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A new extension for Chrome stops AI slop from invading your life. Called Slop Evader, it is a temporal firewall that modifies your Google search queries to exclude any results indexed after November 30, 2022. That is the day the ChatGPT asteroid hit the open web, upending culture and reality as we know it. Installing Slop Evader is easy: just add it to Chrome, toggle it on, and suddenly, the scroll of generative garbage vanishes. You are back in the old internet knowing that every article you read is not the product of simulated intelligence. It’s an enticing idea, especially given that the latest estimation is that more than 50% of all new articles on the internet are now generated by AI. But the digitally Amish lifestyle has an obvious flaw: You aren’t just evading slop; you are evading legitimate news, scientific breakthroughs, and culture itself. Which, on second thought, maybe is a good idea too. The Chrome extension works on a premise that is 50% brilliant, 50% useless, and 100% depressing. Slop Evader is a powerful statement, but not exactly a solution. It’s a vacation from the permanent doubt that comes from clicking on anything these days. [Screenshots: Slop Evader] Kill AI switch It doesnt seem the AI slop will stop. Europol predicts that by 2026, 90% of online content could be synthetically generated. We are no longer surfing a web of human knowledge; we are drowning in a sea of hallucinations. We dont need gimmicks. We need a way to access information without risk of being deceived by machines. We need a built-in toggle in every browser and platform to turn off the machine-generated trash. Since AI can no longer be detected by software, our only hope lies in proving what is real, not spotting what is fake. There are already some efforts to do exactly that. For images, videos, and sound, the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authentication (C2PA) has proposed a digital birth certificate for every pixel and sound wave you encounter. The technology already exists to cryptographically sign media at the point of capture, creating an unbroken chain of custody from the camera lens to your screen. When I spoke to Ziad AsgharSVP of product management at Qualcommto talk about the end of reality, he told me that fake audio and video content is a big concern for everyone. “As these [AI] technologies become more prevalent, this is going to be a challenge,” he says. He was right two years ago, he is even more right today. We need content that works like NFTs, using blockchain-like certificates to prove a video or an article wasn’t hallucinated by a GPU. Qualcomm has successfully integrated C2PA support directly into its Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 mobile platform. The chip uses cryptography to sign the actual pixels of your photos the moment you snap them. Sony, Canon, and Leica have also rolled out firmware updates that sign images right at the point of capture. If you shoot with a Sony Alpha 9 III or a Canon EOS R1 today, you can generate a tamper-evident digital birth certificate for that file. The problem is that most platforms shred this information when you upload. There are exceptions. TikTok supports C2PA and tells users what content was actually captured by a camera. Google has started integrating C2PA into its Search and Ads platforms, allowing the About this image tool to verify provenance. And LinkedIn has the best option: The company says that it overlays an icon on C2PA-signed images that users can click to inspect the edit history. So it can be done. If there was another certification standard for other types of contentlike this articleand if every platform supported the standards in full, users would be able to push the Kill AI switch. But, of course, you know where this ends. Yeah, it will never happen The same tech giants adopting these standards are simultaneously playing a cynical double game. While Meta and TikTok claim to be cracking down on AI slop by downranking third-party generated content, they are aggressively pushing their own AI tools. TikTok limits the reach of external AI videos while actively encouraging you to use its in-app AI filters. Meanwhile, Meta says it will throttle down AI content promotion, but they give users AI tools to create an eternal tsunami of slop. They aren’t trying to save the internet from AI. They are trying to secure their own monopoly on AI pollution. They want to ensure that the only slop you consume is the premium, high-margin slop they generated for you. It is all about revenue domination. If you use Midjourney, you are a spammer. If you use Meta AI, you are a “creator. We can’t expect the companies profiting from AI creation to give us tools to deactivate the very content we create on their platform. So it seems, for now, our best (and imperfect) bet is something like Slop Evadera time machine to transport you to a simpler time.
