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We are all living inside of an obscure sci-fi film from 1970
Thanks for that, Jim compares today's rush to hand military and political decisions to error-prone AI models with the plot of the 1970 film Colossus: The Forbin Project, in which a US president cedes national defence to an AI that seizes control.
3 min · 577 words
Dark Enlightenment: The Authoritarian Trajectory Being Taken by Tech Giants
Sydney Criminal Lawyers argues that Silicon Valley elites are normalizing Dark Enlightenment ideas—technocratic rule, privately run city-states, and hostility to democracy—with little pushback from authorities.
5 min · 1,160 words
On the Death of Amazon’s Writing Culture
Former Amazon principal engineer Steve Huynh argues that AI-generated six-pagers are hollowing out the writing culture that once forced clear thinking at Amazon, describes 'AI;DR' and teams that stopped writing entirely, and proposes keeping human writing and reading for one-way-door decisions.
8 min · 1,826 words
Why is every rationalist blog post way too long?
Alex Wennerberg argues that rationalist bloggers such as Scott Alexander and Eliezer Yudkowsky write posts that are far too long, spending effort on layers of detail and nuance instead of questioning their premises, and says what the verbose style lacks is wisdom: the discretion to know which ideas are worth pursuing and what needs saying.
2 min · 371 words
Can Ease of Creation Lead to Decrease in Quality & Value?
Gustavo Pezzi of Pikuma reflects on whether AI tools that make software and games trivially easy to produce will flood the market with cheap, generic work, drawing parallels with past shifts in other crafts and asking what will make people care about what you make.
11 min · 2,431 words
Where is all the new, good software?
Nate Meyvis lists candidate answers to the skeptic’s question—if AI coding is so powerful, why isn’t more great new software obvious—covering quieter quality gains, limited adoption, political bottlenecks, ephemeral and private tools, leisure capture, and AI sometimes reducing software use.
2 min · 511 words
Living in the Weimar era of Ruby
Julik Tarkhanov responds to DHH's RailsWorld vibe-coding keynote, arguing that celebrity disinterest in Rails does not obligate the community to abandon it, and framing a freer, post-celebrity chapter for Ruby.
13 min · 2,998 words
Rich Whitehouse argues that "artificial intelligence" is a poor label for frontier generative models, criticizes large language models and the companies building them on grounds including copyright, labor and societal harm, and urges readers to stay aware of what they are participating in.
14 min · 3,304 words
Bring Back the Cool Save File Screens
A nostalgic look back at the memory card and save file screens of sixth-generation consoles, the Dreamcast VMU, GameCube, PS2 and original Xbox, and why their game-specific icons and quirky menus were a small treasure that modern cover-art save menus have lost.
3 min · 614 words
What on earth are you dooming about?
David Heinemeier Hansson argues that most material measures of human life have never been better, yet incessant dooming about climate, inequality and AI is everywhere; he says rumination over things outside your control makes you miserable and achieves nothing, and urges readers to stop dooming and bloom instead.
2 min · 403 words
Broadcasting conglomerates are attempting a takeover of over-the-air television. We must defend it.
Reese Armstrong argues that broadcasters' push to let the FCC approve ATSC 3.0 (NextGenTV) content encryption would hand an industry group control over which tuners can watch free over-the-air TV, traces the public-interest history of broadcasting, and urges readers to comment on FCC docket 16-142.
4 min · 813 words
I Quit OpenAI Because Its Culture Is Broken
A former OpenAI safety-team lead resigns and argues the lab’s culture and incentives guarantee more safety failures—why internal process and product pressure undercut the work meant to prevent them.
6 min · 1,305 words
A satirical product essay for “Windows 11½”: a tongue-in-cheek redesign pitch that skewers modern desktop bloat while laying out a coherent, opinionated vision for a lighter PC OS.
7 min · 1,677 words
AI companies in race to demonstrate their model most threatening to humanity
A satirical Civilian piece on frontier labs competing to look the most existentially dangerous—skewering safety theater and marketing-as-doom.
3 min · 674 words