How AI, Healthcare, and Labubu Became the US Economy. “… the US is becoming Las Vegas - but everywhere. We are essentially building a glorified, speculative fantasy while China focuses on the foundational, ‘boring’ work of scientific and technological advancement.” kyla.substack.com/p/how-ai-…
A bleak assessment by Kyla Scanlon. But she ends on a cautiously hopeful note. We have the skills and labor to turn the U.S., and the west, around. We need the will and leadership.
Good ideas are popular: But they’re impolitic. “In democracies, we’re told, politicians exist to reflect and enact the popular will; but the truth is, politicians’ primary occupation is thwarting the will of the people, in preference to the will of a small group of wealthy, powerful people.” Most people around the world support socialism and socialist policies. But politicians don’t represent most people; politiians represent the super-wealthy. Fortunately, the super-wealthy hate each other, which gives the people people opportunity to enact policies that benefit all. By Cory Doctorow pluralistic.net/2025/08/0…
First impressions of Sydney. “A remarkably relaxing city – maybe too relaxing?” By Chris Arnade walkingtheworld.substack.com/p/first-i…
As always, I admire Arnade’s photographic skills, his ability to capture beauty in mundane streetscapes.
Coming Soon: Your Professional Decline. On kottke.org.
“Super weird to have innocuously added a silly personal anecdote to a post you didn’t realize was super popular… Only to have it cross your dash a week later and find out that like 12,000 people think you’re lying. ¯_(ツ)_/¯” www.tumblr.com/dduane/79…
“…. watching otherwise “progressive” people start to parrot jokes about like “Clanker with a hard R” and “screws will not replace us” and whatnot is like 🫥 “ www.tumblr.com/reverieau…
OpenAI is an arm’s-length subsidiary of Microsoft, and OpenAI needs GPT5 to convince Microsoft to keep the money flowing and not just swallow OpenAI outright. pivot-to-ai.com/2025/08/0…
Recent antitrust fervor is millionaire-on-billionaire violence. By Cory Doctorow. pluralistic.net/2025/08/0…
RFK Jr. wants a wearable on every America. That future’s not as healthy as he thinks. www.theverge.com/analysis/…
Victoria Song talks from personal experience how wearables can lead to obsessive thinking and create more problems than they solve. “My first three years with wearables wrecked my relationship with food.”
Song doesn’t even mention other important issues: RFK Jr. is a malevolent lunatic, possibly more dangerous than even Trump. RFK’s deranged theories about health could potentially kill millions of people. And he wants to put a surveillance device on every American.
One of the oldest known archeological sites on Earth, 12,000-year-old Gobekli Tepe in Turkey, meets up with conspiracy theorists and Joe Rogan. www.kpbs.org/news/inte…
