Mitch's Blog

The Moral Unseriousness of Centrist & Conservative Pundits

Sun, 16 Aug 2026 13:46:22 -0700

kottke.org: Jamelle Bouie “chastises American political & cultural pundits for their lack of moral seriousness w/r/t their focus on ‘wokeness’ instead of the real harms being done by the authoritarian Trump regime.”

MAGA is building concentration camps, purging Blacks from high levels of the military, taking billions of dollars in bribes, murdering protesters, protecting pedophiles, committing violent insurrection and protecting those insurrectionists, “imprisoning dissidents, dismantling public education and eroding democracy.

Meanwhile, pundits are concerned about pronouns.

Ursula K. Le Guin: A rant about 'technology'

Sun, 16 Aug 2026 13:10:51 -0700

Le Guin: “We have been so desensitized by a hundred and fifty years of ceaselessly expanding technical prowess that we think nothing less complex and showy than a computer or a jet bomber deserves to be called ‘technology’ at all…. One way to illustrate that most technologies are, in fact, pretty ‘hi,’ is to ask yourself of any manmade object, Do I know how to make one? Anybody who ever lighted a fire without matches has probably gained some proper respect for ‘low’ or ‘primitive’ or ‘simple’ technologies; anybody who ever lighted a fire with matches should have the wits to respect that notable hi-tech invention.”

Sat, 15 Aug 2026 17:57:48 -0700

Corporate Power Approaches Escape Velocity. Hamilton Nolan: A failed Tesla strike in Sweden is a flashing warning light.

Fri, 14 Aug 2026 17:31:53 -0700

An example of this phenomenon, showing it’s not limited to young people: I recently re-read “Fer de Lance,” the first Nero Wolfe detective novel, published in 1934. Two of the characters are wealthy heirs, young men, who have become infatuated with flying. One has a private airfield, owns his own plane and employs a full-time mechanic, the other is studying flying with the first young man and plans to found an airline.

The first time I read the novel, when I was in my 20s, I did not make the connection that the Wright Brothers had first flown 30 years earlier. This was new technology then. These two young men were the equivalent of today’s billionaires investing in AI.

Zoomers don’t know what Usenet is.

Allegra Rosenberg has a good explanation, and she continues with a meditation on misconceptions that Generation Z have about life in the 90s and 2000s.

This misunderstanding is not unique to GenZ; I think it’s a phenomenon of being in one’s 20s. I remember reading Dickens...
mitchwagner.com
Mitch Wagner https://mitchwagner.com/2026/08/14/zoomers-dont-know-what-usenet.html

🦍 Mitchellaneous 8.14.2026

Fri, 14 Aug 2026 15:36:53 -0700

Fri, 14 Aug 2026 14:41:15 -0700

Zoomers don’t know what Usenet is.

Allegra Rosenberg has a good explanation, and she continues with a meditation on misconceptions that Generation Z have about life in the 90s and 2000s.

This misunderstanding is not unique to GenZ; I think it’s a phenomenon of being in one’s 20s. I remember reading Dickens (possibly “David Copperfield”) and coming across a casual mention of the main character sending his wife a letter one morning — he worked on one side of London, lived on another side, and expected the letter to arrive that afternoon. Mail delivery in London at that time was twice a day; people used the post like texting or email today — it was slower of course but you could still count on getting a message to someone the same day. I found that fascinating!

Rosenberg doesn’t mention Reddit. I think a good explanation of Usenet is that it was like Reddit but it was primarily text-based and complete distributed. It was not owned by a single company.

Fri, 14 Aug 2026 12:00:11 -0700

An 18-year-old San Diego man pledd guilty to kicking a sea lion on a viral video. Sea lions are generally unthreatening but they are wild animals and will attack if stressed or threatened. They can get up to 200-800 pounds and have sharp teeth. I watched the video of that kid; he was cruelly picking on an animal that did him no harm. He’s lucky that a criminal sentence is the only penalty he received and if the sea lion had attacked him back, I would have thought of it as evolution in action.

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 12:06:55 -0700

“The Social Ritual That Made Me a Better Man: Long live guys' night." “… the couple of evenings a month that I shared with Steve and the others became for me a safe and premeditated truancy from domestic commitments. The ceremony amounted to a pressure valve. Once released, it sent us home tired and inebriated but also kinder, happier, and more giving.” By Thomas Chatterton Williams at The Atlantic.

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 12:03:14 -0700

Sailors in the USS Lincoln and their families are suffering low morale and mental illness due to long deployment. Multiple sailors have tried to go overboard.

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 09:12:11 -0700

Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t understand how to live. “An AI future of sleek, streamlined, and totally empty relationships.” Elizabeth Lopatto shreds Zuck’s AI manifesto. “Look, I am coming to believe we need a better quality of AI booster…. Is the point of life merely to stockpile accomplishments? If that is what Silicon Valley believes, no wonder all the billionaires seem so unhappy all the time!”

