easy
• My Life Cleanse: One Month Inside L.A.’s Cult of Betterness

sk