Will never stop saying this, in the face of AI, book publishing had (has) an amazing opportunity to double down on everything - taste & curation (acquisition), nurture writers, editorial rigour and integrity, quality production & copyright protection. If they lose any of this to AI, they’re fucked.

The idea that water impacts from data centres are "made up" or "fake" is a nasty right-wing / tech shill talking point that seems to be getting more and more disconnected from reality every single day

Oh god everyone is saying “enshittifying” again and while I know WHY it enrages me It’s still another example of folks truly thinking them not knowing anything including basic pattern matching Is only impactful when a white man insults the Black woman who actually framed the discourse

Sometimes it’s not “enshittification” ( it almost never is) It’s either - this person was lying and you don’t want to examine how you missed it - it always was at this horrific level but for people you refused to even acknowledge - you thought the horror was a justified consequence

I am very cranky that "it used to work on my machine and now it doesn't so I'm going to make it everyone's problem" is considered reasonable political analysis by so many people.

Heads up. He is/was in a lot of starter packs, too, so check yours if you've made one so you're no longer recommending a rapist.

“Wire mother?”

me over a decade ago: startups are a cult everybody then: nahhhh startups today: it's inject-yourself friyays!!

Straight hockey players? In this economy?!

“A University of Michigan researcher told the AP that Whisper created false text in 80 percent of public meeting transcripts examined.” Consider saying “no” if your doctor wants to use “AI transcription” for your appointment.

Not just lobbying! our new paper maps 27 mechanisms of regulatory capture used by Big AI + 11 narrative framings that rationalise capture. “Big AI’s Regulatory Capture: Mapping Industry Interference and Government Complicity” will be presented at #FAccT2026 next month arxiv.org/abs/2605.068... 1/

‘Remain calm’: Japan is gripped by fears of a naphtha shortage. What is it and why are people worried?

And while we're talking about training, my friend @sarasoueidan.com is running a big promo lately for her excellent accessibility course. I've taken it and very earnestly recommend it. practical-accessibility.today

It's either a bunny or a cat. Or a bunnycat. A cyclops? #Iceland #photography #streetphotography #abandoned #decay #window #concrete #graffiti

I know this is The Forbidden Topic but here is the truth: cheap food in the US is generally bad and cheap food in the UK is generally bad. You can get EXCELLENT food in both countries but it tends to be expensive, urban or both. Good food cultures eg Italy have widespread cheap excellent food

again, staying completely silent on the actual merits of ai, the initial ai boosters basically campaigned on "this will eliminate your job, forever, and make me personally rich." it should not surprise *anyone* that this provoked a backlash.

This is one of the most satisfying things I’ve ever seen. Every single tech oligarch should be treated like this all the time. No comfort, no coddling, no hero worship. Just derision and booing everywhere they go all the time. youtu.be/5MYggR_PPRg?...

I am once again proposing this. If it works well, we can lower the threshold to $500 million.

This photo definitely does not work but I am fond of how it's capturing the moment

Here's a little peek at next week's abandoned building. Have a great weekend! #Iceland #photography #streetphotography #nature #landscape #naturephotography #landscapephotography #abandoned #decay #sea

Another tiny house. I'm not sure what this was used for. #Iceland #photography #streetphotography #nature #landscape #naturephotography #landscapephotography #abandoned #decay #rust

An old storage shed that was next to an abandoned summer cabin. #Iceland #photography #streetphotography #abandoned #decay #chair

Something something "landscape of contrasts" something something #iceland #photo #landscape

I hate surveys that ask people if they have a positive/negative opinion about a country but anyhow: thediplomat.com/2026/05/poll...

A bunch of engineers spending a couple decades denigrating any field involved with soft squishy feelings has led to the literal inability to craft a narrative the average human wouldn't recoil from in horror.

People have just wildly misjudged how the youths feel about the "we will replace you with software lol ps your student loan repayment plans will change monthly have fun" era

I love growing fruit and veg but ye gods it's not an economical way to eat.

