Lots to think about here. In the context of Trump’s proposed budget, this stood out in particular:

Our military spending is not a partisan issue. Obama raised Bush’s military budget. Trump raised Obama’s budget. Biden raised Trump’s budget. What would King say to that? Probably exactly what he said in 1967: “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching a spiritual death.”

Doctorow has been arguing for a post-American internet/tech industry for a while, but this passage really landed for me:

If Trump wants to steal Greenland, he doesn’t need tanks or missiles. He can just tell Microsoft and Oracle to brick the entire Danish state and all of its key firms, blocking their access to their email archives, files, databases, and other key administrative tools. If Denmark still holds out, Trump can brick all their tractors, smart speakers, and phones. If Denmark still won’t give up Greenland, Trump could blackhole all Danish IP addresses for the world’s majority of transoceanic fiber. At the click of a mouse, Trump could shut down the world’s supply of Lego, Ozempic, and delicious, lethally strong black licorice.

Ugh, this sucks.

So much about this that I don’t like. The article makes a good case that there may be good reasons to ease up on nuclear power regulations, but the language of AI and VCs suggests to me that those good reasons aren’t the top priority.

So Doctorow already said this in the essay I linked to this morning, but it’s very striking how much this leak highlights Anthropic’s willingness to use our creative labor while simultaneously cracking down on any effort for others to do the same to them.

Didn’t expect from the headline that this would turn into an essay on copyright, but I’m glad it did:

Expanding copyright will gain little for creative workers, except for a new reason to be angry about how our audiences experience our work. Expanding labor rights will gain much, for every worker, including our audiences. It’s an idea that our bosses – and AI hucksters – hate with every fiber of their beings.

The depressing thing is that this isn’t that far off from how OpenAI and Anthropic think.

Some good Lenten reflection in here.

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.