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E-Commerce
Lego has a nostalgia problem. I do, too. Like Hollywood and its eternal cycle of remakes, the Danish company has found a bottomless treasure pot full of GenX and Gen Z people willing to burn their credit cards to turn their golden memories into bricks. By my count, 2025 alone brought a record-setting 16 sets related to old Lego properties and external IPs, shattering 2023’s previous peak of 9 sets. Whether that’s considered a problem or not depends on who you ask. You can argue that we (the people who keep buying these sets) are all the ones who have the problem. The Danish are just milking it. Building Lego soothes kids and adults alike but, when you are putting together these nostalgia-sets, there is an additional satisfaction factor. Its part of you, its what you know, like that old song that plays in your head from time to time and you have the urge to play on your headphones. As you assemble it, you can’t help but enjoy the way in which the Billund designers have abstracted the original objects and created details and features that seem impossible to reproduce at pixel-size brick resolution. Lego won’t share sales figures but, privately, insiders have hinted that these sets bring in lots of revenue, especially because they are large and complex with many pieces and high price tags. The year-over-year increase of new sets seem to confirms this: Between 2014 and 2022, the company released an average of 3.7 sets per year tapping into ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s themes. That number has more than doubled. From 2023 through 2025, Lego produced 31 nostalgia-focused setsa dramatic acceleration that establishes a new baseline. Many of these sets are part of the Lego Icons line, which launched in 2020 as a way to tap into the growing appetite from Lego’s adult customers. Other sets come through the Lego Ideas, launched in 2008, a sort of Kickstarter-ish platform that asks fans to submit designs for official Lego sets. These are then voted on by the community and a handful become commercial products each year. Until 2024, it was an open design call but that year Lego launched explicitly decade-targeted design challenges. First came the “Turn Back Time80s Challenge,” which generated more than 290 submissions. The challenge proved so successful that Lego immediately launched a “Build Your Nostalgia90s Throwback” competition for 2025. Rather than waiting for the nostalgia to happen organically, Lego is now actively soliciting it because it works. Now, if you are like meor my son, who is definitely not a Gen X but is growing up in Gen X cultureyou may be wondering whats cool this year. Well, thats why Im here, my friends. These are the best at every price point all the way up to the crazy nuts $1,000 Death Star (now, if you buy that one, then you will have a very real problem of the financial kind). [Photo: Lego] Home One Starcruiser This is a tiny reminder that Star Wars Original Trilogy sets remain a cornerstone of Lego’s nostalgia strategy. Released January 2025 for $70, this 559-piece Rebel Alliance frigate appeared in Return of the Jedi as part of the climactic Endor battle. It’s a compact set designed for anyone who wants a manageable Star Wars display without a 7,541-piece Millennium Falcon commitment. That it came out on the very first day of 2025 signals how central Star Wars remains to Lego’s calendar. [Photo: Lego] The Simpsons: Krusty Burger This year also brought a new Simpson set. Homer’s favorite fast-food joint comes to life with 1,635 pieces. The Krusty Burger has been serving fictional beef since the show’s early ’90s heyday, and Lego has captured every detail: the oversized signage, the drive-through window, and a small buildable Krusty the Clown figure. It’s the kind of set that doesn’t pretend to be anything other than what it isa shrine to a show that defined a generation’s sense of humor. At $210, it’s a reasonable price point for 1990s pop-culture archaeology. The set includes minifigures of Homer, Marge, Krusty, and the rest of Springfields best and finest. [Photo: Lego] Williams Racing FW14B & Nigel Mansell After releasing Ayrton Sennas McLaren last year, this is Lego’s tribute to one of Formula One’s most dominant seasons: 1992, when British driver Nigel Mansell piloted the Williams FW14B to legendary status. With 799 pieces and priced at $80, this is the kind of nostalgia that doesn’t rely on Hollywood but will appeal to the GenX and GenZ generations. The model includes working steering and suspension details that make it feel less like a toy and more like precision engineering translated into plastic. [Photo: Lego] Blacktron Renegade This one is pure Lego archaeology and made a lot of people happy back in the late ’80s. The Blacktron theme launched in 1987 and became one of the company’s most iconic design languagesa line of villainous space vehicles with electric lime-yellow and black color schemes that defined entire childhoods, opposite from the late ’70s good guys of the Galaxy Explorer. The Blacktron Renegade, $100, resurrects that aesthetic with precision. [Photo: Lego] Minifigure Vending Machine This one emerged from Lego’s Ideas platform, and it is a meta-nostalgic deep cut. The 315-piece set is essentially a tribute to Lego’s own 1980s and ’90s theme history. The vending machine dispenses minifigures, but the real genius is that it functions as a shrine to classic Lego design