Stained-Glass Smash
Tiffany Window Shatters Records as Most Expensive Ever Sold
The sale of the stained-glass piece has cemented the 20th-century designer’s place in the ‘pantheon of iconic artists.’
An impressionistic stained-glass window by Tiffany Studios sold at Sotheby’s New York on November 18 for $12.4 million, making it the most valuable work made by the early 20th-century decorative arts company ever sold at auction.
Commissioned in 1913 as a window for the First Baptist Church in Canton, Ohio, the Danner Memorial Window (named for John and Terressa Danner, who were founding members of the church) easily passed its presale estimate of $5 million and $7 million. The previous record for a Tiffany Studios work was the $3.7 million paid for a dandelion lamp at Rago Auctions in 2021.
Crop Art
A Montana Wheat Field—Planted as Conceptual Art—Becomes Community Sustenance
Unlike any other wheat field in the state, a new work by Agnes Denes transforms the crop into an ephemeral installation artwork that invites community engagement.
While wheat fields are a common sight in Montana, this past year a new type of wheat field took root in the city of Bozeman, one that was agricultural—and also an artwork. Though not wholly dissimilar from a standard crop, the stretches of Bobcat (a variety of hard red winter wheat) were part of a new work by conceptual artist Agnes Denes, Wheatfield – An Inspiration (2024).
Presented by Tinworks, a new non-profit art space in Bozeman with a mission centered on bridging the gap between the American West and contemporary art, Wheatfield – An Inspiration reimagines Denes’ most well-known work, Wheatfield – A Confrontation (1982), which saw her plant a two-acre wheat field on Manhattan’s southernmost point. Here, positioned on some of the world’s most prime real estate, the work invited reflection on societal systems of value, priorities, and human needs. Just over 40 years later, Denes continues these lines of inquiry.
Dorothy
Dorothy Parker and the Art of the Literary Takedown
Her reviews are not contemptuous, a common pitfall for her imitators. They are simply unbridled in their dislike.
When I think of Dorothy Parker’s hangovers, and I do, the image that comes to mind is that of the U.S.S. Arizona. A sunken battleship resting at the bottom of Pearl Harbor, the Arizona is slowly leaking oil as you read this. The ship loaded up on 1.5 million gallons of fuel on December 6, 1941, and has approximately half a million gallons to go. Parker drank with such consistency and complaint that I suspect her headache is proceeding on a similar schedule, throbbing from beyond the grave, ever so slightly, to this day. References to alcohol are rife in her poems (the famous quatrain “after three I’m under the table / after four I’m under my host” may be apocryphal but it’s also emblematic). But it is in her weekly books column for The New Yorker, “Constant Reader,” comprised of thirty-four entries between 1927 and 1928, that one senses that she is this close to asking the reader for an aspirin.
Some of this is the brilliantly honed shtick of a standup comedian. Some of it is Parker being an alcoholic. But some of those allusions to unproductive mornings and squinting unpreparedness belie an unease with the endeavor of book reviewing itself. She writes, at times, as if the column were happening to her: “This thing is getting me. I should have stopped before this and gone back to my job of cleaning out ferry boats.” Or, more bluntly: “Here it is high noon, and this piece should have been finished last Friday. I’ve been putting it off like a visit to my aunt.” Years later, when given the opportunity to select her own greatest hits for a Viking compendium, she included precisely none of these reviews.
Life Bomb
A giant meteorite boiled the oceans 3.2 billion years ago. Scientists say it was a ‘fertilizer bomb’ for life
A massive space rock, estimated to be the size of four Mount Everests, slammed into Earth more than 3 billion years ago — and the impact could have been unexpectedly beneficial for the earliest forms of life on our planet, according to new research.
Typically, when a large space rock crashes into Earth, the impacts are associated with catastrophic devastation, as in the case of the demise of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago, when a roughly 6.2-mile-wide (10-kilometer) asteroid crashed off the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula in what’s now Mexico.
But Earth was young and a very different place when the S2 meteorite, estimated to have 50 to 200 times more mass than the dinosaur extinction-triggering Chicxulub asteroid, collided with the planet 3.26 billion years ago, according to Nadja Drabon, assistant professor of Earth and planetary sciences at Harvard University.
