Mike Elgan

Where I’m at: enjoying vermouth O’clock in the Poble Sec district of Barcelona.

The stray cats in Essaouira, Morocco, sit on the lights that light up the historic walls to keep warm.

Grabbing an espresso at the airport in Catania, Sicily. (Ray-Ban Meta glasses)

From the MyOfficeToday community on Reddit: My Office Today: a 1,000 year old olive oil villa in Sicily Explore this post and more from the MyOfficeToday community

Have you seen the subreddit I created recently? www.reddit.com/r/MyOfficeTo...

Superintelligentpodcast.com

Where I’m at: Just landed in Barcelona, drove an hour to this tiny town, checked in to our Airbnb (the house is older than our country) and went directly to this local dive, where the menu isn’t even in Spanish (it’s in Catalan). I love my life.

We use social networks to share human experiences and interact with people about culture or politics. Silicon Valley wants to replace that, turning person-to-person interactions into person-to-machine interactions, leaving us alone talking to no one.
www.computerworld.com/article/4067...

What the Prosecco Hills look like this time of year.
gastronomad.net/prosecco

Mike Elgan (@mikeelgan) Mad scientists in Switzerland are working on the creation of technology that enables data centers full of living bio-computers based on the human brain. These “wetware”-based data centers involve tr...

Mad scientists in Switzerland are working on the creation of technology that enables data centers full of living bio-computers based on the human brain.
substack.com/profile/1211...

Walking around Giarre, in Sicily, listening to a most excellent podcast. : ) www.superintelligentpodcast.com/p/jensen-hua...

China Faces Unprecedented Donkey Shortage Crisis “We have plenty of cattle and horses in China now — just not enough donkeys” (“目前我国牛马都不缺，就缺驴”).

Crisis of the moment: "donkey shortage"
www.whatsonweibo.com/china-faces-...

Jensen Huang: The Gustavo Fring of Tech Episode #23

Hold on to your butts! Here comes the latest episode of the Superintelligent podcast -- "Jensen Huang: The Gustavo Fring of Tech!!" -- Go here to watch, listen, subscribe and comment: www.superintelligentpodcast.com/p/jensen-hua...

AI is even worse at showing the digital nomad lifestyle than digital nomads are!

AI and other current trends are replacing human social relationships with solitary, one-sided interactions with machines, replacing family, friends, lovers and pets with products. This is the dangerous megatrend of the century and nobody is talking about it.
www.computerworld.com/article/4067...

AI Endangering Tourists by Sending Them to Nonexistent Landmarks in Hazardous Locations Hallucinating AI platforms are spitting out nonexistent landmarks and it's putting tourists in dangerous situations.

HEADLINE: "AI endangering tourists by sending them to nonexistent landmarks in hazardous locations"

ALT HEADLINE: "Darwin works even through AI"

futurism.com/artificial-i...

Claim of the moment: Globally, "Social media peaked in 2022 and has since gone into steady decline" with "one notable exception: North America, where consumption of social media’s diet of extreme rhetoric, engagement bait and slop continues to climb."
archive.is/10cll#select...

Cory Doctorow Says the AI Industry Is About to Collapse Famed sci-fi author and tech journalist Cory Doctorow has a spectacularly grim warning about the coming AI-fueled economic disaster.

Claim of the moment: "a third of the stock market is tied up in seven AI companies that have no way to become profitable"
futurism.com/future-socie...

Chris Best (@cb) Sloptimism

Word of the moment: “sloptimism”
substack.com/@cb/note/c-1...

Where I’m at: flight from Venice to Sicily!

An unwelcome megatrend: AI that replaces family, friends — and pets Technology that’s inherently isolating won’t leave us alone. And it’s going to get worse.

An unwelcome megatrend: AI that replaces family, friends — and pets
www.computerworld.com/article/4067...

What do you mean?

Federal Workers Are Being Told to Blame Democrats for the Shutdown Workers at one agency were given unhinged, partisan language to use when setting out-of-office replies.

The Trump administration is weaponizing out-of-office replies. www.wired.com/story/govern...

OpenAI’s New Sora App Lets You Deepfake Yourself for Entertainment OpenAI’s latest app encourages users to generate a personal digital avatar and scroll AI-generated videos of themselves and their friends.

Phrase of the moment: "deepfake yourself"
www.wired.com/story/openai...

Phrase of the moment: "the Putinization of America"

Mezcal-based cocktails in Oaxaca exist in a world of their own. gastronomad.net/oaxaca

Our friend in the Oaxaca valley lives in a very old house. It's so old that when his ancestors built it, the house was in the middle of nowhere. In the ensuing centuries, a town grew up around the house. (That's my wife, Amira, outside our friend's door.) gastronomad.net/oaxaca

If only.

The soul of Mexico is a Oaxacan kitchen. gastronomad.net/oaxaca

Writers are reconsidering the use of M dashes because some people think it's evidence that copy was AI-generated.

Understanding America’s disinformation capitulation American federal agencies and private companies are now allowing weaponized foreign disinformation to spread and grow. Here’s why.

Understanding America’s disinformation capitulation

machinesociety.ai/p/understand...