eras. It’s designed to celebrate the Classic Space, Pirates, and Castle themes that defined childhoods. Priced at $100, it’s Lego essentially building a monument to itself, self-referencing nostalgia so dense that it risks becoming an emotional black hole. [Photo: Lego] Gremlins: Gizmo The 1,125-piece set captures Gizmo, the Mogwai creature from Gremlins, in brick form. The process of bringing Gizmo to life required Lego’s design team to solve problems that shouldn’t exist. How do you suggest fur texture with plastic bricks? How do you create a nose that reads as a nose without being literal? Lego senior model designer Chris McVeigh told me how he tackled the fur question by using a specific element he originally developed for Lego’s 2023 Architecture set of Himeji Castle: a small 2×2 plate with an upturned corner. “I decided to use that to give the effect of wispy hair flowing off the model,” McVeigh says. For the nose, he experimented with half-circle and full-circle plates, ultimately landing on a 2×2 round plate with subtle cutouts. “It’s one of the exciting things about Lego,” McVeigh explains. “The brain fills the blanks.” At $110, it’s priced in the mid-range for a detailed character build, which is appropriate for a creature that required months of design refinement to get exactly right. [Photo: Lego] The Goonies This 2,912-piece behemoth, priced at $330, recreates an iconic scene from Richard Donner’s 1985 adventure film. Born from Lego’s “Turn Back Time80s Challenge,” where it competed against more than 290 other submissions, the set includes buildable structures and minifigures of the main Goonies characters. It doesnt get more cultish than that. [Photo: Lego] Captain Jack Sparrow’s Pirate Ship OK, so this one is early aughts but, with Jerry Bruckheimer and Johnny Depp, it feels ’90s to me. Released in September, its backordered everywhere, becoming one of the companys hottest hits. The $380 set brings Jack Sparrow and the Black Pearl to life with 2,862 pieces, recreating the iconic pirate ship from the 2003 film The Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, complete with detailed rigging, a functioning ship’s wheel, a working cannon, and a brig with torture implements. Multiple minifigures come with the set, including Jack Sparrow, Barbossa, Elizabeth Swann, and Will Turner. [Photo: Lego] Star Trek: U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-D This was a shocker for Lego aficionados, who are used to living in a Star Wars dominated world. Just for that, it became the champion of 2025 nostalgia releases with 3,600 pieces. Priced at $400, it reproduces the Starship Enterprise-D from TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation, which aired from 1987 to 1994 and defined what Star Trek meant to millions of people who never watched the original. The model measures 23.5 inches long and includes a working saucer separation functiona feature so technically ambitious it required serious engineering. It has all the crew (nine minifigures), including Captain Picard. It’s also bundled with set 40768, the Star Trek Type-15 Shuttlepod, a 261-piece GWP that features opening wing doors and a detailed interior LCARS display. [Photo: Lego] Lego Game Boy The $60 set recreates the original 1989 Nintendo Game Boy in brick form with impressive accuracy. The measurements are almost identical to the original and it includes posable directional buttons, a pressable A/B button cluster, and a buildable cartridge slot. The set even includes minifigure-scale versions of classic Game Boy games like Tetris and The Legend of Zelda printed on the buildable cartridges. Its also my favorite set because you can actually make it into a real Game Boy using this kit. [Photo: Lego] Death Star This is no Lego Set. At 9,023 pieces and $1,000, this is a bloody actual moon. It is so big it must actually have its own gravity field. It is also the most expensive Lego set ever made, breaking the previous record held by both the Millennium Falcon UCS ($850) and the AT-AT UCS ($850). Released back in October, this Death Star is a cross-section cutaway of the Empire’s most infamous space station that features little vignettes from A New Hope and Return of the Jedi: the detention block, trash compactor, tractor beam control room, Moff Tarkin’s boardroom, and the Emperor’s Throne Room where Luke and Vader’s final confrontation takes place. It stands 27.5 inches tall and it is 31 inches wide. The build includes 38 minifiguresincluding three different Luke SkywalkersTatooine outfit, Stormtrooper disguise, and Return of the Jedis Jedi Knighttwo Han Solos, Princess Leia, Darth Vader, Emperor Palpatine, Grand Moff Tarkin, and even the internet-famous Hot Tub Stormtrooper from the Lego Star Wars video games. [Screenshot: Lego Ideas] X-Files: The Truth Is Out There This set is not released yet, but it was announced in 2025 as the winner of Lego’s “Build Your Nostalgia90s Throwback” challenge. While it is currently in development with no official release date or price yet confirmed, the design won a competitive fan vote against four other finalists: Edward Scissorhands, The Fifth Element, Jumanji, and Buffy the Vampire Slayerall quintessential ’90s intellectual property. The fact that the X-Files won tells you everything about which generational cohort Lego is chasing right now. Its also a great fit for our times, as the show that defined paranoia and skepticism for everyone born between 1970 and 1990.
