e553 — Monks, Bots & Ghosts

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Prayer flags strung across trees in front of a waterfall in the North Carolina mountains
Photo by Michael Martine, North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains, May 2017

Published 11 May 2026

e553 with Andy and Michael M – stories and discussion on a robot monk, the Dead Internet Theory,  agentic autonomy, Happy Net Box, the Artemis II minifig.me crew and a whole lot more!

Andy and Michael M get things started with an article from the Smithsonian Magazine featuring a robot taking monastic vows in Korea.  This spurs an intriguing discussion on the nature of consciousness, programming and agentic autonomy.  This morphs into the Dead Internet Theory, the Boring Internet essay from Terry Godier, and eventually to some happy news with the Happy Net Box.

Interspersed are new applications such as a Chair Curling game for the Playdate, and a presentation engine powered by gestures called Hovercraft from Sandwich Vision.  The cohosts discussed the Theater app from Sandwich Vision back in Dec 2024 in e495.  

Knitting the ending together, Andy and Michael express their appreciation and gratitude for the awesomeness that is minifigs.me and Michael shares a story about the Artemis II crew.

Do you think the Internet is dead, boring or something else?  Have your bots (or agents!) 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @gamesatwork_biz (our home for now) and let us know! 

These show notes were lovingly hand crafted by a real human, and not by a bot.  All rights reserved.  That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.

Selected Links

Robot

Smithsonian Magazine article: Meet ‘Gabi,’ the Robot That Just Became a Monk at a Buddhist Temple in South Korea. It’s the Latest Robot to Take Up Religious Practice

Hovercraft is how I always wanted to share my slides. So I made it. It’s a virtual camera for macOS.

No more disembodied voice. No more “can you see my screen?” Just me, tossing around my windows like it’s 2027.

I like to say it’s a visionOS app in macOS clothing. And I hope you’ll give it a try, and let me know what you think.

sandwich.vision/hovercraft

— Adam Lisagor (@adamlisagor) 2026-05-06T17:30:43.254Z

Sandwich Vision hovercraft

Games at Work e495: Personal Planetarium (for Sandwich Vision’s Theater app)

Gaming

Insider Gaming article: XBox No Longer Developing Copilot for Consoles

Playdate Games: office chair curling

playdate

Dead New and Old Internet

Fast Company article: Is the ‘dead internet’ theory coming true? New Stanford research calculates exactly how far we are—and it’s alarming

Wikipedia article: Dead Internet Theory

Kate Davies Designs post: Knitting Bull****

YCombinator Hacker News post: Agents can now create Cloudflare accounts, buy domains, and deploy

TerryGodier.com essay: The Boring Internet 

Mashable article: ask.com shuts down after 30 years

HappyNetBox.com 

Wikipedia article: Finger (protocol)

Space

AnilDash.com post: Why are the Artemis II Photos on Flicker?

kottke.org post: Animated Artemis II Photos Reveal Satellites Buzzing Around Earth

minifigs.me Artemis II Crew with Studtella!

Games at Work e550: Moontella (for the Nutella story on Artemis II)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:36 — 57.7MB) | Embed

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e552 — Norwegian Blue Vision

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A very alive parrot with beautiful blue plumage, not kipping on its back.
Photo by Shannon Potter on Unsplash

Published 4 May 2026

e552 with Andy, Michael and Michael – stories and discussion on AI, life on Mars, life of the Vision Pro, retro C64s and a whole lot more!

Andy, Michael and Michael get things started with a brace of AI articles dealing with with a wide variety of topics.  First up is Meta’s use of employee activities on their corporate computers to train their AI models.  Then, a discussion on the SpaceX and Cursor business deal.  Next, a conversation on a breach to access the Claude Mythos model.  Interspersed with these is a discovery by NASA’s Curiosity rover finding organic molecules on Mars.

With a number of articles claiming, and paraphrasing here, that the Vision Pro is bereft of life, shuffled up its mortal coil and joined the choir invisible, Michael Rowe shares his perspective on the subject.  His says his Vision Pro is not an Ex-Vision Pro.

The cohosts go retro – as they are wont to do – with a flock of posts about all things Commodore.  Links below if you are curious and want to see what these devices look like.

