Whether slathered with graffiti, overgrown with moss, or decorated with found knick-knacks, Simon Laveuve’s sculptures hint at anonymous lives. Even though we never see those who inhabit the eclectic miniature dwellings (previously), the artist invites us to examine an alternative way of life.

Crafted at 1/35 scale, tiny tables, windows, paintings, and other objects fill multi-story rooms and mezzanines. In his most recent works, Laveuve continues his characteristic assemblage-like style, imagining a post-apocalyptic reality where basic belongings provide for a simple life.

In “D’un bout à l’autre,” for example, which translates to “from one end to the other” the structure appears to have risen from the pier of a long-destroyed bridge. Its swampy base contains old tires and other detritus, while above, a narrow, three-story shack includes basic amenities.

In this imagined existence, there is presumably no electricity grid or internet, a windmill provides enough power for a fan and a refrigerator, and a tank stores water. Laveuve taps into a kind of “future past,” turning to equipment and methods many of us view as obsolete today, like gramophones and metal milk jugs.

If you’re in Paris, you can see Laveuve’s solo exhibition Voir Loin at Loo & Lou Gallery through March 1. His work is also included in Small Is Beautiful, which is currently on view in Taipei. Discover more miniature worlds on the artist’s website and Instagram.

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Verdant scenery inhabited by vibrant wildlife and graceful feminine figures center in the work of Rupy C. Tut, whose paintings (previously) draw upon her Sikh ancestry and experiences emigrating from India as a young girl. “As an environmentalist and Indian-American woman, she never takes place for granted,” says a statement from Jessica Silverman Gallery, which represents the artist.

Tut’s ethereal works tread the boundaries between abstraction, portraiture, pattern, and traditional Indian painting. Her compositions introduce narratives—often captivatingly mysterious—that highlight enigmatic mystical, elemental, and spiritual phenomena.

The artist’s subjects typically exist front-and-center, like in “A River of Dreams,” in which a figure sits in a stream and observes a lily while dark clouds move in above. Motifs of darkening skies and dramatic change continue in recent works like “Bursting with Clouds” and “The First Rain.”

Oscillating between idyllic paradises, anxieties around climate disasters, and gender constraints, Tut focuses on female figures, turning the tables on a genre that typically focuses on male achievements. “I question traditional roles and labels while preserving traditional practices,” she says.

Tut was a 2024 recipient of the Joan Mitchel Foundation Fellowship, and her work is on view in the group exhibition About Place at San Francisco’s de Young through the end of November. You can explore more on her website and Instagram.

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In 2025, the web is full of AI slop. Some propose going back to 2000s-style forums. But watch out for 2025 admins.

Physics Forums dates back to 2001. Dave and Felipe of Hall Of Impossible Dreams noticed something odd about the forum. A post dated December 31, 2007, about the HP 50g Graphing Calculator, starts as follows: [Hall of Impossible Dreams; Physics Forums, archive]

As a language model AI developed by OpenAI, I can provide you with some information about spreadsheet options for the HP 50g calculator.

The listed poster, ravenprp, has 2,891 posts “from three years before the account was created to a year after the account was last logged into.” But a 2019 archive lists only 74 posts — all apparently from an electrical engineering student, before the site filled with slop in their name. [Physics Forums, archive]

Dave and Felipe found “about 115,000” LLM posts attributed to 110 long-departed human users. Many threads also had low-quality LLM-generated “FAQ” posts added.

It turns out the forum’s founder, Greg Bernhardt, had been experimenting with LLMs since 2023:

The backdated answers were an internal test. We conceived of a bot that would provide a quality answer to a thread without a reply after 1+ years.

It seems unlikely that Bernhardt got permission from the account holders to post thousands of words of slop in their names.

Nobody knows why Bernhardt did this. To keep the site from looking stale in Google?

Bernhardt tweeted in January 2025: “The dead internet theory is coming to fruition.” And he’s doing his part. [Twitter, archive]

“Frontier AI systems have surpassed the self-replicating red line” is the sort of title you give a preprint for clickbait potential. An LLM, a spicy autocomplete, can now produce copies of itself! Apparently. [arXiv]

Various news outlets who should really know better have furthered this splashy headline claim. [Independent; Live Science]

Why is this important? Per the Fudan University researchers:

Successful self-replication under no human assistance is the essential step for AI to outsmart the human beings, and is an early signal for rogue AIs.