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E-Commerce
When the Department of the Interior announced on Monday that it was suspending the leases of five offshore wind farms that are currently under construction, it blamed national security concerns. Military experts say thats an excuse. I think it is all made up, says Dave Belote, a retired Air Force colonel who previously led the Department of Defenses energy siting clearinghouse at the Pentagon and who currently consults with onshore wind companies about military issues. I’ve got 15 years of experience that I will stack against the Secretary of Interior to say that is all made up to please a president that just irrationally hates windmills. Each of the five projectstwo off the coast of New York, and others in Massachusetts, Virginia, and Rhode Islandwent through a yearslong vetting process that closely involved the Department of Defense, now renamed the Department of War. (After the administration threatened some of the wind farms earlier in the year, New York Governor Kathy Hochul reportedly negotiated with the Trump administration and even agreed to approve a natural gas pipeline in exchange for saving one of the wind farmsbut those efforts may now have been in vain.) Any potential military issues were already fully considered, says Belote. When it announced the new cancellations, the Department of Interior cited radar issues. But thats already well knownand the Department of Defense has known how to deal with it for more than a decade. Spinning wind turbines do interfere with radar, but wind project developers currently pay for a software patch that edits that interference out of NORADs radar scope. With a bigger investment, the radar itself could be upgraded to eliminate the issue without relying on the patch. The military needs to know how to deal with wind turbines regardless of whether they’re in U.S. waters. China, for example, has 129 offshore wind farms. “They are concentrated along the shorelines in the most militarily significant areas around Shanghai and around Taiwan Strait,” says Belote. “If any American is launching from a carrier or Guam or Japan or Korea and pointed west at the Chinese shoreline, that man or woman in the fighter cockpit or bomber cockpit is going to have to deal with a whole bunch of spinning wind turbines on their radar scopes or head of displays. So the whole idea that we can neither train nor detect threats in the presence of small numbers of offshore wind turbines is ludicrous.” The administration has also cited unspecified “classified” issues, but Belote saysas someone who has considered all possible issues that could theoretically occurthat those issues don’t exist. “There’s no there there,” he says. (The Department of Defense said it could not immediately respond to Fast Company‘s request for a comment on the issue.) On the East Coast, Belote argues that the military could even make use of the infrastructure on offshore wind turbines because they already have power, fiber optics, and security that could improve communications in military exercises. There’s also a bigger national security argument: wind is a critical domestic energy source at a time when the country needs to rapidly ramp up production. “Energy security is national security,” Kirk Lippold, a retired Navy commander, wrote earlier this year. “Americas coastal regions host nearly 40% of our population, and offshore wind offers a direct and effective way to provide these areas with utility-scale energy. This is not just about powerits about ensuring that those economic centers remain online amid geopolitical instability or supply chain disruption. When we cede control of our energy futurewhether to geopolitical rivals, volatile oil markets, or outdated infrastructurewe weaken our ability to defend American interests at home and abroad.” A group of retired senior military officials echoed the same arguments in an open letter to Secretary Burgum in May. Because of the strain that data centers are putting on the grid, “it has never been so important that our country is energy independent,” they wrote. “When we rely on energy from foreign countries, it leaves us vulnerable to global market shocks outside of our control.” Collectively, the offshore wind projects could power more than 2.5 million homes and businesses. They also could help tackle soaring energy bills for consumers. It’s not clear what will happen next. The Trump administration also tried to stop Rhode Island’s Revolution Wind project earlier in the year, but a court stepped in and the project resumed construction. “When the Trump Administration imposed a stop work order on Revolution Wind several months ago based on similarly vague assertions regarding national security, the courts found that order was unlawful and stopped the Trump administrations effort to obstruct the build-out of clean, affordable power,” says Ted Kelly, director and lead counsel at the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund. “The administration is now trying to unlawfully stop these five projects which are creating thousands of jobs and making electricity more affordable, including Revolution Wind. We will see what happens in the courts. Even if the administration fails again in court, another pause will make it harder for the projects to survive. When Revolution Wind previously stopped work, it reportedly cost the developer more than $2 million a day.
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E-Commerce
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