Then I’m going down the steps, and my wife calls up, “Where are you going?” I say, “Well, I’m going to go buy an envelope.” And she says, “You’re not a poor man. Why don’t you buy a thousand envelopes? They’ll deliver them, and you can put them in a closet.” And I say, “Hush.” So I go down the steps here, and I go out to this newsstand across the street where they sell magazines and lottery tickets and stationery. I have to get in line because there are people buying candy and all that sort of thing, and I talk to them. The woman behind the counter has a jewel between her eyes, and when it’s my turn, I ask her if there have been any big winners lately. I get my envelope and seal it up and go to the postal convenience center down the block at the corner of 47th Street and 2nd Avenue, where I’m secretly in love with the woman behind the counter. I keep absolutely poker-faced; I never let her know how I feel about her. One time I had my pocket picked in there and got to meet a cop and tell him about it. Anyway, I address the envelope to Carol in Woodstock. I stamp the envelope and mail it in a mailbox in front of the post office, and I go home. And I’ve had a hell of a good time. And I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you any different.
Electronic communities build nothing. You wind up with nothing. We’re dancing animals. How beautiful it is to get up and go do something. - Kurt Vonnegut
People: Thucydides trap. Internet walks. and communities. Paradox of choice. The end of paperback? Phone scams. Gemöks. Social fitness and afterlife marriages. Prisons to flats. AuDHD. Britons and books.
Flemish (politician) scrollers.
Denmark’s end of letters?WTF: Fake archeology of atlantis? And a fake woolly-mouse? Histories of fonts. DOGE an children databases.
For the fun : using AI to hack the matrix (game).Security: US exercises in eu to stop, as well as support to F16. An ESP32 based backdoor. Devs and killswitches. Doge vs efficiency.
Planet: Peas sour beers. Fungi battery.
Tech: BlueGhost. Firedome. Drone to energy. Gene-edited pets. Rotting DVDs. Eutelsat does well. Scared of Thiel? Aspirin and cancer.
Business: Uber for goons. Alternative model for USAID? Decentralized workforce. Crayola retired colors.
Futures: Future of Labs (PDF), and Regenerative design. Futures timelines. Megatrends 2025 (PDF).
AI: AI productivity paradox. AI for future cities (and PDF). AI rating political views in newspaper. Detecting old civilisation vestiges. Deepseek everywhere. AI as tech bribery. Human-centered in AEC.
US using AI to identify prohamas students, to deport.
The Colors of Connection
Sarah had always been a firm believer in the importance of color—not just any color, but *the right* colors. Dandelion yellow, in particular, had captured her heart ever since Crayola announced its revival^1. Every week, she would note the excitement among her friends in their shared community—a digital space that flourished despite the corporate saturation of the web. It was a cozy collective of DIY projects and emotional memes, a vibrant counter-narrative to a digital world filled with ads and algorithms^2.
As the sun peeked through the curtains, a notification buzzed on her phone. “Privacy app now available!” her friend’s message read, followed by a link to *Protector*, an app that offered personal safety guards on demand. “Because Uber wasn’t enough; now, we can hire *protection* for our overpriced lattes,” Sarah muttered sarcastically. She quickly scrolled past it—what a time to be alive^3. Just two years ago, she had sat in a dilapidated café, discussing the idea of human connections after the isolating bow of the pandemic, where the Surgeon General declared loneliness a health crisis^4.
But lo and behold, another crisis was brewing—one of ecological significance, or so the "Regenerative Design" report argued. Humans had pushed the planet too far, and now it was time to rethink city designs for a more sustainable ecosystem^5. She found the irony delectable—an online community bubbling with creativity while the real world required us to reconsider our relationships—not only with each other but with nature itself.
“Hey, remember when we thought digital life would help lessen our environmental impact?” she texted her friend, Madru, who had recently become an outspoken advocate for ecological reform. As they chatted, their conversation floated towards AI, which had, perhaps ironically, led to both breakthroughs and setbacks. From revealing ancient civilizations hidden beneath the sands of the Dubain desert to dissecting how some misguided corporate strategies could undermine even the best intentions of third-party AIs in journalism^6, the pendulum swung precariously between promise and chaos.
The chatter turned to the rising “decisions fatigue,” where options seemed limitless but paralyzed the mind like a thousand-choice jam buffet^7. “We have an abundance of everything except meaningful connections,” Madru remarked. “It’s easy to forget how enriching simple conversations can be.”
This was precisely where Sarah found both solace and complexity—she started to curate her crayon collection enthusiastically, gathering vibrant colors like an archaeologist digging through time (albeit through a more tactile medium)^8. In search of comfort and creativity, she also casually upcycled old crayons into candles, noting how even old shades held memories of vibrant imagination.
Yet as social platforms pivoted towards promoting the *detached* over the *tactile*, she felt an undercurrent of dread. What if they sourced their community safety tactics from cold algorithms, risking the warmth of genuine human connection for mere statistics? It was a thought that danced at the edge of her mind, begging the question—*could technology designed for protection bait a cost too dear to pay?*
As she prepared to leave her apartment and embrace the sunlight, she couldn’t help but smile at the world ahead. For every byte traded in, perhaps there was a sketch worth making—a conscious call to action hidden in the shade of a retro crayon box, where youth and yellows bloomed anew. "Days like these," she mused with a wink, "are why we still need to connect the dots.”
*Maybe, just maybe, the world was still blossoming.*