Friday, July 10, 2026

A lack of qualifications is not a qualification and other thoughts on Platner

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Picking up from Joseph's post . Not being from Maine, I didn't spend a lot of time reading or writing about the Senate primary. Here...
2 comments:
Thursday, July 9, 2026

A concession to Mark about outsider candidates

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This is Joseph. So, credit where credit is due, Mark called the issues with Graham Platner early on. But one thing that still amazes me abou...
Wednesday, July 8, 2026

I probably should have worked in a Matrix reference

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Following up on this week's sci-fi, folklore, magic theme. From Internet of Bugs Carl Brown : But predicting what humanity would do in t...
Tuesday, July 7, 2026

The idea of approaching tech narratives as folklore actually works better than it did eight years ago.

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Yesterday we did a post on how most of the ideas in the techno-optimist movement are just old sci-fi tropes. Tomorrow we'll be talking a...
1 comment:
Monday, July 6, 2026

AI doomsters and Dial F for Frankenstein

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Regular readers know we've been discussing the deeply dysfunctional and just plain weird culture of the techno-optimists for going on 20...
Friday, July 3, 2026

Patrick Boyle on the anniversary of Brexit

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I could pull pretty much any random passage from a Boyle video and strike gold, but this one in particular caught my attention. The first st...
Thursday, July 2, 2026

Peter Thiel's moments of honesty are largely limited to him saying bitchy things about Elon Musk

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 A little bit of background: back in 1999, I was working for a large financial services company (you've heard of them). One of the bigge...
Wednesday, July 1, 2026

“It really seems like anyone with some renders and a white paper written by someone being gassed up by an overly agreeable AI can get VC funding these days,”

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Futurism points us to what happens happens when tech bro "engineers" run into actual engineers:   A scathing takedown video — a...
Tuesday, June 30, 2026

Precarious Times

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This has gotten lots of attention in tech circles, but not that many people have been connecting the dots.  From the Information :  Coinbase...
Monday, June 29, 2026

If only we had effective, efficient technology to deal with these crises

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I realize this puts me at risk of being one of those people who uses tragedies as an excuse to flog a pet cause, but it's a topic that ...
2 comments:
Friday, June 26, 2026

Another one of those stories that we really need Patrick Boyle for.

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June 12 ( Reuters ) - Anthropic said on Friday it will "abruptly ​disable" its most advanced AI models for all users after the U.S...
Thursday, June 25, 2026

NBC Blue was known for playing the uncensored version of Fibber McGee and Molly*

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As I probably mentioned before, if you have any interest in the film and television industry, KCRW's The Business is essential listenin...
Wednesday, June 24, 2026

I've been waiting years for a good feral pig story so I would have an excuse to use these two quotes.

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The first comes from one of the great American novels, Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest. "I haven't laughed so much over anything...
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Tuesday, June 23, 2026

Newport is also the guy who suggested that Anthropic deserved the Nobel Prize in marketing for the Anthropic launch

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Something you won't hear me say often (because, as previously mentioned, I despise The New York Times), but this recent op-ed is essent...
Monday, June 22, 2026

The original Cushing oil boom was started in 1912 by a man actually named Tom Slick. Not relevant to the post but I had to mention it.

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In  most big stories, there are one or two pieces of absolutely essential context that get reported in major outlets but which no one seem...