So more of the usual, bravo

Half of young Canadians spending more than 50% of earnings on rent New survey data suggests it is increasingly difficult to limit rental expenses to one-third of income

“49% of people aged 18 to 24 and 34% of all renters indicated that they spent more than half their income on rent. 57% of all respondents said they were considering moving to a new city because of high rent costs.”

Think about how this changes our society.

SpaceX Gets Billions From the Government. It Gives Little to Nothing Back in Taxes.

The leeches on our system are those with clever accountants and lobbyists www.nytimes.com/2025/08/15/t...

“I strove to be a shitty person to impress shitty people and win their admiration and patronage and it turns out shitty people are shitty. I was not expecting that because I am very dim in addition to being shitty.”

What Does Palantir Actually Do? Palantir is often called a data broker, a data miner, or a giant database of personal information. In reality, it’s none of these—but even former employees struggle to explain it.

Palantir is in the news a lot lately. However, the public discourse about the company often misconstrues it as a data broker, a data miner, a single centralized database, etc. But what does Palantir actually do?

I wrote a piece to firmly & clearly answer that question:
www.wired.com/story/palant...

The Social Media Trend Machine Is Spitting Out Weirder and Weirder Results Trends always have an element of randomness, but our algorithmic feeds have made them unintelligible.

Good article, disagree with some conclusions. It’s not just that “real life is bifurcated into two worlds that aren’t actually separate anymore,” but that the logics of the online world dictate more and more of the offline world

I wrote last week about how the tech dream is ending for mid-career workers. This is a really good companion piece about how entry level tech jobs are vanishing, too, and the Silicon Valley gold rush is coming to a close: www.nytimes.com/2025/08/10/t...

American Companies Are Buying Their Own Stocks at a Record Pace Buybacks are expected to top $1.1 trillion in 2025, led by big banks and tech firms

Stock buybacks are corporate theft. They are the result of surplus value not being given back to labor. They should be illegal. #Econsky

When apps leak our data, who is responsible? The Tea and Flo apps put women at risk. Where are the consequences?

Tech companies continue to rush products to market without proper safety measures. AI programs that write code are making the problem worse. And since the US still doesn’t have a comprehensive data privacy law, consumers are left to fend for themselves. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

This article is trash. It's catnip for us humanists. But it's trash.

93% of computer science grads have jobs. The system isn't breaking.

This article wants you to believe AI is taking everyone's job. But it isn't. It isn't that powerful.

normalize 'clanker' to insult AI!

I Never Understood Our Data-Saturated Life Until a Hurricane Shut It Down

Fantastic read by Trevor Quirk on the most fascinating topic: data flows.

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/11/m...

Goodbye, $165,000 Tech Jobs. Student Coders Seek Work at Chipotle.

Some of remember back in the early 2000's when Gates Foundation & others prompted STEM uber Alles at the expense of liberal arts, which help develop a wide range of skills that are transferable to other fields. We wrote abt the folly of it, but weren't billionaires. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/10/t...

Goodbye, $165,000 Tech Jobs. Student Coders Seek Work at Chipotle.

"Among college graduates ages 22 to 27, computer science and computer engineering majors are facing some of the highest unemployment rates, 6.1% and 7.5% respectively ...

That is more than double the unemployment rate among recent biology and art history graduates, which is just 3%"

What Happened When Mark Zuckerberg Moved In Next Door

As if housing costs in the Bay Area aren’t a serious issue already.

Billionaires need to be reminded what it’s like to be told no. This should have never been allowed.

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/10/u...

2 Japanese boxers die from brain injuries sustained in separate bouts at same event in Tokyo | CBC Sports Two Japanese boxers have died from brain injuries sustained in separate bouts on the same card at Tokyo's Korakuen Hall.

Horrifying. Rule changes in collision sports generally won’t save us from the horrors of TBI.

cc @bachynski.bsky.social

www.cbc.ca/sports/olymp...

