Carolyn Ostrander

The AI / neo-cloud / data center ecosystem is so interconnected it's mindboggling, as this chart very effectively shows. Catch up on the Anthropic IPO details here: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

@microsoft.com is laying off 60,000 people. Whose jobs will be taken by the AI machine. That's 60,000 families @microsoft.com is throwing to the street. If you needed any more signs how critical it is to VOTE BLUE then BREAK THESE COMPANIES APART and REGULATE THE CRAP out of ALL of them.

The newest “innovation” in authentic, humane people management. Escalating the amount of stress inducing, mentally taxing, interruptions laden, multitasking - then dangling a guilt free exit. You’re not fired, you’re escaping a toxic environment. www.wsj.com/business/mic...

Republicans are machines that turn: “THE ILLEGALS ARE TAKING OUR JOBS” Into “AI IS THE FUTURE”

Relying on "line go up" as a way to keep your business funnelling money to shareholders is a certain way to destroy it in the long term. Anyone in business (or at home) should start considering an exit strategy to Open Office and a flavour of Linux. arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026...

Skydance, the newly merged company of Paramount and Warner Bros Discovery, is reportedly offering some employees a “one-time” voluntary buyout and introducing a company-wide five-day-a-week in-office policy variety.com/2026/film/ne...

Get ready for all your Microsoft products to get even worse. We need to find ways to move off of all billionaire-owned internet services and software. A practical consumer issue as well as a critical political necessity.

David Ellison and his co-CEO Ynon Kreiz sent out an email to Skydance employees today offering up voluntary buyouts and also implementing a five-day-a-week in-office work policy. And so it begins...

yeah so this is a big Ricardo Ch 31 moment. the ouroboros of demand from ai tools qua chips better be enough to offset a loss in effective demand from living, breathing humans who buy stuff and soon will be buying much less.

You have to wonder how many workers part of the proposed 60k "exits" from Microsoft have been simping AI tools as the key to staying "relevant" and "not left behind" on LinkedIn.

ICE plan to buy robot dogs spurs protest from hundreds of Boston Dynamics employees - Ars Technica https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/10/boston-dynamics-employees-want-to-block-sale-of-robot-dogs-to-ice/

It's weird seeing AI bubbles across the world begin to collapse in real-time because AI continually needs more input to function, every time it's used its trained and becomes shittier, but nobody's writing their own code now, so it's a death spiral for everyone who needs claude to work

AI was never about helping people do their jobs better, it was *always* about replacing them. Case in point:

Xbox workers among 60,000 staff offered voluntary exit by Microsoft

FWIW, Anthropic admits its current margins may not be representative. There's a bit of lucky timing here: big revenue growth while on the tail end of cheap compute contracted more than a year ago. Their future compute is... not so cheap. (1st pic their S-1, second are my graphics based on S-1.)

In April Microsoft offered voluntary retirement to 8,750 people. ~2,625 took the offer in July. The company laid off 4,800 later that month. They cut 7,425 workers in total. Doing the same math with 60,000 being offered exits yesterday implies the company wants to cut tens of thousands of workers.

The utterly sociopathic entitlement of these tech freaks. Nvidia, Microsoft and Cisco has given the UK government a 12 month deadline to quash public outrage over data centres, or they will... flounce off with their debt? Go on, then. Off you fuck. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

I think if any political party wants a vote winning policy it’d be stamping down on data centres, calling a complete halt, bringing in the most massively stringent conditions on data purpose, energy usage, environmental and light pollution, and water use - in each and every single case.

Everything is just fine

Note how you NEVER see an expectation or suggestion that prices will go down, despite companies trying to get rid of more than a quarter of their workforce because they don't want to pay them. AI's only purpose is to turn the wages of workers into profit for capitalists.

It’s now clear that Big Tech companies believe AI enables them to operate with fewer employees. Hiring of junior workers has slowed, layoffs continue, and Microsoft is now offering buyouts to 60,000 employees. Tech jobs will increasingly lie in smaller tech companies and businesses outside tech.

So what is the plan here for the capitalists and AI supporters? There aren't 60,000 tech jobs to replace these jobs. Prices aren't going down so these employees won't be able to live on nothing. People keep talking about AI making jobs easier, but it is getting rid of jobs without replacing them.

That is a stadium full of employees being replaced by AI in one email

love to see the new presumption of irregularity take form

bsky.app/profile/empt...

Whoops! The Kennedy Center's Trump-installed Board quietly revises a key justification for the two-year closure: that a report supposedly found phased renovations would cost $41M more. The Board admits it never read that before voting. buff.ly/a7LEkeV

Beyond explicitly threatening withholding aid for political reasons, Donald Trump has been *doing* so repeatedly—and his government has been rebuked in court for doing that. Just one example: buff.ly/mvud4IE

Yes, we all knew about the tax immunity. It's been brought up several times in Congress. Conryn almost withheld his vote to confirm Blanche over it, but folded. A future AG can overturn the immunity.

Jesus fucking Christ on a pogo stick.

kind of crazy to me that my parents escaped vietnam during a war and arrived in north america, where they labored as a janitor and secretary so they could save enough money to send me to college, where i received a higher education, and now this is what i use my brain for

Trent McCotter and Aakash Singh's Star Chamber emptywheel.net/2026/10/26/t...

Natalie Harp and her gigantic bag are with the president again today #TravelWithNatalie (Chip Somodevilla/Getty)

These are the people who gave you Trey Gowdy and seven (7!) unsuccessful Benghazi investigations.

NEW: I'm in the Comey docket now. Comey petitioned the court to unseal this case, which Judge McFadden granted today. That's why we're getting this news now 1/

I want every member of the NYPD afraid the mayor will overhear their locker room talk.

Note: Comey accepted a job in the private sector on Dec. 20, 2025, and her backpay will be calculated from her firing through that date.

Shorter 174 judges to 8th Circuit chief judge: Say, have you noticed that DOJ keeps making frivolous complaints about judges? www.democracydefendersfund.org/news/174-bip...

• Ahmed Zewail (Egypt / US): Won 1999 Nobel Prize in #Chemistry • Nader Masmoudi (Tunisia): Won Fermat Prize in #mathematics • Abbas Bahri (Tunisia): also received the Fermat Prize • Sir Michael Atiyah (Lebanese descent / British): #mathematician who won both Fields Medal and Abel Prize.

Yes, the Arabic people, famously bad at math. thats-racist-dot-gif

A 2025 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, Omar Yaghi is the son of Palestinian refugees who grew up in Jordan. He just left the US to move to China after raising concerns about rising anti-immigrant sentiment, like the kind shown here. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/china-than...

Maurene Comey must be REINSTATED to her federal prosecutor job with backpay, a federal judge has ruled. He adds that accepting Trump DOJ's position would "unsettle the very equilibrium established by this Nation’s constitutional system." Doc buff.ly/CDtADgH