The Voices
40% of schizophrenia patients hear voices – New study reveals why
Reviewed by Steve Fink
SHANGHAI — In the silent world of thought, some hear voices. Scientists have long puzzled over the origins of auditory hallucinations, a symptom that affects many with schizophrenia. A recent study from researchers in China and the United States may have cracked a crucial part of this longstanding enigma, potentially paving the way for better treatments and understanding of this often-misunderstood condition.
Study authors conclude that auditory hallucinations may result from a combination of two distinct impairments in the brain’s ability to process and predict sensory information. Their findings, published in the journal PLOS Biology, suggest that these hallucinations arise from a complex interplay between motor and sensory systems in the brain rather than simply being a product of overactive imagination or sensory processing gone awry.
It’s Not Really There
MAN SPOTS SECRET US MILITARY SPACECRAFT WITH AMATEUR TELESCOPE
Just six weeks after spotting a secret Chinese spaceplane, an amateur astronomer in Austria is back at it again.
In an interview with Space.com, sky watcher Felix Schöfbänker described how he came to capture imagery of Pentagon craft that nobody knows much about.
Using a 14-inch Dobsonian telescope that’s optimized to track satellites, the Austrian astrophotographer cross-referenced the images he captured with specs from various spy satellites launched by the Pentagon.
Uranus Lives
New study on moons of Uranus raises chance of life
by Pallab Ghosh
The planet Uranus and its five biggest moons may not be the dead sterile worlds that scientists have long thought.
Instead, they may have oceans, and the moons may even be capable of supporting life, scientists say.
Much of what we know about them was gathered by Nasa’s Voyager 2 spacecraft which visited nearly 40 years ago.
But a new analysis shows that Voyager’s visit coincided with a powerful solar storm, which led to a misleading idea of what the Uranian system is really like.
Uranus is a beautiful, icy ringed world in the outer reaches of our solar system. It is among the coldest of all the planets. It is also tilted on its side compared to all the other worlds – as if it had been knocked over – making it arguably the weirdest.
Hero Monkeys
Gang of hero monkeys fight off sex fiend who was about to rape girl, 6, after he lured her into abandoned building
The troop of monkeys reportedly ‘rushed’ at the man, saving the young girl
by Annabel Bate, Foreign News Reporter
A GANG of hero monkeys reportedly fought off a man who was about to rape a six-year-old girl after luring her into an abandoned building.
The girl’s relieved father said his daughter “would be dead now if they had not intervened.”
The man lured the girl into an abandoned house in Baghpat, near New Delhi, India on the weekend, according to local media.
The young girl’s parents claim the man took off her clothes and attempted to rape her but was scared off when a troop of monkeys rushed at him, it’s reported.
When the terrified six-year-old returned home, she told her parents that monkeys had “saved her” from the alleged attempted assault, Times of India claim.
Healing Girl Pop
Utilizing the Power of Neuroscience, Isabella Kensington May Have Cracked the Code Between Music and Healing
We spent some time in the rising singer’s NYC’s East Village neighborhood to learn more about the science behind 8D audio and her siren-esque “healing girl pop”
Written by Margaret Farrell
Isabella Kensington appreciates the science of a good, sad pop song—neuroscience, specifically.
I meet the British-American singer-songwriter at East Village institution Veselka, the legendary Ukrainian restaurant that’s not far from where she’s completing her studies at NYU’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music. She sits across from me wearing a jean jacket, summery magenta dress, and a gold necklace that reads “bissou,” and only orders a passionately red raspberry iced tea. She sparingly sips her drink as she describes the music she writes—crystalline, diaristic songs she’s dubbed as “healing girl pop.” Which, from her perspective, is a reframing of the sad girl pop genre led by Billie Eilish, Gracie Abrams, and Olivia Rodrigo.
A few years ago, Kensington had a brush with TikTok virality after posting a cover of Daisy the Great’s “The Record Player Song.” Since then, she’s grown her TikTok following to over a million by turning her page into a safe, healing space that showcases her cherubic tones: “I do panning videos that are more centered and targeted towards the neurodivergent community.” Across her profile, there are covers of Swift, Sabrina Carpenter, Dua Lipa, and Charli XCX. If you have headphones on or turn your phone sideways, you can hear her silvery vocals oscillate as if they’re bouncing off the walls. It’s called 8D audio, which stimulates both the right and left side of the brain. The bilateral stimulation can create a sense of balance, a clearheadedness, relaxation, or mental focus.
