Rania Combs

“I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality…I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.” - MLK Jr

Good question

The problem of intermediaries is that when intermediaries gain monopoly power - by buying their rivals and capturing buyers and sellers - they are able to squeeze both.

Actually horrifying: “Zero-click hacks are a holy grail for attackers and catastrophic for victims, because they can automatically install malware on devices without requiring any interaction or missteps from the target.”

“[W]hen we focus on polarization as the problem, the solution is for everyone to quiet down and be ‘civil’—an outcome that benefits those who are willing to grab as much power as they can without concern for legality or civility.”

Check your voter registration status and make plans to vote! apps.npr.org/voter-regist...

There’s a lot of misinformation floating around about Trump Accounts right now. So I reviewed the new rules and separated what’s true from what’s circulating online. Here’s what you need to know:
 www.taxgirl.com/2026/10/04/t...

Exactly: “It is high time for us to regulate usage of systems sold as “AI”, not because they are magical machines, but because they are error-prone products that shouldn’t be used in high stakes scenarios.”

Companies are increasingly using AI tools to track us, target us, and charge us more at checkout. Consumers need control over our personal data.

Did ai say this was a good idea? 🤢

Exactly!

Exactly! “Once a company knows its customers can't leave, it can switch from treating them well to abusing them in order to extract money from them. The same goes for companies whose workers can't leave” pluralistic.net/2026/09/06/h...

Wondering how many of the lawyers who told Nilay Patel they “can do a piece of legal research or prepare a trial brief in five minutes instead of 15 hours” eventually end up on this list of lawyers sanctioned for citing AI-produced hallucinated content: www.damiencharlotin.com/hallucinatio...

A tremendous act of generosity. www.pbs.org/newshour/sho...

We’re not the in the early days when some people believed AI was infallible. Why are attorneys still submitting briefs without checking the citations and quoted content?

We need more radical acceptance in our world: “She practiced a unique brand of radical acceptance…No one would ever be thrown out of the Big Dolly Tent.” www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

“Her philanthropy was so much more significant and serious than what you see from other celebrities... As a woman, she was a standout giver, and she gave to the kinds of causes that a lot of rich people don’t give to, ones that were based on her life experience.”

I always learn something new from Cory Doctorow. A must-read about how monopolies disguise enshittification as innovation to extract maximum profit while limiting consumers power to use their property any way they see fit. It’s time to restore power to consumers.

Competition makes companies weaker, giving the public *and* democratic institutions more power. Competition makes the public richer at the expense of corporate shareholders, who have less money to spend on the project of subverting democracy. 40/

For more on how to talk about tech sold as "AI" in more precise terms: buttondown.com/maiht3k/arch...

Exactly! It’s so frustrating for those of us who have spent the past two decades, writing useful content.

"What a time to be alive! We are finally freeing you from the rat race and placing you on the rat unemployment line.” Read @petridishes.bsky.social's pro-AI commencement speech that 2026 grads will definitely not boo: theatln.tc/39O6Wr1c 🎨: The Atlantic

@petridishes.bsky.social's shoes pivoted to AI. She needed some coffee to deal with this, but the coffee shop had pivoted to AI. She sat down on a bench, but the bench? Pivoted to AI.

The question they should be asking: Is there life after newspapers? Is There Life After Smartphones? www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

“Older people who are lonely or bereaved are particularly vulnerable to being targeted, as criminals seek to exploit their isolation and yearning for friendship to part them from their money” www.theguardian.com/money/2026/m...

I did a consult on an AI drafted non-compete yesterday and it was surreal. There are no good answers because the document is functionally abstract. “Well, how would this work?” I’m sorry. I cannot tell you because literally no one has ever written something like this before.

So then full speed ahead with continuing to develop an “AI is so powerful… that it is very difficult for human civilisation to impose any restraints on it at all”? www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Exactly. “The stakes go beyond economics. Work brings dignity and purpose to people’s lives. That’s what makes the AI transformation so consequential.” www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

AI overviews are “reliable” except when they are catastrophically wrong. For medical and legal advice, consult professionals instead of “Almost Intelligence.”

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” MLKJr

If tax law were actually simple, there wouldn’t be an entire industry built on explaining it poorly on Instagram. I teach several law classes on bad social media tax law and estate planning advice, because it is a great (and fun) way to illustrate so many important concepts.

Now that it’s common knowledge that AI hallucinates, why would an attorney rely on AI to draft pleadings without verifying output?

Beware: Urban VPN Proxy, 1ClickVPN Proxy, Urban Browser Guard, and Urban Ad Blocker are selling your private chats for profit.

“[L]earning from synthesized LLM responses led to shallower knowledge compared to gathering, interpreting and synthesizing information for oneself via standard web links.” gizmodo.com/learning-wit...

Science is amazing: www.broadinstitute.org/news/single-...

I really enjoyed talking with Ruby Powers about how using technology to make our practices more efficient gives us more space to focus on what truly matters: listening to clients, counseling them, and guiding them with care and empathy. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/p...

“We’re all chasing something—success, control, attention—but every chase ends in stillness. What matters is who we loved and how we showed up while we were still running.” open.substack.com/pub/everyday...

Tech companies “have remade our world and have become unfathomably rich for it, all while being mostly oblivious or uninterested in the fallout.”https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2025/10/data-centers-ai-crash/684765/?gift=ZV-j7muNajQ0dFrn8kjD7oPCHvXfCafRv5YdL5pDuR0

Wow.

Science is amazing! www.bbc.com/news/article...

“AI systems will always make a certain percentage of mistakes, no matter how much the technology improves”

What a devastating story about a company that appears to prioritize profits over safety. there should be safeguards to prevent AI from encouraging self harm in its users. techpolicy.press/breaking-dow...

Exactly! “If anyone asks you for cash or any sort of prepaid option like debit cards or gift cards, it’s a big flashing neon sign that you’re being scammed.” www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-...

“Critical thinking is like an exercise. If you stop doing it, your body forgets it and you lose the talent” english.elpais.com/technology/2...

Love this: www.omaritani.com/blog/wabi-sa...

Great explainer from Kelly Erb about the new tax bill. No one makes tax as accessible as @Taxgirl.

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is: “Often the job will have an easy interview or no interview, promise to let you work from home, and let you start right away” apnews.com/article/job-...

Team USA’s women’s U24 ultimate team just won the world championship! So proud of my daughter and all her teammates!