Always good to remember that COBOL was once positioned to replace the software engineer with lay programmers. Which of course did not happen and instead got us the Y2K maintenance crisis.

While I think this touches on some true aspect, a lot of the allure of current LLMs for managers is less worker deskilling but de-mystification of some of the more opaque skill sets. It’s all about giving people in charge a sense of control and insight, and thus devaluation.

I mean, non-euphamistically this is what the "permanent underclass" and "brokies" language used in the agentic coding and vibe-coding communities respectively is all about. Crypto's WAGMI/NGMI but for $200-$500 monthly token subscription budgets as the barrier to entry for learning the tech.

I do worry that the right might be able to capture the climate discourse and reduce it to one of individual adaptation through gadgets, rather than the fight against systemic issues www.theguardian.com/environment/...

☀️

In minor personal news: I am part of yet another thing cnti.org/resource/aij...

ABS works in baseball coz MLB recognized that if u only care about optimizing call accuracy, the tech would destroy the sport. They spent 7 years finding a solution that balance accuracy, entertainment, speed, and the art of baseball. (we wrote a FAccT paper on this: arxiv.org/abs/2605.16237)

Nah that tracks. I guess Cthulhu is almost a lesser evil at this point.

“A flexible venue for work at the intersection of history, computation, and critical approaches to political economy, empire, and environment — draft papers, dataset notes, method sketches, and short pieces that don't fit traditional formats.” working-papers-in-critical-search.github.io/home/

Exklusiv: Wir haben die KI Maschine der AfD gefunden, Weidel nutzt sie. Und dann haben wir von der AfD Testzugänge bekommen. Das Ding verstößt gegen alle US-Tech-Firmen die es nutzt. Deren Reaktion und wem der AfD Mann sonst seine Dienste anbietet, lest ihr im Text: correctiv.org/aktuelles/ge...

“The familiar claim that generative AI drives the cost of cognition toward zero gets the problem backward. What AI cheapens is the appearance of knowledge: plausible claims that circulate as if warranted.” 👀 journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

*actually solid use of AI*

Elon Musk told Davos orbital data centers would be cost-competitive in two to three years. SpaceX told the SEC they “may not achieve commercial viability.” Both statements were made before a $2 trillion IPO. So which is it?

Figuring out whether I can transport new Muji shelves on the replacement buses (due to construction) feels like a very Munich experience.

feels like a huge loss for the journalism industry that nobody has dropped acid at the great american state fair and blogged about it yet

This is a very funny thing to find out and then to conclude: we're still early!!! www.notion.com/resources/in...

Cool, cool, cool www.hcn.org/articles/peo...

So… I guess OpenAI will try and go for that Teenage Engineering coop?

Who are the crypto bros? The amazing Izaura Solipa crunched the data. Short answer: Crypto bros share the same privileged traits, educational credentials, and institutional access that characterize elites in 'traditional' Wall Street segments. Just out in SER: academic.oup.com/ser/advance-...

Still going strong after a week. It's a great example of how online discourse is so distorted by rage-baiting and attention-seeking that it is far removed from anything grounded or useful.

This looks absolutely delightful www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8BY...

It’s been a weekend

The anti-cybertruck www.theverge.com/transportati...

Not as cool as the headline makes it sound, though www.economist.com/business/202...

The ony thing Facebook was truly missing: gambling www.nytimes.com/2026/06/23/t...

“When you tell a large group of workers that their skills no longer have economic value, you risk a polit­ical and social tinderbox.” I can’t help but think that most so-called knowledge workers, if they have been awake, have been depressed since November ’22. matthewbutterick.com/extinction-l...

You could write a very good STS paper about the American discourse on European ACs…

i made a version of wikipedia you can doomscroll xikipedia.org

Struggling with whether to keep "shaping a new technology into a news technology" or drop it from a draft. Not sure if the pun is bad enough.

Again begging “AI in journalism” people to at least skim Bainbridge’s “Ironies of Automation” at least once… reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/are-hum...

"Podcast-pilled" kevinroose.substack.com/p/leaving-th...

A) This would be actually cool and useful if it works as promised… B) … which I don't have any trust in. www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...

Es gibt btw eine freie Stelle beim Media Lab Bayern, Dependance Ansbach. Ist ein wirklich cooles, kleines Team. www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/44...

“I try to avoid using the term “technology” because it rots the brain. If we talk about cars or airplanes or knives and forks or spades, we have sensible, grown-up things to say. As soon as we use the word “technology,” our brains turn to mush” genfutures.substack.com/p/david-edge...

Self-inflicted management errors over and over with little to show for it. newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/why-is-met...

Some scribblings on "futuring" johannesklingebiel.de/wiki/Critica...

The good part about having an upcoming wedding is that it is the perfect excuse to flex the design muscles a bit

Surprisingly, there's now a growing number of media companies with coffee shops. (Or Cafés in Monocle vernacular.) www.niemanlab.org/2026/06/the-...

Play fair with us and we’ll step in during lawsuits for you. Otherwise... it would be a pity if anything happened to that lovely, shiny frontier model of yours, wouldn’t it?

Really curious what OpenAI spent 5 billion in marketing budget on 🤔 www.wheresyoured.at/exclusive-op...

networksofny2026.bigcartel.com/product/netw... hi, did you like my book Networks of New York when it came out in 2016? you might like the updated 2026 edition which I'll be releasing in September and you can pre-order now

Unsurprisingly, LinkedIn is apparently fully on board with this

(Bainbridge, 1983) www.businessinsider.com/botsitting-a...

Without having read it… what are the odds regulations *shakes fist* are the true evil here? europe2031.ai

It’s not really surprising that people are becoming more distrustful and cynical about tech (and everything else) when there’s a constant drumbeat of stories, like this, about a seemingly innocuous game/tool/website harvesting data that is then used for murderous purposes:

Academic writing should be addressed neither to the public nor to other academics. It should be addressed to a single interlocutor with whom you have a petty rivalry and whose work you are trying to discredit

Top 10 inspiring quotes from the first TTRPG Manifesto Jam www.rascal.news/top-10-inspi...

This is wild: essentially every LLM—ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini—keeps using the same character when asked to make up a story, a guy called 'Elias Thorne'. He appears so much it's impacting Google Trends data and the self-published book market. Now we might know why www.404media.co/elias-thorne...

Fukuyama: We have reached the end of history. History: It's 2026, and an official branch of the Ukrainian armed forces is tweeting about how drone striking Andrew Tate while he's clout farming with the Russian military would be fun, but is sadly a war crime. Get bent old man.

I have a running theory that there are only three types of coffee shops on this planet. (At least we moved past Airspace).