Commentary on how people live now. Technology and its effects, institutions and how they fail, and the cultural arguments worth having. Opinionated by design, because writing that hedges everything says nothing.
Artificial IntelligenceA writing group admin banned AI the same week strangers called his hand-painted 2014 watercolor cover AI slop. The ban is his right. Enforcing it by gut is the same guess that insulted his painting.
Artificial IntelligenceChina-linked networks have been caught posing as Americans to push anti-data-center messages. OpenAI and X both found them, and both found they got little traction, because most Americans already oppose data centers nearby.
Artificial IntelligenceThe UK's Society of Authors helped write a charter asking for consent, licensing, payment and transparency in AI use. After member backlash, its leadership said no use of generative AI can ever be ethical and pulled out eight days later.
BusinessMicrosoft Office turned a typewriter into a subscription, then raised the rent for an AI I never asked for. I canceled it and moved my manuscripts to WordCraft, a free Word clone built with AI. What switched over cleanly, what's…
BusinessI joined the Science Fiction Book Club about 30 times: take the introductory books, buy the minimum, quit, rejoin. The club printed hardcovers nobody else would, then turned into crap and stopped taking orders in 2025. Here's its story, and…
BusinessMy mom pasted Green Stamps into books at Sage's in San Bernardino, back when stores paid you to come back. Now I pay Walmart $150 a year and it's still the best deal in town. Here's how Publix, Aldi, Trader…
BusinessEvery supermarket follows a plan: flowers at the door, produce, then the deli, staples around the walls, music and smells set on purpose. The bigger question is who writes the plan, and why Trader Joe's refuses to rent its shelves.
BusinessIn 1969 a Gulf station handed me a cardboard Apollo lunar module. Here's how American giveaways rose and died with the 1973 oil embargo and the extraction era, and why AI and 3D printing are handing the tools back to…
Artificial IntelligenceWriting groups have stopped tasting the food and started inspecting the kitchen. A book should be judged on whether it's a good book. Here's what real AI misuse looks like, why a writer who does the thinking still owns the…
Artificial IntelligenceA member of a big creative writing group wrote that people who use AI deserve to be castrated. Nobody had been caught at anything, and nobody objected. The charge was using software. The sentence was mutilation.
Artificial IntelligenceMention AI in a writing group and you're a thief headed for hell. So I moved the pile-on to a hiking forum, where a beginner let an app plan her route to a waterfall. She had a wonderful day. The…
Critical ThinkingA study using dam resettlement records found rural populations undercounted by 53 to 84 percent. It doesn't mean billions of missing people, and it doesn't rescue anyone from falling birth rates. It does mean the numbers behind policy deserve a…
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