Anna Page

I hope it goes well, with lots of prayerfully informed discussions and decisions.

What despicable behaviour towards other people - how would they feel if they were in the same position?

Orbit30: The Unexpected Afterlife of a Textbook Graphic How a humble educational graphic about the Great Lakes quietly became my most-seen work.

That Great Lakes graphic?

Yeah, I did that.

Here’s the story in the latest instalment of Orbit30:

open.substack.com/pub/orbitstu...

Very interesting article on the AI bubble. Worth zooming in to read it.

I’LL NEVER FORGIVE THEM’ Vegas-based tech observer Ed Zitron on the empty hype of AI, clueless tech lords, and what he thinks of Las Vegas By Lissa Townsend Rodgers have heard about artificial intelligence and how it’s In 2025, even those who can barely operate a cell phone going to shape the future. But while many are excited about the promise, tech journalist and podcaster Ed Zitron is suspicious of the hype. “All of these companies are claiming that large language models, OpenAI, ChatGPT, and the like, is the next big thing,” he says. “The problem is, the actual efficacy, the actual abilities of these programs, have been the same for about two years now. These companies keep growing, their stock valuations keep going up. But it’s not coming from any AI sales.” Born in England, Zitron attended college in Pennsylvania and settled in Las Vegas, where he founded a public relations company. In 2020, he began the “Where’s Your Ed At” news- letter, a caustic, clever examination of the ways we’re failed by the tech that’s supposed to improve our lives. Last year, he began the award-winning Better Offline podcast, which has featured guests from former FTC chair Lina Khan to MIT economist Daron Acemoglu to comedian Andy Richter. Zitron spoke to Desert Companion about the AI bubble, the business idiot, and the honesty of Las Vegas. Here’s an edited version of that conversation. What were your early experiences with technology? I was the dumbest kid in private school and did not have friends. So tech really was my lifeline. ... I was fascinated by the fact that you could connect with people all over the world, that you could play games with them. I was actually a games journalist at 16, one of the first people to cover online gaming, MMORPGs like World of Warcraft, in England. Yeah, tech was a big part of my childhood. Is that why you’re so vexed by what’s happening to technology? It’s personal? Absolutely. I hate these bastards. I’ll never forgive them for what they’ve done…

complete nonsense. Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, claimed that 50 percent of white-collar jobs will be gone in the next one to five years. Complete nonsense based on nothing. … The AI bubble is a hysterical event where these com- panies pretend — and straight-up lie — about what their products can do in the hopes that they can keep boosting their stock valuations. So, you’ve got all of these compa- nies, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and the like, spending hundreds of billions of dollars in capital expen- ditures to build these massive data centers and filling them full of these GPUs sold by one company, Nvidia. But no one’s making any money. In fact, these things are extremely unprofitable. OpenAI in 2024 spent $9 billion to lose $5 billion. Imagine if you or I did that. Would we be able to get more money out of the bank? Of course not. So how are they getting away with it? I have this grander theory called the business idiot. I believe our economy and the large structures behind it, the people in power, are completely disconnected from any kind of production or understanding of their customers. Not just MBAs, also the middle managers that you hate — the people that don’t seem to do anything, but always seem busy. They’re like the people inside the cave that Plato talked about. They see the shadows: “Oh, AI’s big now!” And I think you’re seeing a war between the business idiots and those of us who actually do the work. I’ve heard so many stories about bosses telling people to use AI. Why don’t the bosses use it, if AI is so good? Because it doesn’t work. The main paradigm all of this is built on is large language models. They are probabilistic, which means that they generate the next thing based on how likely it’s the right one. So if you ask it for an image of a cat, these things don’t have con- sciousness. It says, “I’ve been asked for a picture of a cat; based on my training data, this is the thing that approximates cat.” And it’s pretty good at guessing, but it d…

I got interviewed by KNPR, the local Vegas NPR affiliate, and they put the interview in their Desert Companion magazine. I'll post the web version when it's out

One of the most important and powerful things any kid can do to make a better world is if they see someone being pushed around, stand up for them.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Probably about 35%+ of all university Humanities posts will be closed. Those subjects will be taught in far fewer universities. There will be a lot less modular choice within those degrees that remain. A large-scale but unannounced policy change from central govt, with far-reaching implications.

beautiful plumbago

Water companies demand more of our cash while still pumping out sewage. Add your name to demand money-grabbing companies fix their own mess before trying to get more money from us.

