Crowd: "That guy is pretty cool and is doing good work for the community. We should support him!" Guy: Continues to do the exact same work, but decides it might actually be better for him to be…

If you enjoy some piece of media (a story, a song, an image), and then find out it was created with AI, is it reasonable to have your enjoyment impacted in retrospect? It sure is. John Gruber wrote…

“Mathematicians have to grapple with being replaced by AI.” This has become a constant refrain among the media and concerned mathematicians alike. For example, the article “THE…

I understand why MacStories returned to X. My concern is how the decision was handled and communicated to its team, members, and wider community.

(Originally published July 22, 2020.) Let’s be honest about something: We in the West have been overrun by a tidal wave of racial hatred, and it erupted from institutions “of higher learning.”…

“Thus we are all born into a silent war-game, centuries old, enlisted in teams not of our own choosing.” Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (2020) I put my newsletter on Product…

God has given this nation 500 million guns, and has scattered them abroad in such a way that every moment of every day one is found unattended.

obligatory one month without social media on my phone substack essay (contrarian edition) (Apologies for a substack link but this one is worth it.) Quit your phone and change the nature of time and…

A recently released survey conducted in July found that Americans believe more in extraterrestrial visitation and UFOs due to news coverage of the subject. The survey of 2,000 Americans, conducted by…

Tyler Austin Harper: Yesterday in London, Jason Arday, the controversy-plagued British academic and author, was found dead. Made famous as the youngest Black professor in Cambridge’s more than…

Recently I watched a video talking about the literacy crisis. A whole generation of youngsters are growing up with poor literacy skills, whilst adults are increasingly outsourcing their critical…

It was the sign that got me first. I found a photo of an old-style, street-spanning sign that used to be on Columbia near Legion on the Ralphs Thriftway website. I was already It stuck with me for…

Today's college students are more likely to say they're isolated and lonely.

Living in Kuala Lumpur has pros and cons and I’m not going to list them in this post. However, it’s about a problem every pedestrian notices immediately: this place is hostile for…

[This post was drafted with the assistance of an AI writing tool (Claude), based on the author's original notes, arguments, and source material. The draft was subsequently reviewed and edited by the…

Even though reading might not be dead, the Sunday morning newspaper seems to be. Well, at least the print version seems to be dead. For years, I’ve been saying that with the internet every day is…

(This is my twenty-second post in a series of entries I’m using to participate in Blaugust for 2026.) Luke Plunkett has written a piece over on Aftermath that’s formatted as an open…

How to build organizations that support human flourishing in the long term.

I had an interesting chat to one of the crew, regarding Lucire’s low social media metrics. This has come up once before—that the enquirer couldn’t see that an operation that began on the web before…

Table of Contents The Background The Rabbit Hole Third Spaces Caveats Want to Learn More? The Background I’ve been curious about VR Chat for years now, but until a little while ago we…

I wrote this follow-up in case things got worse. They did.

on the furry neighborhood Alyaza Birze (August 21, 2026) canonical link: "on the furry neighborhood" Only gay people who were able to access enough money to separate from their oppressive communities…

So recently there was the passing of arts + culture magazines The Face and 4Columns (both of which I had written for) And then came the announcement of the acquisition / gutting of a bunch of music…

An approach to homework that prioritizes time spent engaging with material, documents the AI-assisted process, and tests understanding through live discussion.

Building a public-interest project to address urban noise pollution sounds rewarding on paper. You write the code, gather incident data, and give your community a voice to demand accountability.

Remember when we wrote about the surveillance cameras tracking pretty much every car? Remember when we wrote about the anti-surveillance fashion that makes ugly sweaters diverting cameras? Now…

Have you ever handled a surgical scalpel? It’s an incredible tool - small, light and sharper than anything of its size and purpose. It takes thousands of hours of practice before someone is…

22 Aug 2026 Here’s another post where I wrestle with my ambivalence towards the technology I’m currently working with... 'Tu quoque to you Sir' OK, so one response to people pointing out generative…

Federico Viticci and John Voorhees have posted an explanation about returning to X: MacStories is precious to us. It’s not just how we earn a living; it’s one of a small number of independent…

"Lucky is he who lives unaware Doesn't get bothered by those who don't care Lucky is he who lives unaware Who doesn't get bothered by all that's unfair Unlucky me who knows way too much Who fights to…

The AI Era (or, as I like to say, AI Crisis) can really be attributed to a single company: OpenAI. As such, it’s an important enough subject that I’m glad someone wrote a book about it…

Here are six chart-driven ideas to think about this weekend: New data shows AI has made hedge funds the most crowded in historyLess-educated young men are stagnating worldwide, just as AI comes after…

The internet has gone from annoying to unusable. It once could be insipid or dangerously temptacious—Now I can’t even bear to be on it. One would be justified in wondering why I…

Colleen McClain and Eugenie Park at the Pew Research Center: Today, 52% of Americans say they are more concerned than excited about the increased use of AI in daily life – up from 37% in 2021.…

At FrOSCon 2026, I gave a talk titled Jiu Jitsu mit dem Quellcode I presented the jj version control system and also tried to make a connection to the ongoing maintenance crisis in open source. After…

So, here we have the fertility rate of Iran by province: In the southwest at 2.14, you see Khuzestan province. This is where the Iranian [...]

Early Release: Mike speaks with Professor William Kovarik an expert on the history of leaded gasoline

Some years ago already I really got fed up with big tech, especially the big US companies. This was before the more recent (geo) political issues arose. The fact that we have become their products…

democracy in the hands (and fingers) of a group

If Banksy was based out of the United States, he would probably be in prison by now. That's how we roll in the Land of the Free.

Looks like I found another cool article I wanted share. This time it's about the impact of generative AI on education.

Milo woke before the streetlights dimmed. He had learned to gauge the hour by the color of the sky through the warehouse window, a skill that required no subscription, no login, no biometric…

There are moments when advocacy feels like shouting into the wind. You send the emails. You request the records. You research the statutes. You attend the meetings. You ask the uncomfortable…

Every other web platform feature I've ever written about, I've been able to test in some easy way. Open DevTools, type the name of the thing, see if it's there. Device Bound Session…

I spent many years paying fairly rudimentary attention to “the economy.” It was never an academic subject that interested me, and a lot of what I skimmed by and about economists seemed to…

The counter to the perennial argument that "humans have seen their work automated before". https://filiph.net/text/2026-08-21-11am-no-we-haven't-seen-this-before.html

Generative AI has turned into the kind of arms race we normally associate with doping in sports. By which I mean: the companies involved make a legal product and a bunch of people try to figure out…

I thought about making a Facebook post that said "Endorsed!" But most people wouldn't know what I meant--they'd rightly ask, "Endorsed by whom?" On Wednesday, I met for an Endorsement panel for…

Graffiti.org Gets Zola

I’ve been on a bender lately of reading books about gender, specifically a lot on the experience of women in society, and it’s radicalising me in the best way possible. Many years ago, during my trip…