But if they had tried to put his name on the policy: “Sorry, can’t insure someone who doesn’t exist yet”

This is a terrible idea for Amazon, the cloud services company.

But for Amazon, the AI company? This is them illustrating the new grift that almost any company can do: use AI to keep a plausible mirage of your company going while reducing opex, and sacrifice humans when necessary to dodge accountability.

But his job wasn’t even to supervise the chatbot adequately (single-handedly fact-checking 10 lists of 15 items is a long, labor-intensive pro­cess). Rather, it was to take the blame for the factual inaccuracies in those lists. He was, in the phrasing of Dan Davies, “an accountability sink” (or as Madeleine Clare Elish puts it, a “moral crumple zone”).

https://locusmag.com/feature/commentary-cory-doctorow-reverse-centaurs/

Maybe through CXL you’ll be able to “download more RAM” (renting it, really)

zooms out a bit

Ah, so it’s like a mini pandemic?

zooms out a bit more

…or like a “normal day” in the few years leading up to 2008. That’s a good sign…

Multiple things can be true at once.

• The election process in the US is horribly constructed in the first place
• It’s executed even more poorly
• Nevertheless, voting does determine who sits in the seat
• It does matter who sits in the seat
• The person who sits in the seat will represent the wealthy and powerful, not you
• It does matter who represents the powerful, because they can be pushed (by the people, and by the powerful) in different ways
• Even if we get the right person in the seat, and do a very good job of pushing them, it won’t be enough
• We need to do it anyway, because that act of organizing isn’t only to influence politicians — it’s also to influence ourselves, and improve our ability to find a path to real victory

Don’t think that voting alone is sufficient. Don’t think that voting and organizing are sufficient. But also don’t think that voting and organizing are not necessary.

They don’t want to save capitalism. They believe capitalism is about to be over, and they want to be in control of whatever it is that comes next.

You might wanna check out what immigration looks like on the easiest setting: https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/06/doge-ball/

This is a photo of my second O-1 (“Alien of Extraordinary Ability”) visa application. It’s 800 pages long:

The next one was 1200 pages long.

They’re worried they’re not spending enough on AI.

Classic MLM tactics. “If you’re not seeing a return on Herbalife, it’s cuz you’re not spending enough on it!”

This sounds eerily familiar…

I don’t know if Hearst told him to use a chatbot to generate their “Best of Summer Lists,” but it doesn’t matter. When you give a freelancer an assignment to turn around ten summer lists on a short timescale, everyone understands that his job isn’t to write those lists, it’s to supervise a chatbot.

But his job wasn’t even to supervise the chatbot adequately (single-handedly fact-checking 10 lists of 15 items is a long, labor-intensive pro­cess). Rather, it was to take the blame for the factual inaccuracies in those lists. He was, in the phrasing of Dan Davies, “an accountability sink” (or as Madeleine Clare Elish puts it, a “moral crumple zone”).

https://locusmag.com/feature/commentary-cory-doctorow-reverse-centaurs/

I feel like I’ve been saying this every day since like 2015 (Or maybe 2001. Or maybe 1999. Idk. Anyway…) but: This is a really bad idea.

Well-argued.

Unlearning Economics has a similar analysis of AI through the lens of cybernetics: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Km2bn0HvUwg

I’m guessing they meant “raw milk”?

Not my own invention, but I’m glad you appreciated it: https://www.thenerdreich.com/

We had tons of help and the easiest baby ever, and I think I managed to pull off two 15-minute gaming sessions in the 4 weeks I had saved up.

Also: company established 3 months paternity leave about 6 months after I came back to work. I’ve never identified more with the boomers who oppose student loan forgiveness out of jealousy.

vendor whose major investors include Thiel’s Founders Fund

To be fair, most SaaS vendors probably have investors associated with the nerd reich

Money is fine. Financialization is not.

The references in that video contradict its own content.

There is no evidence, historical or contemporary, of a society in which barter is the main mode of exchange;[27][26] instead, non-monetary societies operated largely along the principles of gift economy and debt.[25][24] When barter did in fact occur, it was usually between either complete strangers or potential enemies.[29]

The documentary “Finding The Money” has a takedown of this exact myth (Link to timestamp)

Not exactly. If you’re interested in the history of money and how it works, you should check out Finding The Money

Slavery