Merriam-Webster’s 2025 Word of the Year Is ‘Slop’
Merriam-Webster crowned “slop” its 2025 Word of the Year, reflecting growing public awareness and and fatigue around low-quality, AI-generated content flooding the internet. “It’s such an illustrative word,” said Greg Barlow, Merriam-Webster’s president. “It’s part of a transformative technology, AI, and it’s something that people have found fascinating, annoying and a little bi … ⌘ Read more
Time Magazine’s ‘Person of the Year’: the Architects of AI
Time magazine used its 98th annual “Person of the Year” cover to “recognize a force that has dominated the year’s headlines, for better or for worse. For delivering the age of thinking machines, for wowing and worrying humanity, for transforming the present and transcending the possible, the Architects of AI are TIME’s 2025 Person of the Year.”
One cover illustr … ⌘ Read more
How Pokemon Cards Became a Stock Market For Millennials
The Pokemon Trading Card Game has quietly transformed into something its creators never intended: a speculative asset class dominated by adults hunting for profit while children struggle to find a single pack on store shelves. The resale market has climbed so high that the latest set, Phantasmal Flames, had a rare Charizard illustration valued at more than $800 b … ⌘ Read more
1girl ai_generated beach bikini blonde_hair cartoon dc_comics fanart female illustration quantumreel sexy sexy_girl solo sunglasses tara_markov teen_titans terra tropical vacation warner_brothers
1girl ai_generated beach bikini blonde_hair cartoon dc_comics fanart female illustration quantumreel sexy sexy_girl solo sunglasses tara_markov teen_titans terra tropical vacation warner_brothers ⌘ Read more
Trump and Infantino - too close for comfort?
Friday’s World Cup draw in Washington DC will be the latest illustration of the ever-closer relationship between US President Donald Trump and Fifa president Gianni Infantino. ⌘ Read more
Better Technology, Worse Motivation: GenAI’s Mediocrity Trap
While generative AI (GenAI) promises productive efficiency, it can paradoxically lead to lower-quality work. We conducted an experiment with professional illustrators and found that AI assistance flattens the quality curve—it accelerates initial gains but sharply diminishes the returns on sustained effort. Faced with this, a significant number of professionals made a strategic choice: they sacrificed the final quality to save time.
From http://www.jin-li.org/uploads/1/1/4/5/114595093/ai_and_motivation.pdf
I haven’t read this and can’t vouch for it; seems vaguely AI-boostery. Still, the conclusions are interesting. This seems to be the picture that is emerging about generative AI generally: most people don’t like it and find that degrades the quality of work. Coders seem to like it and think that it helps them, but in fact it makes the slower, less productive, and more bug prone.
By all measures it’s a bad technology. We should just be honest about it. There is no need to make excuses for multi-trillion-dollar corporations.
Affinity is a Powerful Free Photoshop Alternative for Mac (and Windows)
Affinity is a powerful creative application that offers photo and image editing capabilities, vector design, and page layout features, all in a single app, and feature-wise it’s easily able to compete with the likes of Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator. But unlike Photoshop or Illustrator, Affinity is now completely free – though advanced features like AI … [Read More](https://osxdaily.com/2025/11/19/affinity … ⌘ Read more
↳
In-reply-to
»
For the innocent bystanders (because I know that I won’t change @bender’s opinion):
⤋ Read More
@bender@twtxt.net Thanks for this illustration, it completely “misunderstood” everything I wrote and confidently spat out garbage. 👌
Americans Brace for Food Stamps to Run Out: ‘The Greatest Hunger Catastrophe Since the Great Depression’
Eric Berger, Reporter - rsn.org | The Guardian (U.K.)
_Stephan: Part of America’s transition from a democratic republic to an authoritarian neo-medieval society, is that just as was the case in the 14th century, the rich and powerful care nothing for the welllbeing of the peasants. Nothing illustrates this more cle … ⌘ Read more
RFK Jr to urge Americans to eat more saturated fats, alarming health experts
Hannah Harris Green, Contributing Writer - The Guardian (U.K.)
