Erin Carson

What jarred pasta sauce can teach us about AI Is skills atrophy the price of convenience?

One of my favorite topics is mid-century American cooking. You know, those wild lime gelatin molds. It was a time when industrialization hit home cooking and changed how we eat forever. For my newsletter, I wrote about how that shift has a lot in common with AI.

open.substack.com/pub/silicons...

They cropped Fei-Fei Li.

Apple Thinks Orange Is the New Black. It Isn't Commentary: Apple picked a bold color for the iPhone 17 Pro and it's U-G-L-Y.

yeah that orange iPhone 17 Pro is nasty

Can’t stop the slop AI slop is ruining the casual internet – it’s also warping how we accept reality.

I’ve been having a lot of fun working on my newsletter, Silicon Sea. This month, I wrote about AI slop and figured out what else to say about it other than “I hate it.”

W/ thanks to @pbooth81.bsky.social for the interview!

open.substack.com/pub/silicons...

Thanks for the plug!

The shopping videos triggering your caveman instincts Stop telling me to RUN to Costco.

Wrote a piece for my newsletter, Silicon Sea, about all those TikTok videos telling you to RUN to Target. Or Costco. Or wherever. siliconsea.substack.com/p/the-shoppi...

Two shirts seen at the airport:

“I don’t care. Work harder!”

“I’m trying.”

What a fever dream

before tiktok,
before bluesky,
before twitter,
before meta,
before it all,
there were sewers.

after all, there will be sewers.

With thanks to @jamesncohen.com for being my first Silicon Sea interview

When I started working on this in early December, I didn’t think TikTok was going to get vaporized. It was a hypothetical, thinking about what would happen if a major social platform went down. But here we are.

Watching the Ruins of Social Media On the eve of the TikTok ban, thoughts on how social media becomes a ghost town.

Wrote a piece for my newsletter, Silicon Sea, about watching social media turn to ruins. siliconsea.substack.com/p/watching-t...

First post goes out tomorrow morning!

Silicon Sea | Substack Tech and culture commentary. Click to read Silicon Sea, a Substack publication.

I was lucky enough to cover the intersection of tech/science/the internet and the way we live our lives for years. There’s so much more to say, so I’m launching a tech culture commentary newsletter. It’s free. Monthly. Intro send slated for the end of the week. siliconsea.substack.com

Genuinely, the best source of weather info in Nashville.

This was one of my favorite things published on the internet period this year.

The bleeding edge humor of me asking, “Do you take Apple Pay?” at the Apple Store yesterday.

Worth the read.

There’s a 26-volume, 54-pound copy of the Warren Commission Report on this list, which is McSweeney’s level unhinged and I love it.

1/ Here’s a story about how journalism works.

Spoiler Alert: This is how we decide *not* to publish.

We were recently looking at Pete Hegseth’s different statements over the years about West Point, where he has said he was admitted.

First stop: West Point.

It'll start telling you to put glue on dishes you would never even dream of

This is like getting a Wrapped from your dentist

This is the worst thing I’ve ever heard.

Contains such blazing AI-driven insight as “yeah, that’s a great track.”

The simmering discontent over Spotify Wrapped not being out yet is the only online outrage I can accept.

Also, another wrinkle in trying to explain to students how to responsibly use and cite platforms like ChatGPT if the citations are *likely* wrong

How ChatGPT Search (Mis)represents Publisher Content ChatGPT search—which is positioned as a competitor to search engines like Google and Bing—launched with a press release from OpenAI touting claims that the company had “collaborated extensively with t...

“Our tests found that no publisher—regardless of degree of affiliation with OpenAI—was spared inaccurate representations of its content in ChatGPT.”

www.cjr.org/tow_center/h... via @columjournreview.bsky.social

Come back: Blogs
Go away: Poor social skills

“Whether children find ways to get past the restrictions is beside the point, [Prime Minister] Albanese said.”

… is it?

Is this… my new favorite word?