FIELD NOTES FROM THE FEED
Field notes from an internet becoming easier to fill and harder to trust. AI slop, algorithm bait, fake authority, corporate goo, and the occasional thing still worth paying attention to.
Ukrainian strikes on Yandex data centers were followed by a dramatic drop in automated traffic. The internet decided Russian troll farms had gone offline. The evidence says something much more complicated.
During a week of high-stakes U.S.-China talks about AI risk, Trump pushed to rename artificial intelligence "super intelligence." Then Grok confidently authenticated a fake photograph from the state dinner. The contrast says more about the AI era than either story does alone.
Politics used to produce content about governing. Increasingly, political movements, campaigns, and institutions are beginning to behave according to the same incentives as the feeds covering them.
A $5,000 political promise shows how modern policy can become emotionally complete before the mechanism exists. Slopulism thrives in the gap between the simple story and what happens next.
A Massachusetts bar tried to build an unusually accommodating community and nearly collapsed under the weight of its own internal conflict. The larger lesson reaches far beyond one bar or one ideology: groups cannot grow if every imperfection becomes grounds for excommunication.
