Chaos & Amazement #2520 Twenty years of Reddit, God loves Dogs, and a Shrimp’s Date
Another week of chaos, amazement, and a little extra birthday joy - let’s have a look at the latest tech twists, viral oddities, and a shrimp’s unexpected date. Love you!
Tech news
Klarna and Duolingo are facing backlash over their AI-first strategies. Klarna is rehiring support staff after automation hurt quality, while Duolingo users on TikTok complain about AI replacing human teachers. https://www.fastcompany.com/91332763/going-ai-first-appears-to-be-backfiring-on-klarna-and-duolingo
Reddit turned 20! Once a scrappy startup pitched after a rejected food app idea, it grew into the front page of the internet — shaping memes, news, and online discourse. Its human-driven model and subreddit design set it apart. https://www.zdnet.com/article/reddit-turns-20-its-incredible-journey-from-scrappy-startup-to-the-heart-of-the-internet/
YouTube is becoming a big podcast platform with over 1 billion monthly podcast viewers. Now, they’ve launched a new U.S. podcast chart ranked by watch time. This shows how important YouTube is for podcast fans and creators! https://charts.youtube.com/podcasts
TikTok just got warned by the EU for possibly breaking the Digital Services Act—mainly around shady ad transparency. First X, now them. Feels like the wild west days of algorithm-driven platforms are finally over. Accountability is catching up. https://www.politico.eu/article/commission-says-tiktok-breached-dsa-ad-rules/
Fresh AI
The rise of God Loves Dogs—a viral YouTube channel churning out AI videos of God petting dogs—feels like a turning point. While creators pour heart into thoughtful content, soulless, surreal slop racks up millions of views.
From my blog
I turned 55! Time to take stock of my life so far. https://bnox.be/2025/05/life-at-55.html
And yes, I definitely know this song by heart…
Weird and wonderful
Little Dig Game. That is it. Now pick up that shovel and get to work!
Humans: live-ish estimates based on global population dynamics & simulated day/night cycles. A lot of them are sleeping.
https://humans.maxcomperatore.com
Country-centered Map Projections: what does it look like if you center a map on a specific country? Click on a country to find out. https://engaging-data.com/country-centered-map-projections/
A palate cleanser for your feed Pika: The Tiny Mountain Bandit, by BBC Earth
This modern-day Geppetto imagines how a shrimp’s date would go.
And this guy made a Wallace & Gromit contraption in real life!
In a scene straight out of a comedy sketch, a bull was spotted riding on the back of a moving scooter in India! Locals watched in disbelief as the animal balanced itself effortlessly, stealing the spotlight and causing traffic chaos.