Welcome back to the 2026 season kickoff of Vibe Coded! In this episode, I cover the phenomenon of how open source software projects are either fending off or embracing the onslaught of agentic coding services, and the ways in which the technology is splitting the F/LOSS community asunder. I just keep thinking, it didn't have to be this way. But here we are!

📢 Hosted by Jared White

💬 Chat with me! Discord / Signal / Mastodon

🤌 Produced by Intuitive Future // Join Intuitive+ Today and support the show for only $5 a month (plus listen to the members-exclusive new show Future Insider)

📥 Subscribe to the Cycles Hyped No More newsletter, the companion to Vibe Coded

🎶 Theme music by Ben Elson

Links

• Fresh Fusion Podcast episode 128
• Recording on Linux: Ardour
• Shame! Open Slopware List
• Hurray! No-AI Policy List
• Hurray! EVi (vim fork) on Codeberg
• Shame! systemd discussion on disallowing genAI: Closed as not planned

The state of play in late 2025 and my expectation that the bubble will burst in 2026. The “Agentic Age” did not materialize this year. Anti-AI activism is heating up…people are noping the f out of the Torment Nexus. Gen-Z and Gen Alpha are turning against the slop machines. That's AI! goes the new lingo. Microsoft's AI CEO is getting pummeled online and a post-Windows PC landscape looking increasingly likely. This and a whole lot more, right here on Vibe Coded.

Hosted by Jared White
Produced by Intuitive Future // Join Intuitive+ Today and support the show for only $5 a month (plus listen to the members-exclusive new show Future Insider)
Subscribe to the Cycles Hyped No More newsletter, the companion to Vibe Coded
Theme music by Ben Elson

Links

• NEW! Human Web Collective: a forum for the AI-Free movement (join today for free!)
• No ~~Kings~~ Benevolent Dictators for Life
• Almost all major Windows 11 core features are broken?!
• AI vegans: Why Gen-Z are turning against chatbots
• Building AI the Firefox way: Shaping what’s next together
  • Last year’s AI feedback thread 😂
• Better Offline by Ed Zitron

The same tired, clichéd arguments keep coming up over and over again why we should all welcome our new robot overlords, so I'm here to knock 'em all down and push back systematically…but most importantly, make the case for the Pro-Craft Movement and how vital it is that we preserve and champion the historical & emotional components of Human Creativity.

Hosted by Jared White
Produced by Intuitive Future // Join Intuitive+ Today and support the show for only $5 a month
Subscribe to the Cycles Hyped No More newsletter, the companion to Vibe Coded
Theme music by Ben Elson

Links

• NEW! Human Web Collective: a forum for the AI-Free movement
• AI Podcast Start Up Plans 5,000 Shows, 3,000 Episode a Week

I’ve talked in length about the ethical quandaries surrounding generative AI, from the industrial-scale theft of intellectual property to the ways it harms both the natural as well as digital environments due to its extractive nature. But I also want to talk about the aesthetics of the slop output we have to contend with now on a regular basis, and I don’t just mean the political side of it—I and many others have been sounding the alarm that genAI lines right up with aesthetics of fascism. Rather, I want to explore the relationship between the slop machines and true art forms, and why we just aren’t seeing anything meaningful and lasting being produced using these problematic technologies.

Hosted by Jared White
Produced by Intuitive Future // Join Intuitive+ Today and support the show for only $5 a month
Subscribe to the Cycles Hyped No More newsletter, the companion to Vibe Coded
Theme music by Ben Elson

Links

• NEW! Human Web Collective: a forum for the AI-Free movement
• A Tale of Two Cyberspaces
• “100% of the music I love listening to was produced without the aid of slop machines”
• 'AI slop': Emily Portman and musicians on the mystery of fraudsters releasing songs in their name
• Embrace Generative Art, Reject Regurgitated Slop (podcast)
• A Photo with Paint FX is Not a Painting, But It Could Be Something Else
• 404 Media Podcast: Shrimp Jesus
• The AI vibe shift is upon us (CNN Business)
• Kat Tenbarge: Sam Altman's Dyson Sphere 😳
• Cat soap operas and babies trapped in space: the ‘AI slop’ taking over YouTube

In this episode, I have a lively chat with Cory Dransfeldt about getting started as a web developer making band websites and his recent work on design systems, his passion for supporting creators and the preservation of craft, the ai.robots.txt open source project, what the GitHub CEO said (note: we recorded this episode before he announced he was stepping down), releasing a music app for Navidrome, machines coming for our tattoos (!), and a whole lot more.

