BlogFlockWhat is the infrastructure of Slop? How does it get made, and how can we make sense of it?
In this 15-minute video, I walk through the slop pipeline as an interconnected social-technical system, fusing generative AI and the predictive…
In December 2025, Senator Bernie Sanders became the first member of Congress to demand a moratorium on the construction of new AI data centers. The costs of the infrastructure that powers generative AI technologies like chatbots and image generators were soaring, but it was not clear that regular people were…
Greetings all,
I’m back in the states and about ready to get back to my regularly scheduled newslettering and podcasting. But first, I regret to inform you that I have some thoughts on the Odyssey. Yes, all the Odyssey discourse got to me, and during my vacation last week and…
By this point, I’m sure ~ the algorithm ~ knows I’m not a big fan of, well… it. Not to mention everything it powers. And it seems to be trying to serve me content that recognizes that.
I’m not a big Instagram user, but recently it started serving me content…
Welcome to the Convivial Society’s Commonplace Book. As you know, this is an experiment, and we’ll see how it goes. Hopefully, you’ll find something of interest, but if you decide that you would rath…
Civil war is coming to Britain, at least according to the world’s first trillionaire, Elon Musk. But in a new interview with The Economist, he declared there’s good news for the struggling nation: it will take 20 years for it to descend into civil war, but the AI and…
I'm a writer who fears the snare of words: the words I say hide others - Which? Maybe I'll say them. – Clarice Lispector, A Breath of Life
To translate a work of literature is to select its absences.…
Elon Musk is not the richest man in the world merely because he’s good at selling cars or rockets at a profitable margin. That might have sufficed for richest men in the world of decades past. But Musk became the world’s first trillionaire, however briefly, for a lot of reasons,…
“Tout le monde déteste l’IA.” That phrase, printed in plain black and white, was one of the first things that caught my eye in the neighborhood in Paris where we’re staying this summer. It’s an advertisement for the cover story in the July issue of Le Monde Diplomatique, posted…
Thinking about technology, society, and the good life.
A newsletter about AI, Silicon Valley, labor and power.
Tech critic Paris Marx provides the critical take on Silicon Valley you’ve been missing
A newsletter about taking control of our attention and finding a more human side of the internet. Featured in Wired and Rolling Stone.