To the Editor: Sir — I see by the papers that a concern called Amazon, whose chief business appears to be the delivery of everything to everybody by Thursday, has announced that it will spend more than one billion dollars over five years upon the towns that have the misfortune to host its data centers. Read More …
Tag: opinion
The Television Is Watching You Back
I was raised to believe a television was a box you watched. It turns out I had the arrangement backwards. Researchers at UC Davis, University College London, and a university in Madrid sat down and did the plain, unglamorous work of watching what a smart TV sends out over the wire while you watch it. Read More …
Who Is for the Children?
Mark Twain gave the first Gilded Age its name, and I suspect he would not be surprised that we are due for a second. Gilt is cheap. It looks like gold from across the room. Chicago is holding an election for its school board on November 3rd. Twenty-one seats. Here is what I found: everyone Read More …
A Letter to the Editor
From the desk of Mr. Samuel L. Clemens, lately of the river, now of the republic To the Editor: Sir — I have been dead a good while now, but a man does not have to be alive to recognize a confidence game. What is being run on the American public at present is as Read More …
The Poorhouse and the Powder Keg
I have lived in enough states to know that a man who tells you the trouble is Left against Right is usually selling something, and the thing he is selling is your attention, so you won’t notice who’s holding your wallet while you argue about the bathroom or sports. Here is what I notice instead. Read More …
Music will be safe for now
This is not going to be a traditional book report. In that sense I will go over the book a little bit, and maybe why you should read it, but instead, and surprisingly, this book reaffirmed my belief that in the long run, human made music will still be around for thousands of years, and Read More …
Video Monday :: You’ll stop using ChatGPT | Jonathan Pageau
Has AI Backlash been going on much longer than we realize? This is a very interesting take on technological advancement. He does ask the question that has been bugging me for some time :: “We must become better Humans. Personal Humans.” Make humans fully human. Jonathan Pageau closed out Day 2 of ARC 2026 with Read More …
The National Cosmetic Studio
I have been observing with breathless awe the latest triumph of our grand Republic’s economic engine. We are told by the public prints that the government has appointed its first Chief Design Officer, a gentleman of immense private fortune and impeccable aesthetic taste, whose solemn patriotic duty is to “modernize the internet-facing portions” of our Read More …
From the Assembly Line to the Golden Ticket
I have lived long enough to watch the soil of the Midwest turn from something we plowed into something we paved over for data centers. I see the world through a window pane that is cold, clean, and increasingly expensive. Being a man of quiet habits and a fair amount of book-learning, I spend long Read More …
A Dream Deferred by a Dollar Sign
There is a peculiar kind of weather in America today. It is a season where the rain falls only on the pavement, leaving the gardens of the ordinary man to bone-dry dust, while the glass towers of corporate high-rises are washed clean every morning by the sweat of people they never see. If we look Read More …