Ai-Da $180k
Creepy ‘AI God’ art painted by humanoid robot could fetch up to $180,000 in ‘first of its kind’ auction
Watch Ai-Da introduce itself in the video below.
by Millie Turner, Senior Technology & Science Reporter
A HUMANOID robot that uses AI algorithms, cameras and metal arms to paint is having artwork sold by a world renowned auction house.
Ai-Da, as the robot is known, will be the first robot to have its artwork sold at Sotheby’s.
The auction for an abstract painting of Alan Turing, titled ‘AI God’, begins today, and is expected to fetch somewhere between $120,000 and $180,000.
The proceeds will go toward Ai-Da’s continued development.
“I am intrigued to see my art, AI God, at Sotheby’s,” Ai-Da said in a statement.
“My artwork uses a fractured and multilayered approach, and this shows the deeper emotional and intellectual layers of Alan Turing himself.”
Dark Ages 2.0
We’re about to enter the Digital Dark Ages
Online archives are vanishing — and they’re taking our history with them.
by Adam Rogers
The long-promised digital apocalypse has finally arrived, and it was heralded by a blog post.
Published on July 18, the post’s headline sounded pretty arcane. “Google URL Shortener links will no longer be available,” it declared. I know, I know — not exactly an attack of alien zombies from the death dimension. But the news nevertheless freaked me out. It means another swath of the web is about to disappear.
Here’s the gist: Google used to have an online service that generated pithy, user-friendly versions of long, commercially unwieldy uniform resource locators — the key addresses that identify everything on the web. Shorter URLs are easier to track and better for online commerce. Google stopped shortening addresses back in 2019, but the concise URLs it had already created kept right on doing their job. Click on one and it would take you to the right webpage, the way it’s supposed to.
No more. In the blog post, Google announced that as of next year, all of the existingshortened URLs are getting turned off. Poof. And on the web, if your URL doesn’t work, you might as well not exist. You are unreachable. Without laborious renaming, everything behind those links — billions of them, a decade of digital content — will become inaccessible. Gone. Ask not for whom the 404 message tolls.
Yankees’ Fans Rule!
The Genesis of Warhol’s Sex
Curator Greg Pierce On How the Museum of Sex’s Warhol Show Came to Be
“Warhol was a radical Queer filmmaker because he didn’t pretend to be anyone but who he was, even when he was playing the part of the great pretender.”
Andy Warhol’s obsession with celebrity was one of the defining aspects of his career, and analyses of that career, not to mention of his life, often fixate on it—he gets blamed for everything from our own celebrity obsessions to the narcissism that has become the ugly hallmark of the social media age. What’s lost in that narrative is any attention that might otherwise be paid to his overtly political work and experiments in abstraction (his Piss, Oxidation and Cum series works were both more boring and more beautiful than you might imagine), not to mention any exploration into the person, particularly the queer person, behind the prints and the persona.
In his quest to edge as close as possible to fame and glamor, Warhol surrounded himself with celebrities and documented the comings and goings of The Factory crowd in photos and film. His portrait series, in particular, portrayed the faces of celebrity, capturing the vulnerability beneath fame’s facade. But what lurked behind his facade? “Looking at Andy Looking,” which opened at New York’s Museum of Sex during Armory Week, offers some clue. Organized by the museum in partnership with The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, it considers both voyeuristic elements of Warhol’s work and the complexities of identity and self-perception that can be gleaned therefrom.
Albert Serra is “balls”
The Loneliness of the Bullfighter
On ‘Afternoons of Solitude’
The most frequently used word in the new film by director Albert Serra is “balls,” but almost as frequently used is “truth.” Following the killing of a bull in which the subject of the film, the young Peruvian bullfighter Andrés Roca Rey, took near-insane risks with his own life, a member of his team approaches to embrace him. As the crowd roars in the background, we hear the teammate shout with emotion to Roca Rey, “La vida no vale nada! La vida no vale nada! Nada! Que cojones tienes!”
I found this moment a perfect encapsulation of the world of bullfighting as I have come to understand it: unique masculine intimacy; admiration for suicidal risk and disregard for life itself; and a preoccupation with balls. I, myself, have heard men in the stands at bullfights point to bullfighters in the ring and remark approvingly, “This guy wants to die!” to express their satisfaction many times–but not as many times as I’ve heard them talk about cojones.