Hosted by Jared White
Produced by Intuitive Future // Join Intuitive+ Today and support the show for only $5 a month
Subscribe to the Cycles Hyped No More newsletter, the companion to Vibe Coded
Theme music by Ben Elson

Links

• A Tale of Two Cyberspaces (Cycles Hyped No More)
• Cory Dransfeldt website
• Mastodon profile
• “I made a music app”
• ai.robots.txt
• Done with GitHub

In this episode I talk about the shocking decline in AI safety, why AI is becoming a religion and that shouldn’t surprise us, software developer reluctance and growing impatience in using these tools, and the LMDs of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Oh yes, we’re going there!

Hosted by Jared White
Produced by Intuitive Future // Join Intuitive+ Today and support the show for only $5 a month
Subscribe to the Cycles Hyped No More newsletter, the companion to Vibe Coded
Theme music by Ben Elson

Links

• ChatGPT will ‘better detect’ mental distress after reports of it feeding people’s delusions
• Developers remain willing but reluctant to use AI: The 2025 Developer Survey results are here
• Why AI Is Becoming A Religion (It’s Not Psychosis) (YouTube) 
  • The Alt-Right Pipeline Almost Got Me. Here’s Why It Failed (YouTube)
• The End of Work as We Know It
• AI summaries cause ‘devastating’ drop in online news audiences: report
• ChatGPT users shocked to learn their chats were in Google search results
• OpenAI's CEO says he's scared of GPT-5
• Ghost 6.0

You're listening to the audio edition of my newsletter Cycles Hyped No More, right here on the Vibe Coded podcast.

In this issue I talk about The Truth 🫡 of Reliable Next-Generation 🔋 Green Energy Storage, because in case you're not aware, there is a concerted effort here in America to mislead the public when it comes to the topic of renewable energy. And rather than jump and wave our hands and scream CLIMATE CHANGE YOU FOOLS!, let's educate ourselves on the cutting-edge of storage solutions so we can…sound very smart at dinner parties. (And also, y'know, save the planet. Definitely that.)

Hosted by Jared White
Produced by Intuitive Future | Join Intuitive+ Today and support the show for only $5 a month
Subscribe to the Cycles Hyped No More newsletter, the companion to Vibe Coded
Theme music by Ben Elson

In this episode I talk about mental health in the face of changing technology, epistemological truth claims, and the future of work. Evidence is mounting that engaging credulously with unskilled gaslighting algorithms which simulate intelligence but lack any real intelligence is a hazard to human flourishing. It's a matter of dignity. It's a matter of craft. It's a matter of truth.

And always remember, two toenails don't make a clipper! 😂 (Don't worry, I'll explain the meaning of this, thank Google!)

Hosted by Jared White
Produced by Intuitive Future (support the show for only $5 a month)
Subscribe to the Cycles Hyped No More newsletter, the companion to Vibe Coded
Theme music by Ben Elson

Links

• LLMs are now a culture war (@[email protected])
• An OpenAI Investor Appears to Be Having a ChatGPT-Induced Mental Health Crisis
• Psychiatric Researchers Warn of Grim Psychological Risks for AI Users
• “Your judgment is clouded” 🤨 (@[email protected])
• Microsoft buys more than a billion dollars’ worth of excrement
• OpenAI goes for Microsoft’s jugular — its Office productivity suite

In this episode, I talk about this growing sense of dread that rather than genAI ushering in a glorious new age of superintelligence, it's actually manipulating us into believing this is happening all while making us way dumber…and in some cases, causing mental breaks from reality.

Hosted by Jared White
Produced by Intuitive Future (support the show for only $5 a month)
Subscribe to the Cycles Hyped No More newsletter, the companion to Vibe Coded
Theme music by Ben Elson

Links

• AI coding tools make developers slower, study finds
  • Mastodon thread
• "ChatGPT Psychosis": Experts Warn that People Are Losing Themselves to AI
• People Are Being Involuntarily Committed, Jailed After Spiraling Into "ChatGPT Psychosis"
• Inside ‘AI Addiction’ Support Groups, Where People Try to Stop Talking to Chatbots
• AI Is Making You Dumber (YouTube)
• Study warns of ‘significant risks’ in using AI therapy chatbots
• Developer of curl Daniel Stenberg on AI slop "security" reports
• YouTube monetization policies changing
• An open letter from educators who refuse the call to adopt GenAI in education

Fellow netizens, the moment you've all been waiting for: the inaugural episode of Jared White's new podcast Vibe Coded!
Magic escalators & floating men? Bots blocked bad by big business? 100 books read a day? All that and a whole lot more…most def you're not gonna want to miss this!

Follow Jared on Mastodon / Read Cycles Hyped No More newsletter

Links

• The AI Backlash Keeps Growing Stronger (WIRED)
• Cloudflare will now, by default, block AI bots from crawling its clients’ websites
• I’m Losing All Trust in the AI Industry
• Google Veo 3 fails, week 3 — fail harder with a vengeance
• Read >100 books a day! (h/t @[email protected])
• The AI Privilege Delusion
• WeatherStar 4000+ (h/t @[email protected])