Binary Sunset

Carolina Milanesi, an independent technology analyst, said Google is trying to make its cash cow business — search — richer and more personalized, and it will make shopping easier. But there is a risk that users may have fewer choices about what to click. "Right now it's: I ask a question, I get a bunch of answers and I feel that I'm in control as to which answer I take, or if I'm looking for something, which product I'm going to end up buying. That is going to be less so going forward," she said. Milanesi envisions AI-enabled search and agents proposing products to consumers — perhaps even those they have requested — but with less clarity or choice around where it's coming from. "If you're going to say: 'I want a pair of Jordans, go find them,' you're not necessarily sure what steps have been taken and whether the AI has used a source or a store that was paid for and therefore came up in the search results," she said, "or if AI actually went and did their due diligence and picked the best for me as a customer."

And here's one from Time magazine (May 20, 2026):

While Google already has “AI Mode,” the company will now power the whole search bar through its new Gemini 3.5 Flash model.  Instead of the classic list of blue links, Google Search will now also generate a custom page with an AI-generated summary of what you’re searching about, which will then trigger a conversation with AI Mode on the main page, allowing users to ask follow-up questions—similar to the kind of layout you would see when opening ChatGPT.

And a little more from Time's article on how this may affect the websites that we are trying to search for:

"St Michel"

Speedpaint and tutorial on my Patreon.

Breaking

Please Don't Leave Me Alone Up Here

A lot of stories have world-ending stakes. It's... pretty common. Ending the world is like, objectively Bad in nearly every way a story could spin it. But the thing is, the World is very large. Too large. Too large to really comprehend. It makes it hard for the protagonist to actually care, and even harder for the audience, since we don't actually live there, and we don't know anyone outside of what the movie shows us. Sure, saving the whole world is the Objectively The Right Thing To Do, but I feel like a protagonist's actual motive for doing so a lot of the time is 'I have friends and family that live there.' Same reason for the audience cares too.

So Suzume sets the stakes lower. The threat isn't the whole world, its just Japan. The characters (just one character I think actually, the cat) do say, a couple times, that "the Earth will crack," but it really seems like the threat is localized to Japan. And with the threat hitting close to home, it actually makes the stakes a bit easier to comprehend, makes them feel more real.

But even then, Japan is still very large and has a lot of people we don't know or care about in it. So the movie makes us care. Throughout her journey across Japan, Suzume meets and becomes friends with several people. These people give her food and a place to stay and help her along her journey out of kindness and human connection. Whenever she seals a door, she hears the echos of those who once visited these places, small everyday moments. All these people will likely die if she lets the worm fall, and she knows it. And for the audience, we can't reasonably be there for Suzume's entire journey and see everything she does, so we're given a special view. In the moments before the worm falls, the scene flashes around, showing people all going about their daily lives, talking and working and playing and all these small nothing moments. We can see the shadow of the worm over them and the golden strings pulling taught around them, but all these people can't, they're just going about their normal lives with no idea what's about to happen. And it just feels devestating.