Later, in the van which transports the bullfighter and his team–his cuadrilla–to their respective hotels, the cuadrilla continually repeats to Roca Rey that he showed “truth” in the ring and killed the bull “truly.” It’s a word we will hear again and again–but not as many times as we will hear cojones.
The film in question is Afternoons of Solitude, a documentary directed by Catalan director Albert Serra. Having previously won prizes at Locarno and Cannes for his fictional films, Serra has now won the Golden Shell, the top award at the San Sebastián film festival for his first documentary.
Chopsticks
Europa Live
Can an icy Jupiter moon sustain life? NASA’s biggest space probe will investigate.
Story by Joel Achenbach, William Neff, Leslie Shapiro
Europa, one of the four large moons of Jupiter first seen by Galileo 414 years ago, may have a deep, salty, global ocean hidden beneath a thick crust of ice. Where there is water, there might be life. In an ambitious $5 billion mission decades in the making, NASA is poised to send a jumbo robotic probe called the Europa Clipper to see if the icy moon has the key characteristics of a habitable world.
“This is a huge deal,” said Robert Pappalardo, the project scientist for the Europa Clipper at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
NASA officials had hoped to launch the spacecraft Thursday on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center. But Hurricane Milton — the eye of which passed directly over Cape Canaveral — put everything on hold. Friday night, NASA said the launch window will open Monday. It extends to Nov. 6.
Life beyond Earth is among the greatest unknowns in science. Finding the first confirmed example of alien life has been a goal of NASA for decades. The scientific community has narrowed its focus to a few enticing targets, and at or very near the top of the list is this strange moon that looks like nothing else in the solar system.
Pete Rose Gone
Cincinnati Reds legend Pete Rose dies at age 83
By: Taylor Weiter
CINCINNATI — Reds legend Pete Rose has died. The Cincinnati native who became Major League Baseball’s hit king was 83.
The 1960 Western Hills High School alum signed a professional contract with the Reds after graduation. Once he made it to the big leagues, Rose immediately made an impact for Cincinnati, batting .273 and winning National League Rookie of the Year.
A key part of the Big Red Machine and “The Great Eight,” Rose was National League MVP and World Series MVP while helping lead Cincinnati to two World Series titles.
Rose then signed with the Phillies in 1979. At the time of the signing, he was the highest-paid athlete in team sports. One year later, he won his third World Series title. He was in Philadelphia until the 1984 season when he was granted a release and signed a one-year contract with the Montreal Expos. In August 1984, he was traded back to Cincinnati.
Kris Kristofferson Gone
Kris Kristofferson Dies: Legendary Country Singer-Songwriter And ‘A Star Is Born’ Golden Globe Winner Was 88
Kris Kristofferson, a country singer-songwriter who revolutionized the genre and Golden Globe-winning actor who starred opposite Barbra Streisand in the 1976 A Star Is Born, has died at 88, surrounded by family in his home in Maui, Hawaii.
As a prolific country music artist, Kristofferson racked up 13 Grammy nominations throughout his career, with three wins including for Best Country Song for the ballad “Help Me Make It Through The Night” off of his 1970 album Kristofferson. In 1984, he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song Score for Songwriter alongside Willie Nelson, with whom he also co-starred in the music drama. “Me and Bobby McGee,” which he penned in 1969 and which Roger Miller first recorded, was eventually performed as a cover by Janis Joplin, and its posthumous release in 1971 landed it atop the Billboard 100 chart.
Portraying John Norman Howard in the heart-wrenching 1976 romantic drama opposite Streisand’s Esther Hoffman led him to a Golden Globe win for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy the following year.
Ive On The Move
After Apple, Jony Ive Is Building an Empire of His Own
by Tripp Mickle
Five years to the week after he walked away from the top job designing the iPhone, Jony Ive leaned over a hulking model of a San Francisco city block. The dozen buildings, with each brick carved to scale in Alder wood, had become a prototype for his future.
“We’re standing right now, here,” Mr. Ive said, pointing with his black, Maison Bonnet reading glasses at a two-story, 115-year-old building in Jackson Square, a Gold Rush Era neighborhood wedged between San Francisco’s Chinatown and Financial District. “We bought this building first, but then we noticed that it had access to this huge volume in the center.”
