Daniel Rourke 🌪️
@therourke.net
Goldsmiths based digital media theory art • currently researching speculative AI • machinemachine.net
My Game of the Year (2025). Hard to explain how clever, weird, frustrating, and downright wonderful it is. Play it if you can
‘It’s a loving mockery, because it’s also who I am’: the making of gaming’s most pathetic character
The team behind Baby Steps discuss why they made a whiny, unprepared manbaby the protagonist – and how players have grown to love Nate as he struggles up a mountain
www.theguardian.com
January 16, 2026 at 2:21 PM
My Game of the Year (2025). Hard to explain how clever, weird, frustrating, and downright wonderful it is. Play it if you can
New depths of #hauntology are available for us to explore together
Plastic Surgeons Are Using Material From Dead People on New Patients
Plastic surgeons are using fat harvested from dead people to inject into patients who want body contouring work done.
futurism.com
January 12, 2026 at 10:19 AM
New depths of #hauntology are available for us to explore together
Blair uses his final wish from the Genie
Blair bids to build own AI tools to rival Palantir
TBI insiders warn of “'insane” plan to transform think tank into a tech company
open.substack.com
January 10, 2026 at 10:06 AM
Blair uses his final wish from the Genie
As a Northerner who also went to Leeds uni & then moved to London, I don't recognise all the suffering expressed here. That said the North/South divide is significant in many aspects of UK life: social, cultural, political etc. Therefore, I'm going to start using this article to justify all my tears
It’s not easy being an English northerner surrounded by southerners. Here’s how we survive | Robyn Vinter
University undergraduates are forming northern societies, but in other circumstances we find different ways to be ourselves, says Guardian north of England correspondent Robyn Vinter
www.theguardian.com
January 7, 2026 at 1:06 PM
As a Northerner who also went to Leeds uni & then moved to London, I don't recognise all the suffering expressed here. That said the North/South divide is significant in many aspects of UK life: social, cultural, political etc. Therefore, I'm going to start using this article to justify all my tears
Reposted by Daniel Rourke 🌪️
The Memes Are the Point - The Atlantic
The Memes Are the Point
Why the Trump administration is posting messages like “THIS IS OUR HEMISPHERE” after the attack on Venezuela
www.theatlantic.com
January 7, 2026 at 12:53 AM
The Memes Are the Point - The Atlantic
My 2026 Bluesky feed is starting to get spicy
January 3, 2026 at 4:52 PM
My 2026 Bluesky feed is starting to get spicy
AI (slop) will kill the attention economy in 2026, or at least force it to mutate into something else. It's going to be like Facebook's BuzzFeed Clickbait moment, circa 2015ish.
January 3, 2026 at 4:47 PM
AI (slop) will kill the attention economy in 2026, or at least force it to mutate into something else. It's going to be like Facebook's BuzzFeed Clickbait moment, circa 2015ish.
That Christopher Anderson photoshoot is one of the best art projects of the 21st century. Just stunningly brilliant
The Vanity Fair photographer who disrupted Trumpworld’s polished image
Christopher Anderson, who photographed Trump’s team at the White House for Vanity Fair, defends his unvarnished — and extreme — close-ups.
www.washingtonpost.com
December 20, 2025 at 10:16 PM
That Christopher Anderson photoshoot is one of the best art projects of the 21st century. Just stunningly brilliant
Reposted by Daniel Rourke 🌪️
The Vanity Fair photographer from the Susie Wiles story.
Holy. Shit.
www.washingtonpost.com/style/power/...
Holy. Shit.
www.washingtonpost.com/style/power/...
December 17, 2025 at 8:34 PM
The Vanity Fair photographer from the Susie Wiles story.
Holy. Shit.
www.washingtonpost.com/style/power/...
Holy. Shit.
www.washingtonpost.com/style/power/...
I forgot everything about the 1st Avatar movie 18 seconds after I walked out of the theatre, and I don't intend to change that
With the release of “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” it’s time to return to Pandora, the spectacularly detailed world invented by the director James Cameron. Here’s a guide to catch you up on the developments.
‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’: What to Remember Before Seeing the New Movie
The newest chapter in the saga of the Na’vi people continues to build their highly detailed world. Here’s a guide to catch you up on the developments.
nyti.ms
December 19, 2025 at 4:59 PM
I forgot everything about the 1st Avatar movie 18 seconds after I walked out of the theatre, and I don't intend to change that
Reposted by Daniel Rourke 🌪️
Things are going great over at X, The Everything App
December 18, 2025 at 11:48 PM
Things are going great over at X, The Everything App
Thank god we can now express ourselves with these emojis
December 18, 2025 at 7:08 PM
Thank god we can now express ourselves with these emojis
This DVD box set just gave me a heart palpatation Mandela Effect moment
December 16, 2025 at 2:17 PM
This DVD box set just gave me a heart palpatation Mandela Effect moment
Reposted by Daniel Rourke 🌪️
The Render Ender
The Render Ender
Al Warburton on how generative AI has disrupted the simulation of light.
open.substack.com
December 10, 2025 at 12:15 PM
The Render Ender
This bot is having a totally normal one in my DMS
December 10, 2025 at 6:24 AM
This bot is having a totally normal one in my DMS
You will be visited by three spirits
December 9, 2025 at 2:36 PM
You will be visited by three spirits
Reposted by Daniel Rourke 🌪️
Year in Review 2025: Hari Kunzru on AI slop and censorship
Slopocalypse Now
Hari Kunzru surveys the AI slop that dominates our feeds and likens the way it drowns out information to a new form of censorship.
www.artforum.com
December 8, 2025 at 7:15 PM
Year in Review 2025: Hari Kunzru on AI slop and censorship
What were the best books you read/listened to in 2025? All genres open, fiction and non. I have a bunch of #Audible credits I need to spend.
December 8, 2025 at 12:37 PM
What were the best books you read/listened to in 2025? All genres open, fiction and non. I have a bunch of #Audible credits I need to spend.
I think this might be an entirely new genre of clickbait
Could Humans Ever Become Venomous? - Sciencing
Despite the abundance of toxic personalities in the world, humans can't produce actual venom, but we do have the underlying genetic framework.
www.sciencing.com
December 7, 2025 at 6:59 PM
I think this might be an entirely new genre of clickbait
LOL The Spectator. The album never ever went away
Bring back the album
Usually when my tweenage sons ask about relics from my 1990s adolescence – ‘What’s a landline?’ ‘What’s a phone book?’ – we’ll have a good laugh about these obsolete artefacts of the not-so-distant pa...
www.spectator.co.uk
December 6, 2025 at 11:47 PM
LOL The Spectator. The album never ever went away
The AI #Slopularity is upon us! Check out this AI generated 'article', with an AI generated author, about using poetry to jailbreak gen AI bots. The slop has seeped through the internet pipes, glooping out of the abandoned 'nunneryplumbingandheating.co.uk' in a haunted text citing the hauntological
Researchers show how fragile AI systems became when pushed with poetry—revealing bomb-making methods and breaking safety rails
Yet a small Italian lab just showed that verse can quietly bend powerful AI systems in dangerous directions. A team of researchers in Italy claims it
www.nunneryplumbingandheating.co.uk
December 2, 2025 at 10:51 AM
The AI #Slopularity is upon us! Check out this AI generated 'article', with an AI generated author, about using poetry to jailbreak gen AI bots. The slop has seeped through the internet pipes, glooping out of the abandoned 'nunneryplumbingandheating.co.uk' in a haunted text citing the hauntological