Excessive use of em dashes would be about #25 on my list of telltale signs something was written by AI. And it’s far from the most annoying one. (My personal #1 annoying telltale sign is endless use of “It wasn’t just x, it was also y”-type constructions.) techcrunch.com/2025/11/14/o...

I thought that abandoning Twitter as a social networking platform would be tough until I actually did it. www.fastcompany.com/91439423/one...

TAP Air Portugal has a rule against using power banks in flight. Is it more dangerous to use one than merely have it with you?

Today at @websummit.bsky.social in Lisbon, @rabble.nz sat down with Cory Doctorow to discuss why Big Tech’s power harms society & why “move fast and break things” isn’t always progress. Tomorrow, he joins @jb55.bsky.social and @harrymccracken.com to discuss building a freer, decentralized internet.

We gotta have a clear term for people so cynical they become gullible.

Trivia: The very first trip I took in a Google self-driving car, in 2013, was on a highway. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Web Summit has self-serve beer dispensing stations. I didn’t partake and am not sure if they somehow card you. Then again, everyone here seems to be adults and I’m not sure what the drinking age is in Portugal.

What a thrill to be part of @talkingpointsmemo.com's series about the past 25 years of digital media! I wrote about why private equity goons destroyed Deadspin and why it matters.

“Dahmer and Yoyo”

Bad idea but GREAT buddy movie premise.

To mark the iPad Pro’s 10th anniversary, here’s my review of the original 2015 version. www.fastcompany.com/3053068/ipad...

I’m still holding out hope that Apple has a vision for the iPad Pro that’s bigger than it being a touchscreen laptop that grows more and more Maclike over time. www.theverge.com/tech/817939/...

This humanoid robot from China’s Unitree is attracting a crowd in the Web Summit speakers’ lounge. It’s whipping about VERY quickly, in a way that’s a little unsettling.

Filling out a banking form that asks for my occupation, and in what I am choosing to consider as a sign of the times, "journalist" is not a selectable option, but "cryptocurrency" is

How Elon Musk’s Changes to X Made Our Discourse Far Stupider by Dave Weigel talkingpointsmemo.com/tpm-25/how-e... talkingpointsmemo.com/tpm-25/how-e...

I’m among the throngs attending Web Summit’s opening night.

I’m in Lisbon at Web Summit’s Future of Media Summit. NPR’s Katherine Maher is kicking it off.

I attended the Disney Accelerator demo day on the studio lot this week, and wrote about exactly why Disney has an accelerator at all. www.fastcompany.com/91436702/dis...

this looks like a trick daffy duck would put up to get bugs bunny into "the oval office"

Are we supposed to be impressed when our airline app says it uses generative AI to provide flight status? Or concerned? (So needy.)

An absolutely exhaustive and utterly fascinating history of the iconic Bullwinkle (& Rocky) statue on Sunset Blvd, by @harrymccracken.com…

Why aren’t we all making a bigger fuss about Lee Grant’s 100th birthday today? people.com/lee-grant-tu...

Judging from the candy I already see in kids’ bags/plastic pumpkins, one of our neighbors is giving out Almond Joys, my favorite candy bar.

Happy Halloween. (This is the tallest pumpkin I’ve ever carved, by a lot.)

Even in the most mundane instances, trying to get a journalist to do something is likely to redouble their effort to not do it.

My best Halloween costume, which I apparently put back on at Christmas to impress my grandmother.

My Aunt Elizabeth dressed as a bullfighter for a Greenwich Village Halloween party, 1965.

In the end, history judges every president based mostly on the quality of his carpeting.

I’m guessing I’m not the only one who has reached six digits of digital photos and found that a huge percentage aren’t worth keeping. I wrote about a useful tool for dealin with that problem, plus some of my own best practices. www.fastcompany.com/91432303/del...

Working on a newsletter, I was trying to remember when I got my first digital camera, My ancient email told me it was May 1999. I was impressed by the 12MB of onboard RAM and the (I don’t remember what this was) “sun window.”

Treating the president as an endearing, kooky character, especially in headlines, continues to confuse me. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/30/u...

My insurance company just asked me to send them a document and asked which would be easier: email or fax?

I talked with Figma CEO Dylan Field about why the company just bought Weavy, an interesting tool for creating, refining, and remixing AI images and videos so they’re just “a creative starting point.” www.fastcompany.com/91431691/fig...

I spoke with Logitech’s CEO about products old (mice), new (environmental sensors), AI, tariffs, and more. www.fastcompany.com/91428349/log...

Here’s my look at 1X Technologies’ Neo, a humanoid home robot that’s ultra-ambitious—but also a work in progress. www.fastcompany.com/91428202/1x-...

Very excited for HBO Max’s rebranding as Paramount Max, followed by its 2028 re-rebranding as HBO Max. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Unsigned editorials, regardless of the subject or conclusion, just seem like pointless anachronisms that don’t deserve to exist anymore. If they we didn’t already have them, nobody would invent them in 2025. www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

The East Wing Desecrators Given the extraordinary and unprecedented destruction of the entire East Wing, built in 1942 for the Office of the First Lady, it’s important to note who enabled this. In this thread, I run through the companies and organizations involved and provide contact info. 🧵

I for one will be referring to it as the Gulf of Mexico Ballroom.

Whenever something ridiculous happens, one fun trick is to ask an AI model about it to get an incredulous reaction “That claim is not true … The White House is a protected historic building, and any major construction or demolition would require congressional funding, permits, and public record”

"Tearing down the White House and replacing it with a facsimile of Mar-a-Lago isn’t any less appalling because Trump cajoled companies into paying for it. Indeed, it might be worse. Funding a pet project via the coercion of private donors creates a closed loop and complete lack of accountability."

Nolan Bushnell’s 1983 ad for his Topo home robot is still one of my favorite things ever, from the photo to the gold-plated statuett to the fact you mailed the order form to Nolan himself.

For this week’s Fast Company Plugged In newsletter, I wrote about Apple’s new M5-powered MacBook Pro, a laptop that faces stiff competition from the cheaper, thinner, lighter MacBook Air—but is quietly nice in ways that are easy to overlook. www.fastcompany.com/91426686/mac...

Unimaginable headline in the morning paper

“Others say it was time for change.” (BTW, the URL for this story is painful in itself.) www.nytimes.com/2025/10/23/u...

Do the blueprints for the East Wing survive? Just askin'.

Impressive, but no more impressive than The Amazing Kreskin. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/23/s...

almost wonder if he's gonna lose interest in the east wing and just like leave it half built and like exposed