I have been cooking dinner most nights for twenty-plus years and for my family for over a decade. If I go even a few days without doing so it takes me a full week to get back to a basic level of competence. This is a post about AI.

One nice thing about the boys getting older is now instead of spending 30 minutes a week cleaning the bathrooms I get to spend two and a half hours a week haranguing them to clean the bathrooms.

Very fun story from my pal Saleem about the southern roots of electronic music. https://www.wunc.org/podcast/the-broadside/2025-10-23/how-the-synthesizer-became-southern

This is sometimes read as "look 'AI' isn't working". But the opposite is true. _This_ is what "AI" is _for_. Push down labor power, push down wages, make employment more insecure. https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/29/forrester_ai_rehiring/

Ok, as part of the movement to take back “Luddites” as not being anti-tech but anti-exploitation we start pronouncing it like crudités

The aesthetics of Musk’s pathetic AI Wikipedia ripoff are from the same playbook as state sponsored disinformation on Facebook. Every post looks the same so every post is potentially credible.

And just like that it’s your last day at a job you’ve had for just shy of nine and a half years. I’m going to miss the amazing people I got to work with every day. And I’m also very excited about what’s coming next, after a quick break.

Been a little busy so I completely missed that @Wilto launched JavaScript for Everyone, which you should go sign up for https://wil.to/newsletters/mat-update-15/

It’s time to make chili

Characteristically clear and urgent writing from @kissane about the challenges the lie ahead for the emerging social networks trying to emerge from the old dying world. “I wish we’d had more time. But this is the world we have, and there’s so much to do.” […]

“And Jim tell us where you were when you got the idea to add Trader Joe’s chili lime pork rinds to a Caesar salad, inspiring the creation of the first ever Nobel Prize for the culinary arts” “Well, Cindy, it’s a funny story…”

In the world where Antonin Scalia dies six months earlier and RBG retires at some point before the third cancer diagnoses, a bankrupt Trump sits in a maximum security prison and costs us a single secret service patrol […]

“At a time when we are surrounded by fakes and fabrications, Sora seems precisely designed to further erode the idea of objective truth. It is a jackhammer that demolishes the barrier between the real and the unreal.” https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/19/opinion/ai-sora-slop.html

Having spent three years insider a massive tech company rebuilding itself around AI, @anildash is exactly right here. It’s normal technology that the bosses see as an opportunity to expand and exploit, including their own workers. https://www.anildash.com/2025/10/17/the-majority-ai-view/

Six year old went from being scared of going to a protest to exclaiming “THIS IS SO FUN” about fifteen minutes in. Solidarity defeats fear!

“From his debut in 1995 to what would be his final album in 2014, as pop/R&B/hip-hop music changed with the advancing technologies and speed-running of sounds to a cyber future that never really materialized, there is a straight line between all three D'Angelo projects.” […]

All three D’Angleo albums are masterpieces that changed music in subtle and profound ways. Truly a legendary artist.

John Oliver quietly doing the media literacy work we desperately need https://youtu.be/gieTx_P6INQ

Incredible framing by the paper of record of yet another unconstitutional budget runaround of Congress.

My rubric for why tech billionaires continually humiliate themselves: in the summer of 2020 a marketing intern posted in a company-wide Slack channel “frens could we consider more inclusive language, like ‘feed 2 birds with one scone’ plz” and the bosses all lost their goddamn minds.

“The faculty member wrote that Roberts pushed for the new school despite lacking a ‘cogent idea’ as to what the ‘School of AI’ will entail, teach and stand for” Don’t love this! https://dailytarheel.com/article/university-breaking-school-of-ai-20251009

“Papá can we read together tonight?” Bed time? Six year olds don’t need a bedtime.

We’re really doing this, huh https://spyglass.org/soras-slop-hits-different/

Every @kissane dispatch is such a balm. Please consider tossing in to support her work if you care at all about building better online spaces. https://www.wrecka.ge/a-year-into-the-wreckage-and-salvage/

Ted Chiang remains one of the most important parsers of our technology mediated times https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/life-is-more-than-an-engineering-problem/

This is such a thoughtful, generous, close read of Ezra Klein’s conversation with Ta-Nehisi Coates https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/you-don-t-have-to-swallow-frogs

He buried the lede — you have a chance to work with @beep! As someone who’s had that very privilege on multiple occasions I’ll just say you won’t regret it. https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/a-carried-leaf/

