This week on my podcast, I read Why businesses lie about AI, a recent essay from my Pluralistic newsletter that breaks down Nikhil Suresh’s essay describing the total absence of any proof that any business is benefiting from AI deployment. One person who’s had a lot of opportunity to observe the shear between the stated... more

This week on my podcast, I read Post-political, a recent essay from my Pluralistic newsletter, about the material, irreconcilable differences between leftism and other political beliefs. But when it comes to a “post-politics that is neither right nor left,” the definition I turn to most often comes from science fiction writer Steven Brust, who once... more

This week on my podcast, I read my latest Locus Magazine column, Hell Is Other People, about the solipsistic fantasy underpinning the AI bubble. Sartre was (arguably) an optimist. It’s not that other people are unpleasant: quite the contrary! There’s nothing that makes the day (or, pointedly, the night) sweeter than agree­able human companionship. And... more

This week on my podcast, I read Zuckerberg’s increasingly bizarre war on whistleblowers, about Mark Zuckerberg’s campaign of terror against the whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams. More than a decade ago, a group of young, internet-connected Belarusian dissidents launched a series of increasingly high-stakes, increasingly surreal confrontations with the corrupt, authoritarian government of Alexander Lukashenka, a man... more

This week on my podcast, audio from Sunday’s launch in Menlo Park for The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI at Kepler’s Books with Angie Coiro. Catch me next tonight in Toronto at Osler Records, tomorrow in NYC with Jonathan Coulton at The Strand, Thursday in Philly with David Williams and Friday in Chicago... more

This week on my podcast, I read a recent post from my Pluralistic newsletter, “The World Has Moved On,” which analogizes Stephen King’s Dark Tower series to the Enshittification hypothesis. In the Dark Tower novels, we crisscross a fallen world in which decay is all around us. The buildings are rotten, the machines have stopped... more

This week on my podcast, I read my latest Locus Magazine column, “The Age of Vapor,” about the role science fiction imaginaires plays in fueling high-tech investment bubbles. It’s one thing to make everything about imaginary technology when you’re writing SF. The point of those imaginative exercises is to illumi­nate: To provoke reflection on our... more

This week on my podcast, I read AI and a world without migrants, a recent essay from my Pluralistic blog, which psychoanalyzes the sociopathic fantasies that are driving the AI investment bubble. I don’t care who you are, there will always be times when hell is other people. Not because other people are horrible –... more

This week on my podcast, I present an hour-long excerpt from the audiobook for The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI, which is currently on pre-order through my latest Kickstarter campaign: A short, provocative guide to what’s good, bad, and stupid about AI and the discourse around AI, by the author of Enshittification. In... more

This week on my podcast, I read Comrade Trump, a recent column from my Pluralistic newsletter, which will be syndicated in The Nerve. All of which means that my experience of the Trump years is decidedly weird. On the one hand, I exist in a near-perpetual state of anxious misery, as Trump and his chud... more