Overview
Today’s feed knits together a grounded story of technology and craft with scenes from nature and space. We have AI partnerships moving from pitch to practice, defence leaders pushing for faster innovation, and robots flying through the air for crowds. Makers show what modern tools can do, gamers celebrate smart design, and users vent about stubborn bugs. NASA opens its lunar playbook, Europe watches the storm tracks, and a famed Yellowstone bear reminds us what resilience looks like.
The big picture
AI in the real world
NVIDIA and Palantir put AI to work
At Palantir’s Paragon event, NVIDIA’s Justin Boitano and Palantir’s Kevin Kawasaki discussed a joint stack that helped Lowe’s rebalance stock across 1,700 stores in three weeks, with talk of hospital scheduling gains and a programme to speed up US datacentre build-outs. It is the kind of specifics enterprises want to hear - models, ontology, results, repeatability.
Mark Cuban’s advice to students: become the AI implementer
Cuban argues the next wave of jobs sits with people who can customise models and walk into a small business with a clear plan that saves time or money. Less theory, more outcomes.
Inside the Pentagon with Emil Michael
Emil Michael, now Under Secretary of War for Research & Engineering, outlines a refocus on six areas - applied AI, hypersonics, directed energy, contested logistics, battlefield information dominance, and biomanufacturing. He wants five more modern defence suppliers alongside SpaceX, Anduril and Palantir, and faster procurement to bring commercial tech into a trillion-dollar bureaucracy.
Meta’s auto-dubbing steps beyond text
Meta’s tool now auto-dubs videos across more languages with lip-sync that looks natural, echoing Facebook’s 2008 community translation push but for moving images. The replies split between access and misuse risks.
Robots, code, and maker energy
Disney’s Spider-Man is a robot acrobat
Walt Disney Imagineering’s Stuntronics robot flips, tucks and lands from 25 metres, making its own real-time decisions. A neat showcase of entertainment robotics that keeps performers safe while keeping the magic intact.
Four frontier models, one tricky 3D coding prompt
A benchmark asks models to write a single-file HTML/CSS/JS scene of a Formula 1 donut drift. Claude Opus 4.5 nails it with smooth physics, Gemini is close, while GPT-5.2 and Grok fall flat - a tidy snapshot of how these systems handle graphics-heavy reasoning.
The fastest scraper in the thread
“Parse” grabs 887 NASDAQ earnings reports in seconds, with a dynamic API layer for repeat queries. The maker crowd cheers, and rivals get a quiet nudge to catch up.
Timeless shapes, browser-based 3D
Womp shows a 13-second journey from stone arrowhead to horned USB drive in the browser. Sculpt, texture, render, export - no heavy installs, just quick ideas turned into objects.
Square gears that open a gift box
A neat print from a holiday series uses interlocking square gears to twist a lid open. The motion is irregular and satisfying, perfect for desk toys and stocking fillers.
Spatial[2], a hypnotic study in motion
Raf0x00’s slick AviUtl animation pulses with cyan glyphs and cyber motifs. Thirty-one seconds of rhythm and restraint that pulled in thousands of reposts.
Games, craft and spectacle
How Expedition 33 won on design smarts
Sandfall’s debut RPG took Game of the Year with a smart mix of turn-based arenas, lush edges that sell scale, and tight real-time beats - plus marquee voices like Andy Serkis and Charlie Cox on an indie budget.
RDR2’s ropes and rolling logs
A tidy clip shows ropes shot through and logs tumbling one after the other, a reminder of Rockstar’s attention to physics details that still delights years on.
Platforms under the microscope
Figma lag was a Linux issue, not the app
A designer flags that a stuttery resize video came from an unofficial Linux build. Official Windows and macOS versions look smooth in comparison, with Linux electron wrappers often plagued by XWayland quirks.
Four years and counting on an iOS keyboard bug
A developer shows iOS typing the wrong characters and says resets do nothing. The replies read like a support forum in miniature, with suggestions to escalate to Apple leadership.
Space, science and the natural world
NASA opens the Artemis II playbook
Episode 1 of Moonbound on NASA+ tees up crew training, SLS assembly and Orion systems ahead of a crewed lunar flyby planned for 2026. It is the groundwork that makes a headline launch possible.
Grizzly 399 and her four cubs, on the climb
A much-loved Yellowstone matriarch, filmed by Gregory B. Balvin near Jackson Hole, guiding a rare quartet uphill to a high den. A glimpse of behaviour shaped by survival - away from males, towards safety - and a note on the biology of delayed implantation.
Storm tracks spare mainland Europe, for now
Ensemble models show cyclones curling north past the British Isles through 20 December. A positive NAO keeps central Europe calmer after early storms hit the UK and Ireland.
Startups and crypto culture
Naval on networking: do the work first
Ravikant’s old clip lands again with the same point - build something people want, and the right network follows. Replies add the obvious test: genuine user pain solved.
Solana’s content crown goes to Jussy
A light-hearted cheer for a creator who has written more about stablecoins than some care to read, and who just took home a Breakpoint award.
Why it matters
- AI’s centre of gravity is moving from demos to delivery. The NVIDIA-Palantir case studies, Cuban’s call for implementers, and the Pentagon’s tech priorities all point to demand for people who can turn models into shipped systems with measurable gains.
- Culture rides on tech, and tech borrows from culture. Disney’s robot, indie game craft, and short-form animation show how ideas spread across robotics, engines and editing tools. The best work feels playful yet disciplined.
- Platforms live or die on trust. Bugs that linger and unofficial ports that mislead can sour user confidence. Clear fixes, honest support, and faster feedback loops matter as much as new features.
- Translation and dubbing at scale will redraw media borders, but also strain verification. Expect wider reach for creators and brands, and a parallel push for provenance and detection.
- Space and science stories still cut through. NASA’s behind-the-scenes series builds public literacy ahead of Artemis II, while a grizzly’s trek and quiet storm maps remind us the world is bigger than our timelines.
