# July 4 link dump

> Source: <https://blog.zgp.org/mlp-2026-07-04/>
> Published: 2026-07-04 00:00:00+00:00

[The Internet
needs more You](https://arunrocks.com/the-internet-needs-more-you/) by Arun Ravindran. The indie web is slowly staging
a comeback. People are returning to personal sites, RSS readers, and
hand-curated blogrolls — not out of nostalgia, but because the
algorithmic feed has failed them.

[SoftBank’s
untitled AI goose game — eggs do not lay eggs](https://pivot-to-ai.com/2026/06/26/softbanks-untitled-ai-goose-game-eggs-do-not-lay-eggs/) by David Gerard.
SoftBank was also the main backer of WeWork, which was almost as
stupid as OpenAI. WeWork’s 2019 stock market offering failed
spectacularly and SoftBank’s investment went down 90%. WeWork still
exists in 2026, but it’s a lot smaller. As well as the spectacular
messes, SoftBank has a pile of quietly successful portfolio companies —
like ARM, which designs the chips in all the phones, and makes a bundle.
These pay for the messes.

[I
drove the Slate Truck — there’s more to it than EV minimalism](https://www.theverge.com/transportation/955454/slate-truck-ev-price-drive-specs-minimalism) by
Rani Molla. The vehicle runs counter to a broader trend in the auto
industry sometimes referred to as

trimflation

— the push to
increase margins by bundling vehicles with more technology and luxury
features.

[War
by Other Means](https://www.palladiummag.com/2026/06/23/war-by-other-means/) by John Severini. Combined with recent and
forthcoming improvements to industrial automation, all signs point
toward governments relying on a much smaller pool of human capital for
labor and war. Accordingly, this means that a fundamental source of
political power has begun to shift from the people toward the firms that
make those machines.

(Those firms, though, have labor forces. So the
importance of labor/management issues goes up, too?)

[There is
minimal downside to switching to open models](https://www.marble.onl/posts/cancel_claude.html) by Andrew Marble. (A
thought-provoking comparison of desktop Linux to open* AI models. And
yes, we still need open-source/Eurostack CAD.)

[Sixty
percent of US consumers say ‘AI’ in brand messaging is a turnoff, survey
finds](https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/16/sixty-percent-of-u-s-consumers-say-ai-in-brand-messaging-is-a-turnoff-survey-finds/) by Sarah Perez. (If people knew how much “AI” investment is
there to implement surveillance and price discrimination/surveillance
pricing, IMHO the “AI” boom would be even less popular.)

[You
Should Make Cross Views](https://moultano.wordpress.com/2025/02/24/you-should-make-cross-views/) by Ryan Moulton. All you need is two
pictures taken from two different positions shifted
horizontally.

[Improvements
to Web for AI Should Benefit All Users](https://cloudfour.com/thinks/improvements-to-web-for-ai-should-benefit-all-users/) by Jason Grigsby. When a
site’s actions are hard for an AI agent to use, that is a gap in the
page’s own semantics, and we should first seek to close it in the
platform’s shared layers (HTML and ARIA), where the user, assistive
technology, and agents all benefit.

[The
Costco theory of the internet](https://www.joanwestenberg.com/the-costco-theory-of-the-internet/) by JA Westenberg. (But who is left
who’s trusted enough to be the curator?)

[The
Future of Everything is Lies, I Guess](https://aphyr.com/posts/411-the-future-of-everything-is-lies-i-guess) by Kyle Kingsbury. (Long
series on how LLMs change things.)
