Interesting article here. I don’t read WIRED (or The Verge, or…) for the product reviews, but it’s not hard to see how generative AI can create issues for them in that way.

Gotta admit that I was tempted to put “Brendan Carr is a dummy” on my protest sign today so I could find the other Vergecast listeners in town.

This is the first thing I’ve bothered reading about the router ban, and it is exactly the kind of thing I was hoping to read.

Histoire fascinante—mais inquiétante.

Uh, this sucks.

Cory Doctorow’s end of year recap of books he reviewed always puts a few titles on my list, and this was one of them. The history of energy is not inherently the most interesting topic ever, but once I got past the fact that I was reading in translation (which only bugs me with French, since I can read that pretty well) and trying to figure out how the translation was done (worried about AI, to be honest), I really enjoyed this book.

That Marc Andreessen clip about having zero introspection sounds like it’s straight out of an Ellulian critique: There is no good or bad, there is only technique.

The Martian is a fun reread—except when its casual references to a functioning federal government and US media ecosystem briefly take me out of the narrative.

Reprehensible comments deserve swift condemnation, and Johnson is being even more disappointing than usual.

Terrible but hilarious.

The last line really lands.

Required reading, imo.

Oh, okay, maybe not shame so much as butt-covering.

Oh look, they are capable of shame.

Terrifying stuff.

Opt out is a terrible way of doing this. I’m so angry that I didn’t even finish the article before posting.

Over the past few months, one of my afternoon traditions has been to take a short break to read through the day’s passages in Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, and Enuma Okoro’s Common Prayer: Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals. I bought this book after being impressed by Claiborne’s work in Jesus for President (which is much more radical than the title sounds) and with the hopes that it would be another resource for me as I continue to learn about the liturgical calendar. I didn’t stick with it long during the 2024-2025 liturgical year, but I’ve been having more luck with the 2025-2026 liturgical year. Sometimes, I’ll admit, I just go through the motions, but every once in a while, something really stands out to me.

This post takes for granted that one is familiar with the first season of the Apple TV+ show Pluribus—I don’t make any effort to explain the premise of the show or to avoid any spoilers about it.

As I concede just about every time I write something related to anarchism, I don’t claim to be a serious student of this political philosophy, and I don’t know if I’m ready to declare my allegiance to it. Yet, there are two basic beliefs of anarchism that I find attractive and that keep me coming back to anarchist writing (both fictional and philosophical):

The beginning of this book felt like a bit of a slog, which felt tragic because I knew the book had all the elements I like in sci-fi! It eventually won me over, though, and I’m glad I stuck with it.

Wild escalation of digital labor issues in generative AI.

Good observations here. My respect for Anthropic was solely based on their seeming willingness to stand up for something, because otherwise, I have a lot of issues wirh them. This groveling makes that respect disappear.

Hate this so much. The company statements are weaselly and gross. This also demonstrates one of the worst things about this whole issue. I would never buy Meta smart glasses, but I know two people in my life who own them, and the privacy burden of this product isn’t borne by the owner of the device so much as by those around them. Barf, barf, barf.

On commence à voir pourquoi Andor s’est inspiré de cette série ! Au bout de douze épisodes, je commence à mieux connaître les personnages et à choisir des préférés parmi eux. En avant !

As soon as I saw this in a bookstore, I knew I’d need to read it, and I was happy to find an audiobook through hoopla (even if ew, hoopla). The details of the trial itself weren’t always easy to follow, but it was fascinating to learn more about a historical figure I was only loosely familiar with—and the final part of the book tracing Pétain’s continued significance was especially interesting.

Vicious and hilarious.