“Civility obsessives love a silver-tongued devil, wearing a nice suit, sporting a tidy haircut, while whispering sweet bigotries.” Always read @roxanegay https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/24/opinion/civility-fantasy-power-kirk.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ok8.LoXb.4_TRFOn5496w&smid=url-share

Good thread on why I’m waiting for 26.1 across the board https://mastodon.online/@nikitonsky/115248089319181113

I’ve seen a few “smart glasses are good now???” reviews this week and not a single one mentioned they are a physical node on the most grotesque, exploitative surveillance network devised by capitalism and overseen by amoral sociopaths […]

This is obvious and dumb and clownish in all the usual Trumpian ways he’s too ignorant and self involved to give a shit about. The important message to corporate media is: one day you will need something — a merger approved, a license renewed — better obey in advance to make sure you get it […]

The six year old came home and declared he wanted to make his own lunch for tomorrow, assembled a pickle and cream cheese bagel sandwich, pretzels, dried apricot, apple sauce, and a bit of turkey jerky. I have nothing to add to this development?

Seems only fair, given my professed love for Thanksgiving, that the neighborhood turkeys should turn my newly seeded lawn into a buffet.

“Kirk was not just putting on a show. He was a dedicated proponent of a specific political program. He was a champion for an authoritarian politics that backed the repression of opponents and made light of violence against them.” Always read @jbouie […]

Blacksky is doing the most interesting, innovative work on the decentralized web these days. Pay attention to not just what they’re doing but how they are doing it.

I’ve long maintained the Times Style (and real estate) section is staffed by secret marxists determined to expose the plutocracy for all their petty tackiness in order to pave way for the revolution and looks like they’re crankin’

As a parent you like to think you’re preparing your children for the world, knowing you can’t protect them from everything only give them the tools to be their best most authentic selves in a culture that wants anything but that. And then your son is singing Benson Boone at 7:00am on a Sunday.

I started listening to In Our Time from the very first episode earlier this year and the show itself is a fascinating time capsule of how the world has changed over nearly three decades. What a run […]

Cleaving off Chrome or Android never made any sense. Forcing Google to decouple its ad and search, though, would be good for antitrust and probably better for Google in the long run. https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/02/tech/google-antitrust-ruling-chrome-android

If a bunch of pissed off redditors stage an insurrection because the president canceled funding for a promising baldness cure, it will confirm my suspicion we’re living in a footnote of an unpublished David Foster Wallace novel […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

Is there a MacOS window manager that works like tmux sessions? I want to group windows from various apps into a session and hide everything else. Spaces might’ve worked but they’re too app-centric, e.g. I want to pin windows to a space, not entire apps.

Incredibly sharp thinking from @ben about how newsrooms can embrace building communities not just broadcasting to audiences, especially with new social protocols. https://werd.io/can-newsrooms-become-social-platforms/

It only took Nick Clegg eight years of apologizing for Facebook’s recklessness (while making millions) to realize what had been obvious for at least a decade before he worked there. Will his next job be determining if it hurts while smashing one’s face with a hammer? […]

Do we have a word for when people defy Congress, the branch of government that makes the laws? Something like unlegal? Alegal maybe?

Thirty years ago, this week, an article diagnosing the "Californian Ideology" of Silicon Valley was published. This scathing critique has become a badge of honor for the new tech right. As I argue today in Tech Policy Press, it has never been more relevant […] [Original post on social.coop]

Perhaps it's time to tap the chart again. Left-handed people were once seen as sinister (the word sinister, from Latin, originally meant "left" or "on the left side") so kids were forced to be right-handed. However, with advances in science it became clear […] [Original post on mastodon.world]

I’ve never understood the point of arguing this. Rich people overconsume by their very nature — too many houses and cars and crap that’s antithetical to vibrant shared spaces for normal people. Tax them *until* they leave […]

I’d like to propose something similar to Betteridge’s Law of Headlines for these. Whenever a feature is attempting to figure out a nuanced rationale for why someone has fully committed themselves to American fascism, the answer is: it’s a grift.

The literal first word of the America by Design uh… manifesto? is a failure of the most basic design principle of text design. As in, I would literally fail my undergrad page layout course if I turned this in.

My favorite thing I’ve learned this week is America’s most reliable source of road trip diarrhea was founded by an oil exec to get Americans to buy more gasoline.