While no Artemis II image for this week’s episode, do check out the minifigs.me offering of the crew, along with the jar of “Studella” in the links below.  There are a couple of additional bonus links that the cohosts didn’t have time to include in the episode that prove that we can have nice things.

What is your quest? What is your favorite Monty Python sketch? Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @gamesatwork_biz (our home for now) and let us know! 

These show notes were lovingly hand crafted by a real human, and not by a bot.  All rights reserved.  That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.

Selected Links

AI

The Verge article: Now Meta will track what employees do on their computers to train its AI agents

Futurism article: Your Former Employer Is Selling Your Slacks and Emails to Train AI

Anthropic news post: Introducing Claude Design by Anthropic Labs

The Verge article: SpaceX cuts a deal to maybe buy Cursor for $60 billion

kottke.org post: NASA’s Curiosity rover has detected organic molecules on Mars

Wikipedia article: Marvin the Martian 

The Verge article: Anthropic’s most dangerous AI model just fell into the wrong hands

Apple Vision Pro & more

Mac Rumors article: Apple Has Given Up on the Vision Pro After M5 Refresh Flop

Six Colors article: The Vision Pro: Not quite dead yet

Wikipedia article: Dead Parrot Sketch

lifewinning.com post: Alchemy Studies

Will It Blend

Games

Retrododo article: Factory 95 Sees Players Building PowerPoint Factories In Windows 95

Ravensburger Labyrinth

The Verge article: The Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum have been turned into retrofuturistic handhelds

Commodore C64 Ultimate

Games at Work e223: CES and C64 (for the Commodore 

retrogames.biz

Bonus Links

minifigs.me Artemis II Crew with Studtella!

People Magazine article: How Tiny Vending Machines Have Created a Resurgence in Popularity of Richard Scarry’s Busytown Universe (Exclusive)

FastCompany article: KitKat’s newest product is … a Faraday cage?

Slashfilm article: Ted Lasso Season 4 Trailer: Apple TV’s Comedy Series Returns With A New Football Team

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:52 — 12.9MB) | Embed

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e551 — ATProto Socials

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The exhaust plume left behind by the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket that launched Artemis II, NASA’s first crewed mission to the Moon since December 1972, dissipates in the Earth's atmosphere in this photograph from the International Space Station. NASA ID: iss074e0431736
Photo from the International Space Station 1 April 2026 of the exhaust plume from Artemis II in Earth’s atmosphere – NASA ID: iss074e0431736

Published 20 April 2026

e551 with Michael, Michael and Andy – a tour of the Atmosphere with ATProto, Sifa, Eurosky, Leaflet, a LEGO cacophonous karaoke of “Mad About Me” and a whole lot more!

Michael, Michael and Andy get things started with a series of applications powered by ATProto, the protocol powering Bluesky and many more.  Andy shares his experimentation & experiences with several of these applications, including a set curated on portal.Eurosky.tech such as Leaflet, Popfeed and Sifa.

Andy also shares Anisota, which is a gamified approach to Bluesky social media browsing where you may collect photos of moths and start expeditions.  Andy learned of Aetheros from from whitep4nth3r.com and takes Michael and Michael through it.  There is a nice capability in this service called Deckard, which provides a columnar view of Bluesky posts.

Rounding out the episode for this week, the co-hosts take a look at Aadam Jacobs’ collection of recordings on the Internet Archive. This is an impressive set of hundreds of live music recordings from 1984-2019.  Check it out in the show notes below.  And for a little more contemporary musical example, have a listen to a cacophonous karaoke of “Mad About Me” created with 7 of the Mos Eisley Cantina SMART Brick sets.  And to continue to set the mood for the upcoming , give a listen to the original via the YouTube embed.  Also, managed to get in an Artemis II reference for the third straight episode with the hero image.

What is your favorite Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes song?  Have your droids 🤖 drop our droids 🤖 a line at @gamesatwork_biz (our home for now) and let us know! 

These show notes were lovingly hand crafted by a real human, and not by a bot.  All rights reserved.  That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.

