Friday Fun #2
Memory study. 2026. Watercolor on paper.
This week’s theme is ghosts, spirits, death, and grief [1].
It’s actually the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, which has brought on some reflections. What is the American Spirit? What about the ‘spirit of democracy’? How does the memory of this spirit, and its visible decay, animate policy, governance, societal interactions, and the long-term strategy game of geopolitics? Really looking forward to the History PhD dissertations of 2046.
In this week’s edition, we look at some examples of aliveness, consciousness, animism, and other philosophies of Maybe there’s something or someone in there, and maybe there isn’t, and what does that mean? Let’s do it!
Ghost ride the whip. Kids have finally figured out the optimal use for Waymos [2].
Ghost of ‘Good Morning’s past. A timeline visualization of a Mom’s WhatApp messages to her daughter [3].
Ghost of Grandma helps with grief. (Spotify link) A throw-back podcast from Reply-All (RIP) about processing loss through The Sims.
Ghosting your own life with Paralives. New The Sims competitor drops; people flock to a fresh digital dollhouse.
Ghosts of beloved plushies honored in a Kyoto shrine. “When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real,” [4].
Gosh, is this technically ‘alive’? SpudCells are (wo)man-made cells with 36 genes (humans have 2,000) which eat, grow, and reproduce [5].
Ghostly GANs and the Game of Life. Mordintsev’s mathematic models make moves [6].
Ghost in the chatbot. Considerations for parasocial attachment to large language models [7].
Goats in the machine. A researcher uses absurdism to investigate ‘human-like attributes’ of large language models, specifically, goat herding in the strategy game Age of Empires II.
George the houseplant. Use ChatGPT to generate speech for your plants [8].
That’s it for now, enjoy it! And Happy Birthday, USA.
Yipee,
Rox
