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May 22-24, 2026 · 10 links

A grab bag of resistance and reckoning: catalogs of refusal (The AI Resist List, Part of the Solution or Part of the Problem) sit alongside the FTC's settlement with Cox Media Group over deceptive ad practices and CMG's own pitch deck pushing "Active Listening" voice-data targeting ; the practice and the punishment in the same week. Underneath, a quieter thread on craft and memory: The Colorist Archive, the tufte-viz Claude Code skill, and the Acme design system reference all argue for considered tools over generic ones. Rounding it out, two essays mourning what the web became (The Internet After Failed Utopias, The Future Perfect) and Zendaya's Shape of Dreams as the cultural beat between them.

The AI Resist List

airesistlist.org

Nothing about the current trajectory of AI development is inevitable. It was shaped by the thousands of subjective decisions of a tiny elite, and continues its march based on the active participation and tacit consent of people globally.

Inspired by Choose Democracy’s Resist List against authoritarianism, we organized the AI resistance movements we documented based on how they pressure different “Pillars of Support” that uphold and perpetuate the empires.

Our list is not meant to be comprehensive. Rather we selected a sample of movements to show different approaches to resistance and to illustrate how anyone can help shape the future of AI development.

The Colorist Archive

meditationsincolor.com

A living archive of how artists work with color across time. Each artist profile scans publicly available works to trace dominant colors, a chromatic fingerprint, and the arc of a palette across a lifetime.256 Artists, 19,144 Works, 15 Collections.A living archive of how artists work with color across time. Each artist profile scans publicly available works to trace dominant colors, a chromatic fingerprint, and the arc of a palette across a lifetime.256 Artists, 19,144 Works, 15 Collections.

tufte-viz Claude Code skill

gist.github.com

— Edward Tufte data visualization principles

Acme — Design System Reference

thariqs.github.io

Acme design system Generated from src/styles/tokens.ts and src/components/ — use as a portable reference when prompting.

The Internet After Failed Utopias The Internet After Failed Utopias

sleek-mag.com

Vuk Ćosić looks back at the promises that once surrounded the internet and their afterlives. In conversation with Anika Meier for SLEEK, he speaks about nettime, browser art, artistic resistance, and the institutionalization of internet culture. He also reflects on the moment the community he believed in became, in his words, “an audience and a springboard for careers.” Looking at today’s debates around AI and crypto, he sees echoes of the promises that once surrounded the early internet. “We believed in some of the utopias because we wanted them to happen,” he says. “But we were also among the first to criticize them.”

Part of the Solution or Part of the Problem

michaeljctaylorphd.substack.com

Americans are often influenced by their chosen media to expect and depend on binary choices, reducing perceptions to simple black-and-white options. Instead of accepting life’s nuances, they favor straightforward decisions, complicating rational political understanding. This approach also causes them to see opposing views as wholly evil, fueling strong opposition to rivals’ proposals. Ultimately, this leads to a deeply divided society, enabling a minority to seize power for their benefit. Therefore, one should be cautious of binary choices from the start.Americans are often influenced by their chosen media to expect and depend on binary choices, reducing perceptions to simple black-and-white options. Instead of accepting life’s nuances, they favor straightforward decisions, complicating rational political understanding. This approach also causes them to see opposing views as wholly evil, fueling strong opposition to rivals’ proposals. Ultimately, this leads to a deeply divided society, enabling a minority to seize power for their benefit. Therefore, one should be cautious of binary choices from the start.

FTC to Require Cox Media Group, Two Other Firms to Pay Nearly $1 Million to Settle Charges They Deceived Customers About

ftc.gov

The Federal Trade Commission will require Cox Media Group (CMG) and two smaller marketing firms to pay a total of $930,000 to settle allegations they deceived customers by falsely claiming to offer an AI-powered service that could target localized ads based on conversations captured from consumers’ smart devices and that consumers had opted into such targeting.

CMG Pitch Deck on Voice-Data Advertising 'Active Listening'

documentcloud.org

. Consumers leave a data trail based on their conversations and onlinebehavior2. A.I. collects and analyzes this behavioral and voice data from 470+sources3. Processing voice data with behavioral data identifies an audience who is“ready-to-buy”4. We take this data, and align it with your products and services, to build anaudience list in a defined 10-mile radius5. This audience list is uploaded into our ad platforms to target your digitaladvertising6. Once launched, the technology automatically analyzes your site trafficand customers to fuel audience targeting on an ongoing basis

Shape of Dreams, starring Zendaya.

youtube.com

Welcome to Zendaya’s Dream Lab - Film written and directed by Spike Jonze.

The Future Perfect

harvarddesignmagazine.org

If you treat AI as a tool, you ask: how do I get the right answer? If you treat it as a medium, you ask: what happens if I push this?

The difference is immediate. A prompt stops being an instruction that returns a correct (or not) answer and starts being a sketch—something provisional, something you can revise, distort, overwork. The point is not to nail it on the first try. You are trying to see what these models do under pressure.

In my class, the first principle is simple: Do not take what comes back from prompts at face value. Interrogate it. Iterate on it. Stay with it longer than feels efficient.

One of the clearest examples of this came from Roy Zhang, a student in the Master of Design Studies (MDes) program who graduated in 2025, who asked what sounds like a trivial question: what happens if you ask the same thing over and over again?

He took a single image from the collection at Harvard’s Houghton Library and asked ChatGPT to generate twenty keywords describing it. Then he did it again. And again. Twenty times using the same prompt. He compared the returned lists of keywords with each successive list and found something fascinating.