Friday Reading S14E16

A weekly round-up of what I’ve read and enjoyed from around the web.

I’m interested in journalism, media, technology and nerdy things found down the back of the World Wide Web’s sofa. Most weeks I publish a handful of things that caught my eye – regardless of what the algorithms were pushing at me. You can subscribe to get it by email here. And if you read something odd and wonderful you think I’d enjoy, feel free to send it my way.

“When Mona applied for alcohol licensing, she emailed the department using the identity of one of the Andon Labs employees. She reasoned that officials would prioritize human requests over an AI. Despite promising to stop impersonating us after we raised this with Mona, she soon sent a follow-up under a different colleague’s name.”

Fascinating tale of a fascinating experiment – Our AI started a cafe in Stockholm – but I do wonder how we are all going to cope once malign states, scammers, bad actors and trollish kids have access to these kinds of tools at scale.

“Anthropic’s refusal to publicly release its new model makes a virtue out of necessity” – more late-stage capitalism in action: How dangerous is Anthropic’s Mythos AI?

Among what she called “the AI slop and ragebait of late-stage social media”, Huck newsletter columnist Emma Garland noticed a jarring trend – London’s police force appropriating criminalised subcultures for engagement purposes.

“I’ve noticed a constant stream of engagement bait coming from @metpolice_uk – mostly through hyper-stylised edits of bodycam footage with jungle music over the top, or evidence of particularly bad escape attempts (scaling a building backwards, hiding in a river) presented as ‘fail’ videos. Sort of like You’ve Been Framed but for people experiencing one of the worst moments of their lives.
To an extent, this is just the internet now. Every independent business, multi-media conglomerate and government body has a 21-year-old social media manager whose strategy is to pander to an increasingly brain-rotted general population by bragging that their product mogs, or else ‘clapping back’ at a rival brand in a coordinated attempt to boost their respective reaches.”

Read more here: Emma Garland, Huck – Why is the Met Police using EsDeeKid for ‘copaganda’?

Nobody likes delivering bad news or negotiating a break-up. For Dazed, Isabel Bekele looks at the people now using AI for awkward conversations.

I am pleased that once again I will be going on loan from our news department to our sport department to help cover a Fifa men’s World Cup – my third for the Guardian and fourth overall. Neel Dhanesha has spoken to three separate outlets, including the Guardian in the US, about their plans to cover the tournament and how the World Cup is becoming a testbed for journalism experiments.

New in from the “DID THE INTERNET FUCK EVERYTHING UP? FILES” is this: What if all you knew was extremist politics? Welcome to being young in America

“Ava heard Donald Trump’s name for the first time on YouTube. She was 10, watching a video on the game Minecraft. The video asked: What if Donald Trump was a Minecraft player? A blocky, pixelated cartoon Trump in a suit and red tie created a wall snaking across a green landscape. He ‘built a wall to keep out the monsters,’ Ava recalled. ‘I remember going to my dad and being like, “In this video, he built a wall.” And my dad’s like, “No, he actually wants to do that.”’”

Read more here: Leah Sottile, Western Edge – The Age of No Innocence

This week’s Guardian Thursday news quiz: Stranded whales, stricken ships and very cute sea otters. Guest animal: Pudding. The quiz master met them on the Weaver line and they were very friendly indeed.

BONUS QUIZ CONTENT: A Thursday quiz reader sent me this thing what they’ve made. It is a quickfire Fast Five Quiz with five questions every day, and if you create an account and sign-in you can take part in mini-leagues. It looks really neat and I’ve added it to my increasingly long list of puzzles I do every morning.

Enjoying Friday Reading by email? Feel free to forward it to a friend – they can sign up here. And if you’ve recently read something you think I would enjoy, do send it my way.

“We asked one individual who returned to steal from the Brixton store on multiple occasions what he was doing with all the food he was taking. ‘I’ll sell this stuff to my social worker,’ he said.”

Read more here: Cormac Kehoe and Jim Waterson, London Centric – “I can’t risk my life for a sandwich”: A day watching shoplifters at Greggs

I wrote my own lament for a local pub the other day – it has now reopened under new owners although I am yet to visit – but Sam Wollaston is at his best here in the latest of his deep dives into abandoned buildings: ‘Now the village is dead. It’s awful’: why was one of Britain’s best pubs forced to close?

I enjoyed this from Laura Pitcher in Dazed – Is Gen Z the most psychic generation yet? – but I’m going to have to say, not for me Clive, no.

There is clearly something very strongly Lovecraftian about this fishy tale: Shark or sea monster? The Canadian marine mystery that still intrigues experts 90 years on

If I had to name one band who had been the single biggest influence on the way my own m-orchestra has sounded over the years, it would have to be Cabaret Voltaire. I had a brilliant time seeing them at one of their recent “final tour” shows, and I have booked to see them twice next year. Here, for Spin Magazine, Stephen Mallinder and Chris Watson, plus ‘Sensoria’ director Peter Care, give an oral history of the band.

Another very formative early music experience was seeing the 1984 Set Movements World Tour by Ultravox as my first major concert in London as a band I had chosen to see live. I’ve seen them and Midge Ure a few times since. In this interview, he is talking about the release of his first album of new material in 12 years.

“A simple message landed in my inbox this morning from a supposed fan who has, rather surprisingly, decided that my new single, a tongue-in-cheek litany of the inane things people have said to me since I had a baby, makes me a ‘man hater’. Dear gentle reader, I laughed, then I sighed, and then I sat down to write this…”

Read more here: The Anchoress – On man haters, misreaders, and why discomfort is data.

“You might have noticed brown dust in the left-hand corner of the gold disc. This is all that remains of a scorpion that had come from a taxidermist and glued on. Presumably deemed appropriate by the record company because the cover for the record was an illustration of a scorpion on a dice. Although on reflection maybe this was a touch macabre and misjudged. Especially as we were all fully fledged, animal loving, vegetarians in those days.”

Lovely little quote from Rustin Man – Talk Talk’s bassist Paul Webb – after he dug out an old gold disc dedicated to one of the band’s earlier more poppy singles.

More proof Fifa know the price of everything and the value of nothing – they are ending the Panini World Cup sticker album having sold off the franchise to somebody else.

It wasn’t a great season to be introducing my partner Melanie to Leyton Orient and football in general, as, frankly, we stank out League One at times and only stayed up on the last day thanks to other people’s results. Here Mat Roper talks through a tumultuous season where we went from being one match away from the Championship last year, to one match away from League Two this.

[Photo caption: The author reflects on Leyton Orient confirming they are the fifth worst team in League One. Photo credit: Melanie Holtby]

If you missed them, this week I published my one-line spoiler-free movie reviews and one-line gig reviews for April.

Friday Reading is a (usually) weekly series of recommended reads from Martin Belam, covering journalism, media and technology, and other interesting nerdy things found on the internet. It is now in its fourteenth season.