New chatbot on Trump’s Truth Social platform keeps contradicting him An “answer engine” on Trump’s social media site says the 2020 election wasn’t stolen, tariffs aren’t boosting the stock market and Barack Obama is seen favorably.

“Trump and the new AI search tool on his social media network, Truth Social, don’t exactly see eye to eye. Truth Search AI contradicts him by saying tariffs are a tax on Americans, the 2020 election wasn’t stolen, and his family’s cryptocurrency poses a conflict of interest.”
🎁 link: wapo.st/3HpR2uG

The Prodigal Techbro Prodigal tech bro stories skip straight from the past, when they were part of something that—surprise!—turned out to be bad, to the present, where they are now a moral authority on how to do good…

remember there’s always a lucrative position for the seeming critic of the tech industry who doesn’t actually challenge its power and foundational ideas.

the prodigal tech bro is one example. there’s a whole industry of academics and journalists who serve in this role too.

Having seen much of the discourse around the new ChatGPT release, I think that a huge part of the problem is the idea that big commercial LLMs should be all-purpose.

It is absolutely absurd that the exact same technology would be used as a companion chatbot AND as an enterprise productivity tool.

Goodbye, $165,000 Tech Jobs. Student Coders Seek Work at Chipotle.

"learn to code," they said

Among college graduates ages 22 to 27, computer science and computer engineering majors are facing some of the highest unemployment rates, 6.1% and 7.5% respectively, compared to biology and art history graduates, which is just 3%

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/10/t...

Goodbye, $165,000 Tech Jobs. Student Coders Seek Work at Chipotle.

“Among college graduates ages 22 to 27, computer science & computer engineering majors are facing some of the highest unemployment rates, 6.1 % and 7.5 % ... That is more than double the unemployment rate among recent biology and art history grads”

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/10/t...

What Happened When Mark Zuckerberg Moved In Next Door

A minor but good reason to reduce inequality is because billionaires are, at their core, truly bizarre. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/10/u...

What Happened When Mark Zuckerberg Moved In Next Door

The inequality in wealth and privilege is unimaginable.
www.nytimes.com/2025/08/10/u...

Can we just have one day when no one mentions AI? The gap between hype and reality is frustratingly wide and growing

on.ft.com/3J7Bj3R Can we just have one day when no one mentions AI?

I’d settle for ‘can we just have one day when people sodding stop being gullible and calling it that’. It’s not frigging intelligent it’s pattern matching code.

Pakistan’s deadly monsoon floods were worsened by global warming, study finds A new study shows that heavy rainfall that caused floods that killed hundreds in Pakistan in recent weeks was worsened by human-caused climate change The study by World Weather Attribution was release...

“A new study shows that heavy rainfall that caused floods that killed hundreds in Pakistan in recent weeks was worsened by human-caused climate change The study by World Weather Attribution was released on Thursday.”

Flattery, Lobbyists and a Business Deal: Crypto’s Richest Man Campaigns for a Pardon

Gift article
www.nytimes.com/2025/08/09/u...

How Eugenics Shaped Statistics Exposing the damned lies of three science pioneers.

So you're going to "teach AI" this year. That's great!

Start with "How Eugenics Shaped Statistics"
nautil.us/how-eugenics...

#mtbos #ITeachMath #AIinEd

Chatbots Can Go Into a Delusional Spiral. Here’s How It Happens.

New story out from me and @dylanfreedman.nytimes.com about how and why chatbots go into delusional spirals that can cause people to have mental breakdowns. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/08/t...

Google says it's working on a fix for Gemini's self-loathing 'I am a failure' comments Google Gemini users said the bot is sharing self-loathing messages while attempting to solve tasks, including "I am a disgrace to this universe."

Google Gemini doesn’t appear to be doing too well:

‘"I am a disgrace to this planet. I am a disgrace to this universe. I am a disgrace to all universes . . . I am a disgrace to all possible and impossible universes and all that is not a universe," the bot continued.’