Pluralistic: A weekend's worth of links (30 Aug 2025)

Today's links

A weekend's worth of links: Short hits for a long weekend.
Object permanence: Floppy disk CD sleeves; Rules for radicals; California's preventable fires; Muppet Haunted Mansion; Wells Fargo steals rescued Nazi loot; Texas abortion release.
Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
Recent appearances: Where I've been.
Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
Colophon: All the rest.

Zuckermuskian solipsism: They just don't think other people are real.
Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
Object permanence: Heinlein bio; Amazon bans Amazon-critical podcasts; How to Argue With a Racist; Disenshittify or Die; Food arrangement copyrights, Stingrays on steroids.
Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
Recent appearances: Where I've been.
Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
Colophon: All the rest.

LLMs are slot-machines: You only remember the jackpots.
Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
Object permanence: Heinlein bio; Amazon bans Amazon-critical podcasts; How to Argue With a Racist.
Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
Recent appearances: Where I've been.
Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
Colophon: All the rest.

Maga's boss class think they are immune to American carnage: They're in for a surprise.
Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
Object permanence: Paradox of choice (screens); Perpetual Lenovo crapware; Trump's Solicitor General: "bribery is legal"; Marvel's 10¢ comics; Snatched postal sorting-machines; Failed State; Kenk; Glass Houses; Caveman SF; My origin story; FBI vs George Carlin.
Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
Recent appearances: Where I've been.
Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
Colophon: All the rest.

Goodhart's Law (of AI): When a metric becomes a target, AI can hit it every time.
Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
Object permanence: Bill Ayers graphic novel; Foxconn in India; Uber loses $4B; Warren Buffet, monopolist.
Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
Recent appearances: Where I've been.
Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
Colophon: All the rest.

Which jobs can be replaced with AI?: Jobs that have already be degraded to the point of uselessness.
Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
Object permanence: Circular batteries; Prison for file-sharing, Satanic abortions.
Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
Recent appearances: Where I've been.
Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
Colophon: All the rest.

Bragging about replacing coders with AI is a sales-pitch: The reality is more complex.
Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
Object permanence: David Byrne vs Spotify; India's porn ban; Qanon ARG; Contextual ads; Leveraged buyouts aren't mortgages.
Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
Recent appearances: Where I've been.
Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
Colophon: All the rest.

AI software assistants make the hardest kinds of bugs to spot: Errors that are tuned to be statistically indistinguishable from correct code.
Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
Object permanence: A universal remote for killing people; Win10 spies out of the box; MacOS firmware worm; Tor exit-node subpoena, 3D tube-station maps, Papercraft Addams Family house.
Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
Recent appearances: Where I've been.
Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
Colophon: All the rest.

AI's pogo-stick grift: The hard part is operating in an unpredictable, adversarial, unstructured world.
Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
Object permanence: Galaksija, TSA shock-wand, Reverse-centaur apocalypse.
Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
Recent appearances: Where I've been.
Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
Colophon: All the rest.

Delta's AI-based price-gouging: Running an airline like a hedge-fund.
Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
Object permanence: DHS RFIDs tourists; Solar heroin; International development and the copyfight
Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
Recent appearances: Where I've been.
Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
Colophon: All the rest.