Add your name to demand money-grabbing companies fix their own mess before trying to get more money from us. act.38degrees.org.uk/act/no-bill-...

July 2025 General Synod: money talks What really divides the Church of England? Not sex: money and how it should be distributed.

Finally found the time to update my blog with what happened at Church of England General Synod shared-conversations.com/2025/07/19/j...

MERUK asks what the significance of the Royal Free outbreak is today and how it shaped research.
tinyurl.com/muasf2e3

How to Get AI Out of Your Google Search Results • The Revelator Three simple keystrokes will deliver search results that consume less energy and water — and probably contain better information.

Excellent article, very useful tip. ⬇️
therevelator.org/how-to-get-a...

📌

WeTransfer just changed their TOS giving themselves permission to train AI on any content you transfer and produce derivative works based on content you transfer that they are allowed to monetize and you are not allowed payment for.

Stop using WeTransfer.

The problem isn't that generativeAI will get so good it will replace artists. It can't and never will.

The problem is that uncreative and incurious people will flood every venue with so much regurgitated slop that no artist has a chance of ever being seen or found.

I was never a fan of Brexit, but I have to admit, I failed to anticipate that one of the reasons I would most want to return to the EU, on a personal level, would be that the UK government would give my work away to thieves. <sigh> This, below, is how to respond to AI theft.

Just putting this here.

Mayor Brandon Scott has reduced crime in Baltimore by 62%, and now has the lowest homicide rate in Baltimore history.

How did he do it?

NOT be spending more on police. He did it by MAJOR investment in afterschool and literacy programs.

Socialism works

Those checks and balances were based on the premise of politicians acting with integrity and enough people being willing to call out those who weren't. Sadly, integrity seems to in short supply.

Can Geology Explain the Deadly Reputation of the Styx River and Shed Light on the Death of Alexander the Great? - Geoheritage Geoheritage - Modern discoveries of two naturally occurring toxins that thrive in limestone-rich environments offer clues to understanding how the Styx (Mavroneri) River received its nefarious...

Interesting and nuanced open-access paper by Adrienne Mayor, investigating why the river Styx might have acquired such a deadly reputation in ancient times that early writers ascribed Alexander the Great's death to being poisoned by its waters: link.springer.com/article/10.1... #AncientSky

Same. My birth was registered at British consulate in country of my birth.

The hidden labor that makes AI work Alex Hanna and Emily M. Bender examine the hype behind artificial intelligence in their new book, The AI Con. Below is an excerpt on the invisible labor behind some AI tools.

Call it clickwork, crowdwork, data labor, or ghost work - they are all poorly-paid, precarious and traumatic jobs that make AI possible. Read an excerpt from The AI Con by @alexhanna.bsky.social and @emilymbender.bsky.social on @restofworld.org .
restofworld.org/2025/the-ai-con-book-invisible-labor

I only want real books by real human beings. Social media is awash with endless AI generated 'stories' with initially beguiling hooks but then implausible/sensationalist changes in direction and 'click here' to read the rest. Blocking such accounts is a daily thing for me now.

Sigh. All these AI bots do is muddy the waters of academia and make it even harder for real humans to research and analyse what is real.

She Won. They Didn't Just Change the Machines. They Rewired the Election. How Leonard Leo's 2021 sale of an electronics firm enabled tech giants to subvert the 2024 election.

It's likely worse than we think:

thiswillhold.substack.com/p/she-won-th...

"We need a system where leaders protect people, not spreadsheets. Where compassion isn’t something earned after the metrics are met, but the ground from which all action begins."

AI feeds off the limitations of what has been captured electronically, it is not human and can never fully make decisions based on the mysteries of how individual humans think (sometimes irrational, often very nuanced). Using AI to suppress how humans develop complex thinking skills is a worry.

I would urge ppl to read this. It’s truly shocking; in fact “shocking” isn’t an adequate word to describe the poverty in 🇬🇧. Poverty that’s not seen or experienced by the Westminster elite. They have absolutely NO idea. IMHO any politician that endorses the welfare bill deserves to lose their seat.

"But with each interaction delegated to AI, with each moment of messy human connection replaced by algorithmic efficiency, ...unknowingly altering the very foundations of how children learn to be human...infant brain...evolved...to learn from...imperfect, emotionally rich dance of human interaction"