Howdy! Gautam here. For all the new folks - welcome to this weekly newsletter where I share interesting things happening at the intersection of tech & culture, usually from an Asian vantage.
I am trying to make art a habit and not just a hobby and here’s what I made this week while waiting for a friend:
If the first two months of this year have taught me anything, it’s that every week of the year will be filled to the brim with “AI News”. When something is so novel, it can be hard to separate the signal from the noise. There were will be more frenetic announcements, doomsday predictions, absolute declarations, AI-driven-oopsies and inconsequential debates than we have ever seen before, about any topic. I’m going to take a delayed gratification approach to AI the rest of the year - a way to make sure the signals have enough time to breathe and accumulate. Where I reserve my attention not for new announcements or shiny demos, but for when these things meet the real world and change it in some way. With that, here are (non-AI-hype) the finds for the week:
- COLLABORATIVE CUTENESS Disney’s latest demos show how two robots can be much more capable than one
- ANESTHETIC INEQUALITY Women wake up more during surgeryNew findings could influence anesthesia dosing for women.
- TYPE TRENDS I love any discourse on typefaces - they live in the liminal space between graphic and written culture. Monotype’s type trends report predicts 90s and Y2K grunge, AI-inspired surrealism and a return of serif fonts.
- ICE AGE Japan heads for 'marriage ice age' with lowest number in 90 years.
- COMMENTS & SONGS I strongly believe that all of the world’s wisdom lives in YouTube comments. Someone made a clever portal that pairs love songs and their accompanying YouTube comments. Filled my heart.
Have a great weekend folks. And if you enjoyed any of these finds, please share this newsletter with one more person. Just one! Pretty please. 🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