Adi Robertson
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thedextriarchy.bsky.social
Adi Robertson
@thedextriarchy.bsky.social
Senior Editor, Tech & Policy, The Verge
there's a novelty "AI dating cafe" pop-up launching in NYC and I decided to try making a bot from the service, only to find it offers male and female options but doesn't personalize any of the flavor copy so all chatbots including the burly old dudes are "AI girls"
November 20, 2025 at 8:19 PM
sean duffy freaking out when he learns the female crash test dummies don't produce large gametes
Leave it to Sean Duffy to make a critical safety milestone — the introduction of a female crash test dummy — grossly transphobic and weird
November 20, 2025 at 7:58 PM
I'm calling it now: netflix is going to add a brainrot overlay. You're going to be able to play a stranger-things-branded subway surfers knockoff on the bottom of your TV while watching the nteenth ryan murphy show
November 17, 2025 at 8:38 PM
Reposted by Adi Robertson
Most folks know I've been banging the drum about the AI bubble for awhile, and this brilliant piece from @lopatto.bsky.social dramatically reinforces that hypothesis and is as meticulously researched as it is brutal:

www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...
Meet CoreWeave, the AI industry’s ticking time bomb
The debt-laden AI compute company has been boosted by Nvidia.
www.theverge.com
November 17, 2025 at 3:41 PM
Reposted by Adi Robertson
November 17, 2025 at 9:08 AM
the serious answer to "tech tree" is books that periodically dip into other languages but I now have a horrible temptation to try making a book you have to unlock a bespoke set of branching skills to read
books have no tech tree, no fog of war
November 10, 2025 at 10:08 PM
I didn't tweak it quite as much as the temu carhartt people but GPT-5 can def get something close to it
November 10, 2025 at 9:36 PM
somebody finally wrote the perfect distillation of how "masculinity but make it centrist liberal" guys insist men cannot be fulfilled unless they get something a *little* extra special over women, as a treat
November 10, 2025 at 7:25 PM
Reposted by Adi Robertson
Good @laurenfeiner.bsky.social story about the state of CISA that highlights potentially corrosive fears among the agency's critical infrastructure partners about the Trump administration's cuts and politicization: www.theverge.com/policy/81688...
November 10, 2025 at 5:55 PM
my fave new AI slop aesthetic is "steampunk airship captainess jacket clumsily photoshopped with the carhartt logo"
November 10, 2025 at 6:36 PM
it's absolutely killing me that chatgpt apparently(?) cannot count down a timer that it sets or remember when it started (it's a 1-hour timer that *goes off* at 12:40 and these queries were 3 minutes apart). please someone tell me there's a way to make this damn computer tell time
November 7, 2025 at 4:50 PM
the NYT interview where the "women are too emotional to uphold the rule of law" lady explains what she considers a failure to uphold the law is... really very revealing
November 6, 2025 at 2:27 PM
the sandwich trial livetweets have been killing me for days now, ty to all the real heroes posting through it
A ballistic vest meant to stop a bullet “is definitely going to keep you safe from a sandwich thrown at you," Sean Dunn's defense attorney argued.
November 5, 2025 at 7:09 PM
I gotta say it's been satisfying to watch a male politician whose coalition is built on collaboration and good social skills absolutely trounce a bunch of dudes obsessed with physical strength and macho bullying as a proxy for political power
November 5, 2025 at 6:13 PM
Reposted by Adi Robertson
Tron gives an inaccurate impression of how many guys live in your computer. It makes it seem like thousands of guys are in there. In reality only about 10 guys live in your computer and less than half of them ride motorcycles
October 6, 2025 at 5:22 PM
Man RIP Peter Watkins, Privilege is still one of the most compelling movies about fandom and pop culture ever made
November 1, 2025 at 12:35 PM
damn i voted way too early this year
🚨🎃 for my fellow NYC halloween voters and sticker obsessives: there are a total of FOUR items available to you today — ask your poll worker!

1. halloween voting sticker
2. halloween **temporary tattoo**
3. borough-specific early voting sticker
4. regular early voting sticker

gotta catch ‘em all 🗳️
October 31, 2025 at 3:13 PM
Reposted by Adi Robertson
October 30, 2025 at 3:18 AM
this may be quixotic but I'm convinced the single best public intervention is still funding noncommercial alternative digital and physical spaces and services for kids
It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. Really the "solution" would be something like socially changing the way we let minors use their devices. But that ship seems way harder to un-sail than the platforms dealing with it.
October 29, 2025 at 8:04 PM
Getting nervous the backlash against chatbots will put more wind in the age verification push's sails, because I cannot see a way you'd implement this without requiring age verification on Google, Microsoft, and any other major tech company experimenting with AI
Senators propose banning teens from using AI chatbots
Another bill promises to regulate AI.
www.theverge.com
October 29, 2025 at 6:53 PM
character AI says "sub-10 percent" of users identify as minors, but I find that pretty dubious and the age verification system they're promising seems less than foolproof on giving us real numbers there
Character.AI is banning minors from AI character chats
Teens are no longer welcome to talk to Character.AI’s chatbots.
www.theverge.com
October 29, 2025 at 1:13 PM
at some point feminism has to deal with the fact that young women are getting this exact same experience nonstop through booktok and the romance genre, just swap "you want to hurt some woman" for "you want a big strong man to take control of you" jude-doyle.ghost.io/dilf-redux-t...
October 28, 2025 at 4:03 PM
the political right and center have spent the past half-decade trying to defang public shaming as a tactic because it's one of the last options non-billionaires have left to stop deeply antisocial stuff like this
call them whatever you like, the reality is 'smart glasses' are surveillance devices designed by tech companies to violate consent and rewrite social norms. social shaming is still a more effective a deterrent than the law. @hypervisible.blacksky.app

www.theverge.com/tech/807834/...
October 28, 2025 at 3:14 PM
Reposted by Adi Robertson
No Quarter is back!

On Saturday November 22nd No Quarter will be returning for its 2025 edition!

No Quarter is an annual playable exhibition where four newly commissioned works from outstanding artists working across games are debuted. Tickets here noquarter2025.eventbrite.com
October 28, 2025 at 3:09 PM
in seriousness re: today's AI game main character, I really miss when AI enthusiasts leaned into it as a source of absurdity and weird pastiche instead of "i'll show those pesky creatives how replaceable they are"
October 24, 2025 at 7:09 PM