Selected Links

AT Protocol

AT Protocol

AT Protocol post: Understanding Atproto

The ATmosphereConf 2026

Bluesky

Wikipedia article: Personal Data Service (PDS)

Equals Drummond blog post: The Difference Between a Personal Cloud and a Personal Data Store

Smoke Signals

leaflet.pub 

Eurosky Portal

Eurosky’s Introducing Portal blog on leaflet

sifa.id 

Andy’s sifa.id post: https://sifa.id/p/andypiper.me 

anisota.net 

Aetheros.computer via (https://whitep4nth3r.com/)

Media

James Kottke blog post: Now Online: a Treasure Trove of 1000s of Secret Concert Recordings

Internet Archive: Aadam Jacobs Collection at the Live Music Archive

Brick Fanatics post: What can you do with £750 worth of LEGO SMART Play sets?

CBC article: 5 things you didn’t know about the Star Wars Cantina band (unless you are a total Star Wars nerd)

BBC article: LEGO’s new smart brick

Games at Work e546: Smart Play Doom Brain Brick (for the new LEGO SMART Brick)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:38 — 11.4MB) | Embed

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e550 — Moontella

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mashup of Victor Serban’s photo of a Nutella jar from Unsplash with an Artemis II photo of the Moon.
Mashup of photo by Victor Serban on Unsplash & images-assets.nasa.gov/image/art002e009287/art002e009287~orig.jpg

Published 13 April 2026

e550 with Michael, Andy and Michael – celebrating Moon Joy with the Artemis II crew, Nutella in space, AI, an isomorphic reboot of Wolf3D and a whole lot more!

Michael, Andy and Michael get things started for this episode with stories Artemis II mission, recorded just a few hours ahead of the splashdown off the California coast.  The Artemis II mission has captured the attention of many and reignited interest in space and space exploration.  NASA has leaned into the Moon Joy and the celebration of the Artemis II crew has inspired and touched the co-hosts. Check out the Artemis II moon wallpaper, and the LunarWall shortcut courtesy of Federico Viticci.  In addition to the Rise mascot floating around the Artemis capsule, the world certainly took note of the floating Nutella jar.  This was not the only COTS product aboard.  In addition to the photos shot on iPhone and Nikon D5, Jessica Alba’s Honest lotion also had its moment.

NPR had an entertaining story about all of the Moon movies – at least those that had Moon in the title.  This of course missed examples such as the Austin Powers film (with Moon Unit Alpha and Moon Unit Zappa).  Fortunately, Wikipedia has a set of movies set on the Moon.

In the AI section, which persisted throughout the episode, actually – “AI!” – the co-hosts talk about the 3D models created by Google’s Gemini.  They also take a moment to consider the reported cybersecurity vulnerability discoveries from Anthropic’s project Glasswing.

Rounding out the episode for this week, the crew takes a look at the Android XR capability for turning 2D websites, apps and more into 3D experiences.  And a fun reboot of Wolfenstein 3D in  isomorphic form – though a bit of a challenge without remapping the keys.

What can you think of that do not have moon in the title?  Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @gamesatwork_biz (our home for now) and let us know! 

These show notes were lovingly hand crafted by a real human, and not by a bot.  All rights reserved.  That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.

Selected Links

Artemis II Splashdown & More

Mashable article: How NASA made ‘moon joy’ a space-age catchphrase

Cult of Mac article: How to put stunning Artemis II moon wallpapers on your iPhone, iPad or Mac

Futurism article: Lone Jar of Nutella Drifts Around Cabin of Moon Spacecraft

Nutella at Costco

NPR article: The most memorable moon movies aren’t even about space

Wikipedia article: Category:Films set on the Moon

Games at Work e549: Dark Side of The Moon (for discussion & show notes on Artemis II)

AI

The Verge article: Google’s Gemini AI can answer your questions with 3D models and simulations

The Verge article: A new Anthropic model found security problems ‘in every major operating system and web browser’

Le Chat by mistral.ai 

3D

The Verge article: You can now turn 2D apps into 3D while using the Galaxy XR headset

Isowulf Wolfenstein 3D Mod

Wikipedia article: Wolfenstein 3D

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:42 — 11.5MB) | Embed

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