Starlink Messin’ Stuff Up
Starlink is increasingly interfering with astronomy, scientists say
by Paige Bruton
An international team of astronomers reported in a study Wednesday that the second generation model of Starlink satellites is hampering radio astronomy, which is essential for the study of the non-visible universe, like black holes, for example. The satellites, which are part of SpaceX’s internet constellation, were found to have interference 32 times stronger than the first generation.
The number of satellites in orbit around Earth is rapidly increasing, with some 100,000 expected to be in place by 2030. And as their numbers grow, so does the difficulty of observing the universe from Earth. In some cases, satellites, such as those of Texas company AST Spacemobile, are so big and bright that they appear more luminous all but the brightest objects in the night sky.
Poetry Rules
Can Poetry Save a Nation?
In a globalized world, why should anyone want to be German, French, Spanish, or Hungarian? “None of the above” isn’t a full-credit answer to the question of national identity. This is the great existential question for the West. Nations are the carriers of cultural continuity. Without the hope that future generations will speak our language, remember our struggles, understand our prayers, and continue our labors, we lose our motivation to bring children into the world. There exists a lullaby in Esperanto, but it has never put a baby to sleep. Only national language embedded in a national culture can provide a bridge between past, present, and future.
Poetry plays an irreplaceable role in the enlivenment of the past and the evocation of the future — not just the national classics, but the less pretentious efforts of popular poets. Molière’s bourgeois gentleman was surprised to learn that he had been speaking prose all his life. The precise opposite is the case: Wittingly or not, we cannot help but speak poetry. Every national language inherits unique poetic expressiveness from its particular tradition. The great poets, and even popular poets on occasion, refine and elevate the poetic content of everyday language. That explains why poetry resonates so powerfully: It awakens a dimension of our thought that lies dormant in everyday speech and makes us conscious of our identity.
Go, Little Pony! Go!
Wildly popular ’80s toy has another shot to overcome long-running snub
My Little Pony has again made the list of finalists for the National Toy Hall of Fame
My Little Pony has again made the list of finalists for the National Toy Hall of Fame. Maybe the seventh time will be a charm.
The pastel toy horse with the silky mane is among this year’s 12 contenders, said the announcement Wednesday from the Strong National Museum of Play, in Rochester, N.Y.
Introduced in the early 1980s, My Little Pony became an immediate hit, for a time outselling Barbie and spawning movies and TV shows. The 2010 animated series “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic” led to the baffling trend of “bronies,” a fandom of grown men.
Despite the popularity, My Little Pony has always fallen short in the annual balloting for the Toy Hall of Fame — taking a backseat to not only Barbie, American Girl and Cabbage Patch Kids but a stick and a cardboard box.
Rectal Respiration
Scientists who discovered mammals can breathe through their anuses receive Ig Nobel prize
By Issy Ronald
The world still holds many unanswered questions. But thanks to the efforts of the research teams awarded the IG Nobel Prize on Thursday, some of these questions – which you might not even have thought existed – now have answers.
We now know that many mammals can breathe through their anuses, that there isn’t an equal probability that a coin will land on head or tails, that some real plants somehow imitate the shapes of neighboring fake plastic plants, that fake medicine which causes painful side-effects can be more effective than fake medicine without side-effects, and that many of the people famous for reaching lofty old ages lived in places that had bad record-keeping.
Among those collecting their prizes was a Japanese research team led by Ryo Okabe and Takanori Takebe who discovered that mammals can breathe through their anuses. They say in their paper that this potentially offers an alternative way of getting oxygen into critically ill patients if ventilator and artificial lung supplies run low, like they did during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Outfuckingstanding
James Earl Jones Gone
James Earl Jones, iconic actor and memorable voice of Darth Vader and Mufasa, dead at 93
By Brandon Griggs and Alli Rosenbloom
You can’t think of James Earl Jones without hearing his voice.
That booming basso profundo, conveying instant dignity or menace, was Jones’ signature instrument. It brought power to all his stage and movie roles, most indelibly as Darth Vader in “Star Wars,” Mufasa in “The Lion King” and as the voice of CNN.
That remarkable voice is just one of many things the world will miss about the beloved actor, who died Monday, according to his agent. He was 93.
Ellison’s Paramount
Larry Ellison Will Control Paramount After Deal, Filing Says
Story by Christopher Palmeri
(Bloomberg) — Paramount Global, the parent of CBS, will be controlled by software billionaire Larry Ellison after a group led by his son David completes its purchase of the Redstone family’s interest in the film and TV company, according to a regulatory filing.
