Gerard Saucier

Just making note that thus technicism manifesto ought to be read in light of Veblen, Ellul, Mumford, and Postman.

Believe it or not, if you’ve paid off your home you are still a member of society and still need to pay for society. Now if you want to ask why homes—the dominant form of wealth among non-rich people—are relatively alone in forms of wealth that are taxed in the US, that is a different question.

MFR resistance in Oregon

going to continue linking this Eric Reinhart piece because i sincerely believe he gets it exactly right when he talks about the stakes here and what AI “art” threatens in society - the very connective tissue of human experience

where is the fun in having a computer go “here’s a song. no guiding thought went into its creation, and it’s produced by stealing creative endeavors from all your favorite artists”?

We need a word to describe a person/entity that is very clever and knowledgeable, but also entirely mechanisic and instrumental and soulless, that's what this so-called 'superintelligence' is. German, rich in compounding capabilities, might be just the language in which to find it...

Or, "you are only right if you do what they tell you to do"

To put this in perspective chestnut trees used to be dominant species in the United States. Billions of trees were killed by fungal blight and now fully grown America chestnuts are functionally extinct. There is no getting them back. Ever. All for a data center. www.gadgetreview.com/one-of-ameri...

Attention to wording would better be on the other half of the compound...it seems more like cleverness than broad-range intelligence. Deft and quick, kind of know-it-all, but prone toward wily cunning, while lacking wisdom and deep insight. In many cultures, wisdom is more emphasized than smarts.

The story, then, is one of epistemic degradation, which the pandemic accelerated (not least due to more time online and more to conspiracy theorize about). A factor is content collapse: people think tons of bad just started happening when the reality is it just started being in their face every day.

What's eroded here is a cultural infrastructure: Social Norms ~ "standards governjng which information circulates" ...as well as what behavior is in circulation

Nate Soares: "We need a treaty." Meanwhile...

Uniqueness, the "non-standard" and "unique and powerful voice" Cory references elsewhere in this fine thread, is fundamental to the aesthetic and artistic realm. And if AI is grinding out the convergent commonalities in past works, it is systematically missing something in that realm.

Strong email from @aoc.bsky.social putting down a marker on how to deal with both the proximate economic risks from AI and the longer term ones.

Sometimes, in a dream, you realize the way to end what's happening in the (bad) dream is to just wake up. Way to wake up from THIS dream is to turn off the devices* -- sooner rather than later... *tho not necessarily 100% of the time, of the uses

it comes off as Guys Building The Doom Machines standing around and going "the doom machines could quite likely kill us all, and we should coordinate on stopping them from killing us all, although I *personally* am going to keep focusing on becoming ultra-rich from building the Doom Machines"

There's only one way out of this mess: the rapid disassembly of the American internet and the rapid creation of a post-American internet, one built on open, auditable, sovereign digital public goods, internationally built and maintained: pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/3... 51/

Big Tech has proved that its only principles are not paying taxes, invading your privacy, and not being broken up by antitrust enforcers: arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026... 36/

This is what living next door to a 30 megawatt data center sounds like.

In science, this arises where in a situation of underdetermination (many models could well fit) a premature consensus based on limited data leads to an epistemic bubble, the scientists have overfit their (world)view to the model. And miss lots of trees in the forest. Consider e.g. the Big Five.

The Trump years are proof of this. We've reached a high-water mark for rule by illegitimate billionaire dilettantes. The second Trump admin began with DOGE's Bonfire of the Stupidities, where Musk cultists dismantled vast swathes of the American administrative state. 56/

Autocomplete's predictions are always grounded in who you *used to be*, which means autocomplete knows very little about who you are now, and absolutely nothing about who you will become: reallifemag.com/instant-reca... 25/

Suresh describes this as a literal religious mania. In the 500+ employee businesses Suresh studied, the only people who were promoted - or even spared from being fired - were people who professed "religious declarations of faith" about "the transformative power of AI." 23/

Intriguing divergence of voter (general populace) and donor (big $, incl billionaire) interests, in consumer domain. But conundrum disappears with strong campaign-finance rules, such that voters rule.

Good grief, this hits home.

"Trump positions himself as a vindication of masculine prerogatives," says @moiradonegan.bsky.social. He tells men not to "cultivate virtues" but to "embrace their own vices." On the pod, this look at Trump, the Tate brothers, and the plight of young men is so good: newrepublic.com/article/2136...

🧠 AI was meant to fix our bias We were promised AI would strip bias out of decisions. A new paper shows the opposite: language models absorb human cognitive distortions, then amplify them back at us. 🔗 arxiv.org/abs/2607.20695 #AI #Bias #CriticalAI 🧪

This list of what the public finds corrupt is basically a rundown of Trump’s governing philosophy. Poll: @brennancenter.org

Ford has rehired hundreds of senior engineers after replacing them with AI backfired and has cost the company billions of dollars. AI adoption is blamed for Ford being the most recalled automaker in the U.S. with 51 recalls covering over 11 million vehicles in the first half of 2026 alone.

I keep saying: Nordic-style social democracy (capitalism with social programs) is quite different from socialism traditionally defined (abolishing capitalism). I think it’s useful to use clear language that distinguishes between these things.

Alex Reisner has found four giant data sets of songs—totaling more than 20 million tracks—available to companies training AI music-generation tools. Search for an artist or song in the data sets:

Crime and Punishment Follow my cartoons and accompanying written commentary on Substack: nickanderson.substack.com For @contrariannews.org

Q: What's the difference between Iran and Vietnam? A: 47 had a plan for getting out of Vietnam.

“.. The first rule is to have muddled objectives. .. The second rule is, do not know thine enemy. .. Finally, be sure to alienate your friends.” @edwardluce.bsky.social www.ft.com/content/0ba6...