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 08:57:42 -0700

Why you can’t find a primary care doctor. Prevention isn’t a priority in US healthcare. The profit is in damage control. Why should healthcare providers invest in primary care physicians to help you lose weight, eat healthy and get fit when there is so much money to be made in prescription meds and heart surgery?

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 08:51:19 -0700

On AI Coding and Its Discontents.

Cal Newport says the honeymoon phase of AI coding is over. Early advocates of using AI to write code are scaling back their ambitions. Turns out AI-generated code is often buggy, hard to fix and hard to maintain. Coders are still using AI in their work, but in controlled and limited ways. “AI is not a magic ‘infinity machine’ that can solve all our problems, and ultimately deliver us a sense of meaning in a cold, confusing world. It’s a normal technology, and perhaps it’s time we start talking about it that way.”

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 08:42:26 -0700

Bobby Brainworms comes to San Diego to make homelessness remediation as successful as the war in Iran and fixing the reflecting pool.

Wed, 12 Aug 2026 12:59:04 -0700

Anthropic will watermark text and other file types to identify AI-generated content. I’m intrigued by how that would work in text — seems impossible.

Wed, 12 Aug 2026 12:12:48 -0700

I loved the movie “Up In the Air,” starring George Clooney and Anna Kendrick as contractors who break the bad news to employees during corporate layoffs.

I saw it the night I was laid off from a job. It was, I think, my second time being laid off, not my first. The first time you’re laid off it’s traumatic. After that — the second, and subsequent occasions — you’re like yeah sure whatever just tell me about my severance and COBRA.

Also, I have been a frequent business traveler nearly all of my career (though nowhere near as frequent as George Clooney’s character).

Tue, 11 Aug 2026 22:09:25 -0700

Bluesky’s active user base is shrinking as its focus expands beyond the app. X is shrinking too but Threads is growing.

Tue, 11 Aug 2026 10:17:50 -0700

“It’s amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.” — Harry S Truman

🦍 Mitchellaneous 8.11.2026

Tue, 11 Aug 2026 08:27:05 -0700

🦍 Mitchellaneous 8.9.2026

Sun, 09 Aug 2026 15:01:07 -0700

Breaking out the dino undies? She must be really special.

Democratic Socialists and anti-Semitism

Sat, 08 Aug 2026 09:54:35 -0700

I spent a few minutes on the Democratic Socialists of America website, paying particular attention to their platform. Much of it is aspirational and utopian and entirely agreeable. This is the world we’d like to see in 25, 50 or 100 years, not necessarily tomorrow.

However their singling out of Israel of all the nations of the world for criticism sets off a bright, blinking red light for me. I’m fine with people criticizing Israel — I am highly critical of it myself, as are many Israelis — but when a political organization or candidate criticizes Israel exclusively without also criticizing countries like Saudi Arabia and China, with which the United States also has strong ties, I strongly suspect that candidate or organization of anti-Semitism.

The DSA says Israeli and American officials who committed genocide against Palestinians should face criminal prosecution. I have no objection to that. But the DSA says nothing about Palestinians who commit atrocities against Israeli civilians. That’s a big red anti-Semitism flag for me.

Both major political parties in the US now have powerful anti-Semitic wings. I’m sure this is fine and will be no problem at all.

If you want to respond to this post by pointing out terrible things Israel did with US support, go ahead, but you’re missing the point.

🦍 Mitchellaneous 8.8.2026

Sat, 08 Aug 2026 08:55:00 -0700

Fri, 07 Aug 2026 18:36:55 -0700

I updated the template for my newsletter to set the maximum width for the body to 600 pixels, so the newsletter doesn’t stretch alllllllll the way across a widescreen. I had Claude do the code and it appeared to get it right in one shot, which is too good to be true.

If you’re reading this in the newsletter and the formatting is funny, please let me know. And if the newsletter is so badly formatted that you can’t read it, well, I hope my attempt at mental telepathy is working.

🦍 Mitchellaneous 8.6.2026

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 23:19:53 -0700

Shared privately by a friend, who says, “A valid and rational response. Smart kid. Looks into the abyss and averts his eyes.”

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 15:33:18 -0700

This is cool: The cast of “The Pitt” will do a live table reading of the first broadcast episode of “Star Trek” to celebrate the show’s 60th anniversary and benefit the Writers' Guild Foundation. Noah Wylie will play Kirk, and other cast participating include Katherine LaNasa, Fiona Dourif, Taylor Dearden, Shabana Azeez and Ayesha Harris

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 10:54:40 -0700

We missed the San Diego Carnivorous Plant Society Sale and Show. It was last weekend. Darnit!

In other news: San Diego has a carnivorous plant society. Is it a society of carnivorous plants?