Nothing But Flowers
The plan for December was to focus on a big writing project (okay, a book proposal), mostly pausing these weekly emails in order to write other things; but here we are, mid-month and I've accomplished very little towards that end. (You're still getting the odd newsletter,
The Off Season
The Right to Say "No"
A reminder: Second Breakfast is on hiatus until the new year. Well, sort of, as here's a Second Breakfast email in your inbox. There are a couple of weeks' worth of news articles to link to, to be sure – the usual Friday stuff. But I've
Sputnik Deja Vu
I gave this presentation on Monday afternoon at Yale University. The talk was co-sponsored by the Department of Political Science, DOWN Magazine, the Education Studies Program, and The Politic. A huge thank-you to Jennifer Berkshire for inviting me and having me speak to her students. This is the May 1958
AI Grief Observed
These remarks were delivered this evening at the Creatively Critical Tech Speaker Series at Illinois State University. "There is no good way to say this." These are the opening words of Yiyun Li’s latest book Things in Nature Only Grow about life after the death by suicide
The Last Word
The Ketchup
Today's bird is the Adélie penguin; the subject of today's email, the condiment – both attempts to reference Pittsburgh PA, where I'm in town to speak at a technology and ethics conference at Duquesne University. I am still very much in recovery mode from Sunday&
The Marathon
The Run Up
Now Is the Time of Monsters
"AI slop is winning," writes The Atlantic's Charlie Warzel. By volume alone, slop may be the most visible and successful by-product of the generative-AI era to date. It is also a hallmark of what I’ve previously described as a collective delusion around artificial intelligence—where
Unlearning, Unchanged
Political commentator Frank Rich recently wrote a lengthy essay for New York Magazine on the mayoral candidacy of Zohran Mamdani. The headline, "The Power Breaker," is surely a play on the title of Robert Caro's biography of Robert Moses, the man who infamously used his power