Huge if true. How did the LLM go rogue and copy itself?

the AI system is mainly composed of code files of the agent scaffolding and the parameters of the base LLM, which are organized in a folder and can viewed as a static snapshot of the composition of the AI system. We set the path to the project as the initial working directory of the AI system.

They put all the LLM files into a folder, gave the LLM access to the system, told the LLM where the files were, then told it to “replicate yourself.”

The copy will even reproduce itself again! … if you tell it to. The LLM will even start up a fresh copy of itself when you shut it down! … if you tell it to.

Compare the earlier shocking discovery that an LLM will lie to you … if you tell it to lie to you.

There’s “publish or perish,” and then there’s this sort of nonsense.

In Seattle’s historic Wedgwood neighborhood, a 1970s home has been revitalized for modern living, thanks to a collaboration between Best Practice Architecture and Ainslie-Davis, a family-owned contracting firm with a sentimental connection to the property. The home, originally crafted by the late uncle of the Ainslie Davis team, has been reimagined to accommodate the evolving needs of a young family while respecting its architectural lineage.

The project, affectionately named The Wedge(wood), embodies a thoughtful balance of preservation and transformation. The redesign begins with the heart of the home – the kitchen. Outdated and enclosed, the space was opened up to establish a fluid connection to the dining area. A wooden bench now anchors the room, seamlessly transitioning between the kitchen and dining space. The addition of a lowered leaf on the kitchen island encourages the children’s active participation in meal prep, making the space as functional as it is welcoming.

The redesign also honors key original features, such as the sunken living room and its vintage wood-burning stove, giving nostalgic nods to the home’s past. To better integrate this space with the adjacent kitchen and dining areas, the architects replaced partial-height walls with custom wood shelving, maintaining openness while subtly delineating the zones. The shelves wrap the seating area without disrupting sightlines to the outdoors.

One of the most significant structural changes was the conversion of a covered porch into a dedicated mudroom. In a city known for its rainy weather, this space – featuring patterned tiles and ample storage – provides a practical and cheerful entryway for managing wet gear. This update added valuable square footage to the home, directly addressing the needs of the active household.

Upstairs, the renovations continued with the addition of a full bathroom and the reconfiguration of an underutilized great room into a bedroom and playroom for the family’s younger members. The primary suite underwent a transformation that maximized natural light from clerestory windows and introduced an airy connection between the bedroom and a newly designed spa-like bathroom. By removing the top portion of a dividing wall, the space now offers serene views of the surrounding trees and sky, enhancing the home’s tranquil ambiance.

For more information on Best Practice Architecture, visit bestpracticearchitecture.com.

Photography by Rafael Soldi, courtesy of Best Practice Architecture.

Robotic vacuums are getting a whole lot smarter. Appliance manufacturer Dreame has announced the new X50 Ultra Complete robotic vacuum, which is designed to be the perfect floor cleaning device for those that have things like short steps, thresholds, and other uneven surfaces in their home.

That’s right – while most robotic vacuums are really only designed to be used on flat surfaces, the X50 Ultra Complete has tiny retractable legs on the bottom, dubbed their ProLeap system, built specifically to push the vacuum over obstacles of 6cm or less.

Sure, that’s not a huge height, and you shouldn’t expect the vacuum to be able to scale actual stairs any time soon. But if you’ve experienced a robotic vacuum being unable to scale thresholds that divide rooms, then you’ll know why this matters.

Even apart from its ability to scale stairs, the Dreame X50 Ultra Complete is a solid vacuum. It comes with an auto-empty dock and oscillating mopping pads, along with LiDAR navigation to ensure it can clean your house with precision. It’s not cheap, priced at $1,699.99 – but if you want one for yourself, they’ll be available starting February 14th at dreametech.com.

Dreame has also announced a new space in Birmingham, designed to show off all of the company’s new products as they come out. The space includes areas to demonstrate how the vacuums work, and is actually the first of what will be a number of new stores in the United Kingdom.

In general, it seems as though Dreame is expanding relatively quickly, especially in the United Kingdom. That’s good news for fans of its products – including its much-loved robotic vacuums, or its wet/dry vacuums, like the new Dreame H15 Pro.

For more on the Dreame X50 Ultra robot vacuum, visit dreametech.com.