_Stephan: No one illustrates the incompetence of the Trump administration than Robert Kennedy, Jr, Secretary of Health and Human Services. I know children who would be more competent in that position than Kennedy, whose only qualification seems to be his surname and his submissive loyalty to his king. Please … ⌘ Read more
Donald Trump shares AI video of himself bombing ‘No Kings’ protesters with manure
JADA BAS, Trainee Reporter - Daily Mail (U.K.)
_Stephan: Just how mentally sick and contemptuous of Americans who don’t support him, dictator Trump is can, perhaps, best be illustrated by the video of himself wearing a crown, flying as a fighter pilot, and dropping faeces on “No Kings” demonstrators. He, himself, actually posted this video. I think it is also i … ⌘ Read more
Greta Thunberg and other Global Sumud Flotilla activists used an image of Israeli hostage Evyatar David to illustrate the suffering of Palestinian prisoners incarcerated in Israel. ⌘ Read more
@zvava@twtxt.net Hahaha, I love it! This illustrates the contradiction very well.
The last six months in LLMs, illustrated by pelicans on bicycles
Article URL: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jun/6/six-months-in-llms/
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44215352
Points: 506
# Comments: 150 ⌘ Read more
↳
In-reply-to
»
new icon! art is by rian gonzales, one of my fave comic artists :)
⤋ Read More
@bender@twtxt.net SUPER talented like the way she does her illustrations is crazy!!!
A visual flow chart diagram that illustrates how two different but very related concepts can lead to system accidents 👌 
- asynchronous evolution
- drift into failure
10 Great Comic Book Castings Wasted on Bad Scripts
Casting comic book characters onto the big (or small) screen is tricky. Unlike regular novels, these superpowered stories come with vivid illustrations of every plot beat. As such, fans have clear pictures of how the characters should look and act. Maybe that’s why they scrutinize these adaptations so closely. It’s painfully apparent when the wrong […]
The post [10 Great Comic Book Castings Wasted on Bad Scripts](https://listverse … ⌘ Read more
[ANN] Launching a new design initiative for Monero
The dream is to bring designers, developers, and creatives together to shape the future of Monero’s ecosystem and I’d love for others to jump in! To build resources and help craft great design. If you’re a designer, developer, illustrator, or just someone passionate about Monero and good design sensibility reach out. Let’s build together!
Links:
Monero Observer Artistic Saturday Top 5 - Week 5, 2025
Previous Artistic Saturday weekly reports can be found in the [art] 1 section.
 https://github.com/historicalsource/journey
The Illustrated Word2vec “ Jay Alammar ” Visualizing machine learning one concept at a time https://jalammar.github.io/illustrated-word2vec/
3 of 3 - A Thousand Plateaus by Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari - Illustrated Audiobook - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ws2b5aOhrdA
2 - A Thousand Plateaus by Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari - Illustrated Audiobook - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7ZQ5HRntHo
1 - A Thousand Plateaus by Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari - Illustrated Audiobook - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XYc2scuJrI
Lovecraft is illustrative of the first half of the 20th century because he represents several seemingly mutually exclusive extremes. Recommend reading Sterling’s Pirate Utopia & Stranger Than We Can Imagine together, then Dreams in the Witch House
Sublime Pulp: An Interview with Illustrator Les Edwards https://wearethemutants.com/2016/10/31/sublime-pulp-an-interview-with-illustrator-les-edwards/
Mathematical Illustrations http://www.math.ubc.ca/~cass/graphics/manual/
Old Book Illustrations: Free Archive Lets You Download Beautiful Images From the Golden Age of Book Illustration | Open Culture http://www.openculture.com/2015/12/old-book-illustrations.html
The Best Demon Illustrations of All Time - Atlas Obscura http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/demons-illustrations-dictionnaire-infernal?utm_source=Atlas+Obscura+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=149faf3a75-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_07_12&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f36db9c480-149faf3a75-63252673&ct=t(Newsletter_7_12_2017)&mc_cid=149faf3a75&mc_eid=fb147c2f0d