Multiplanetary humans, industrial TikTok, synthetic runoff
Why Elon Musk’s Mars dreams aren’t coming true anytime soon, and some soothing video scrolls for the stressed
I’ve just finished reading A City on Mars by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith. In summary, if you have any abiding dreams about Elon Musk leading our glorious civilisation to Mars, this book will crush them.
The Weinersmiths together spent years researching the pros and cons, and the possibilities and impossibilities, of settlements on other planets. And they make it very clear there’s a huge amount of questions that aren’t being addressed by founders and their big space cocks rockets – including, but not limited to: medicine, reproduction, law, ecology, economics, sociology and warfare. So, you know, just the small things.
Remember all that next time SpaceX posts tweets about Mars being “the best destination to begin making life multiplanetary”. Or when startups decide what space really needs is “more habitable space”. Or when brands like Volvo start talking about introducing a “lunar highway code”.
Other things I read and saw this week
🌏 The Browser Company has poached a major Apple designer away from Safari. Their Arc browser is basically the only web browser worth bothering with.
☕ Why not make a coffee robot? And then, why not make that coffee robot capable of taking the lift?
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👗 When I’m feeling stressed, I like to watch TikToks by Constant Practice - a Virginia-based clothes shop that posts videos of immensely functional vintage fashion, narrated in a flat monotone.
🏭 Industrial China TikTok also comes highly recommended, particularly after this piece explaining how some of these manufacturers have, very innocently and accidentally, become memes.
💡 The past was dark, literally. I’d never given much thought to what a major impact light had on civilization until reading this. Plus there’s the below super metal advert for whale lard and oil.
🥀 Lots of people are talking about how the internet might not be big enough to serve our hungry AI masters – or how, in actual fact, the internet is dead. This is a great long-read that touches on all of that, with a stop in a weird corner of YouTube that’s full of what Erik Hoel calls “synthetic runoff” – AI-generated trash aimed at children.
🤖 Archetype is training its AI on the real world, instead of huge scads of text data.
📚 If you’re Meta you forget all that, and go straight to buying up the back catalogue of one of the biggest and most significant publishers in the world. I was testing out Claude the other day and it recounted the storyline and style of writing of Mark Z Danielewski’s House of Leaves in deep and intimate detail, and then later lied and said it knew nothing about it.
🦨 Back in the realm of things we can see (and smell), Louis Vuitton produced this quite incredible book of perfume. It’s the small plates of the fragrance world.
🏎️ If I was a designer, there’s nothing I’d like more than to be designing THE NEXT MOON BUGGY.
🚲 In the world of business, Peloton accidentally built a media company – and it’s only adding to their troubles.
🧋 Haeckels has launched “the future of skincare”: liquid supplements including beetroot probiotic, seaweed broth and seaweed tea. “Consumption is vandalism” reads the LinkedIn bio of Haeckels founder Dom Bridges who, in 2022, oversaw £5m in revenue according to Business of Fashion.
🐙 And finally, a short but sweet take on why Instagram (and plenty of other apps) need to stop trying to be all things to all people.