Ellison, the co-founder of Oracle Corp., is backing his son’s proposal to buy the Redstone’s National Amusements Inc. and take control of Paramount for more than $8 billion. According to a filing with the US Federal Communications Commission, the older Ellison will own 77.5% of National Amusements through a trust and series of corporations.
Across The Worst
Hemingway’s Worst Novel Gets Worse: ‘Across the River’ Is a Dull, Pointless Misfire
Liev Schreiber and Venice can’t save this lifeless adaptation of Hemingway’s least beloved work.
By Rex Reed
Does anyone know how to make a movie these days that makes sense, with enough plot, narrative coherence and character development to keep a viewer from falling asleep? Hope springs eternal, but the answer, from almost everything I’ve seen lately, is no.
The newest time-waster is Across the River and Into the Trees, a dismal disappointment based on the last full-length novel written by Ernest Hemingway and published to abysmal reviews in 1950 (later came The Old Man and the Sea, but that was a short novella, not a novel). Now, more than 70 years later and for reasons unexplained, along comes a dull, pointless movie version of Across the River, proving Hemingway’s worst book has not improved with age. Director Paula Ortiz, obviously obsessed with the source material but understandably realizing how resistant it has always been to film, has changed practically everything about the book, including the plot, the characters and even the postwar years in which it takes place. Nothing, I regret to say, helps. It’s lifeless as a stump, and destined for box-office doom.
Revisiting The Silk Road
China Reaches Back in Time to Challenge the West. Way, Way Back.
The country’s archaeologists are striking out along the Silk Road to trace the reach of ancient Chinese civilization, disputing long-held beliefs
By Sha Hua
HINOR, UZBEKISTAN—China’s leader, Xi Jinping, says he is striving to make sure Chinese civilization wields global influence far into the future. One little-noticed part of that vision: an effort to expand its reach into the very distant past.
After decades of digging in their own backyard, Chinese archaeologists are now fanning out across the world, trying to unearth connections between Chinese civilization and pivotal moments in global history.
On the plains of southern Uzbekistan, a team of Chinese scientists is working to excavate burial sites they discovered in 2019. The tombs offer potential clues about the fate of a mysterious nomadic tribe with roots in what is now considered China that could rewrite the history of the Silk Road, the network of trade routes that connected the East and West over two millennia.
Dark Oxygen
‘Dark Oxygen’ in depths of Pacific Ocean prompts new theories on life’s origins
Scientists have discovered that metallic nodules on the seafloor produce their own oxygen in the dark depths of the Pacific Ocean. These polymetallic nodules, generating electricity like AA batteries, challenge the belief that only photosynthetic organisms create oxygen, potentially altering our understanding of how life began on Earth.
By: NEWS WIRES
In the total darkness of the depths of the Pacific Ocean, scientists have discovered oxygen being produced not by living organisms but by strange potato-shaped metallic lumps that give off almost as much electricity as AA batteries.
The surprise finding has many potential implications and could even require rethinking how life first began on Earth, the researchers behind a new study said on Monday.
It had been thought that only living things such as plants and algae were capable of producing oxygen via photosynthesis — which requires sunlight.
But four kilometres (2.5 miles) below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, where no sunlight can reach, small mineral deposits called polymetallic nodules have been recorded making so-called dark oxygen for the first time.
AI Eats Electricity
AI’s Energy Demands Are Out of Control. Welcome to the Internet’s Hyper-Consumption Era
Generative artificial intelligence tools, now part of the everyday user experience online, are causing stress on local power grids and mass water evaporation.
by REECE ROGERS
RIGHT NOW, GENERATIVE artificial intelligence is impossible to ignore online. An AI-generated summary may randomly appear at the top of the results whenever you do a Google search. Or you might be prompted to try Meta’s AI tool while browsing Facebook. And that ever-present sparkle emoji continues to haunt my dreams.
This rush to add AI to as many online interactions as possible can be traced back to OpenAI’s boundary-pushing release of ChatGPT late in 2022. Silicon Valley soon became obsessed with generative AI, and nearly two years later, AI tools powered by large language models permeate the online user experience.
One unfortunate side effect of this proliferation is that the computing processes required to run generative AI systems are much more resource intensive. This has led to the arrival of the internet’s hyper-consumption era, a period defined by the spread of a new kind of computing that demands excessive amounts of electricity and water to build as well as operate.