Alien: And how did you run out of water? Earthling: Machines drank it. Alien: Machines. Earthling: We had to feed machines the water. Aliens: So the machines were holding your planet hostage for water. Earthling: No, we made the thirsty machines. They worked for us. Alien: End communication.

Birth rate discourse is like “It turns out if you give women more choices, they’re less likely to make ones that make their lives harder.” Which is really helpful in figuring out how we can improve society somewhat. But instead people are like wow giving women more choices was a mistake

Holy moly this has been bugging me for weeks because I couldn't place Altman and yup. Nailed it. The resemblance is way deeper than mere appearance.

The kids are alright. Quite on top of everything else, what kind of bozo makes a graduation speech that isn't actually about the graduates?

The answer is no. There is no way that smartphones are responsible for a 40% decline in worldwide fertility rate. This is what the graph looks like from 1970 to the present (from @ourworldindata.org).

I would love if we could make the audiobook of my novel a big success as a big fuck you to Unbound/Boundless

“I don't understand what it's supposed to do. Every time I see a video on Instagram that's like, 'Hollywood is cooked,' what follows is, like, the most stupid dog shit I've ever seen in my life…”

“Pivot to AI needs your support — sign up to the Patreon today! – Pivot to AI” https://pivot-to-ai.com/2026/05/16/pivot-to-ai-needs-your-support-sign-up-to-the-patreon-today/

So, the nationalist parties won a substantial victory in the municipal elections here in Iceland yesterday, which is honestly a bit discouraging.

“…reinforcing previous studies, the researchers found that a patchwork of state, federal and local policies allow data center operators to avoid publicly disclosing their actual water use.”

At the conclusion of the "build-measure-learn" era of tech, we find that it has not accomplished very much at all: startups fail no less frequently than they did before the rise and fall of the "agility" circlejerk. The helpless flailing of "synthetic users" is only accelerating the collapse.

The second one by Evan Garris describing how those same programmers gave up their only leverage on their employers, by exchanging their relationship with reality (which corporate fiat could not overrule) for a performance of fluency for its own sake. AI code is the apotheosis of this transition.

In 1966 Joseph Weizenbaum developed ELIZA, a chatbot. He programmed a doctor script that simulated a therapist by rephrasing replies as questions. In 1976 he wrote the attached quote in his book. Whenever someone says they asked ChatGPT or Claude I think of this quote.

Also? People are conditioned to hate apps at this point. Little data harvesting machines to sell our data. Little walled gardens that punish you for wanting to leave the app to share a link or content. They're annoying. Nobody wants that shit anymore.

Joined @majorityreport.bsky.social yesterday to talk about The AI Con, the inevitability narrative of "AI" that exists on the Left, and Kevin O'Leary massive data center projects in Utah. majorityreportradio.com/2026/05/14/t...

“Self-Driving School” https://2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/the-self-driving-school/ > It’s a good reminder of much of the talk of automation and replacement – whether of truckers or of office workers – rests on an utter misanthropy;

We are in big trouble that there is a generation who are not troubleshooting junior entry level tasks in literally any industry using their own brain So if they can’t do junior stuff, how will we get middleweights. And if we don’t get middleweights, we never get anyone who knows what they’re doing

the generational de-skilling is almost the entire point of this technology. its architects are very open about wanting to bring about a new feudal order, with themselves as its barons.

"The old world of tech is dying and the new cannot be born" www.baldurbjarnason.com/2026/the-old... This ones leans a bit more into theory and politics than I usually do when writing about the industry, but this moment in time warrants it, I think.

Tech companies aren't *just* building literal gas infrastructure. They are building rhetorical and empirical greenwashing infrastructure, so they can lie to investors, customers, and the general public about the shockingly severe and acute impacts of their carbon bomb data centre projects.

A fun computer sec fact is that, for the longest time, work computers kept being infected by the darnedest things, for seemingly no reason. At length, they figured out it was because people wanted to watch anime and installed "players" to do it. Incident rates dropped when they just preshipped VLC