Thought Shrapnel

Thought Shrapnel is going into low-power mode for a few weeks over the summer. Instead of posting nothing at all, I’ve decided to continue to share 10 things each week — but in a single post, with minimal commentary ☀️

• Text therapy: study finds couples who use emojis in text messages feel closer (The Guardian) — Makes sense to me! I went to a presentation once that called emoji the most significant visual language since hieroglyphics.
• On July 7, Gemini AI will access your WhatsApp and more. Learn how to disable it on Android. (Tuta) — I use AI on a regular basis, but I don’t want Google’s generative AI playing fast-and-loose with all of my data, thank you very much.
• AI spots deadly heart risk most doctors can’t see (ScienceDaily) — It looks like a combination of AI and human oversight of things like scan results is likely to be game-changing.
• Flounder Mode (Colossus Review) — I love this piece on Kevin Kelly, especially the parts about “illegible career paths” and having a “good day, most days”. Refreshing.
• Changing Assessment: How to Design Curriculum for Human Flourishing (Conrad Hughes) — This 120-page, CC-licensed book looks great and exactly what we need to redesign assessment in the age of AI.
• Ghost and WordPress announce deeper social web collaboration (PPC Land) — Long-form content on the Fediverse is becoming more popular. See also this announcement from Bonfire.
• Writing Code Was Never The Bottleneck (ordep.dev) — This post is about code, but the same is true for anything: producing content isn’t the bottleneck, it’s the “clear thinking, careful review, and thoughtful design” that takes time.
• Millions of websites to get ‘game-changing’ AI bot blocker (BBC News) — There’s an element of closing door after the horse has bolted to this, but Cloudflare is a major player and their “Pay Per Crawl” system could change things.
• Project Vend: Can Claude run a small shop? (And why does that matter?) (Anthropic) — Laughable. Read in conjunction with this and this.
• Your Voice, Your World, Your Connections — The Reclaim Open 2025 conference happens online from 4-6 November, with submissions (in the form of a blog post) due by August 30th. (Side note: I always love see illustrations by Bryan Mathers on Reclaim sites, having introduced him to Jim Groom almost a decade ago around a table in Barcelona which also included Audrey Watters. Fun times.)

👋 That’s it! Have a good week. I’m still around if you comment / hit reply on this, so let me know what resonates.

– Doug