Long Links (AI-free)
Hey everyone, I know you’re overloaded because everything has become overly efficient. Long-form reading or writing or art or music, who’s got time for that? Fortunately there are those who still do and here’s some if it. I hope one or two of the link targets can chisel their way into your jammed schedule and bring with them joy or rage or another appropriate feeling. Today’s curation has a lot of books and music and way more humor than usual. Also, a good electric wok.
Now, let’s all take a couple of breaths and gingerly approach the A-word, namely “AI” (as understood in 2026). Which is occupying much more of my attention and cognition than I would like, and there are gems embedded in the flood; granted, sparsely but they still add up. I respect that many of you will have just fucking had it with that subject. So I shuffled that material off into Long Links (AI), which you can drop by (or not) as you please.
Books · One of the weirdest and flawed but still good things I’ve read this year is The Luminaries, written by Eleanor Catton back in 2013, a pretty dark tale of murder and theft and love and oppression in a not-so-great corner of New Zealand during an 1866 gold rush. Really super intense and hard to put down; even though it’s 900+ pages I never got bored. But freakishly complicated and I was left puzzled by multiple plot elements. Fortunately (yay Internet!) there’s Deconstructing The Luminaries, an explainer.
Other recent books: Platform Decay, minor Murderbot, but still worth reading. The Incandescent by Emily Tesh, yet another highschool-for-magic book, only with the grownups in the foreground and the kids behind them. Way more fun than the last few instances of that genre. Also, sex. Finally worth mentioning: The Everlasting by Alix Harrow, which started slow but eventually got a real grip on me; recommended.
I was in the library today and I always cruise past the “featured” table, where I saw Nobody’s Girl by Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre (R.I.P.) and Empire of AI, Karen Hao’s huge takedown of OpenAI and Altman. But I just now do not have the spoons. Maybe later.
Hmm, they tell me men can write books too. Must look into some.
Political economy · I and many others are deeply discontented with the current flavor of late-stage capitalism, that “late-stage” a conscious callout to terminal illness. So do we really want to do away with Capitalism as such, or retain it but try to regulate away inhumane behaviors and effects? Or what? Let’s not forget that there are still people out there proud to call themselves Socialists and their take is that Capitalism can’t be fixed and must be replaced. With what?
Anyhow, if you want to hear what these people are saying the place to go is Jacobin. I’m not a regular visitor but when I do drop by I’m starting to hear the phrase “market socialism”. Thus How Socialism in the 21st Century Could Work. The tone is kind of nonspecific and academic but it’s part of a conversation that I think the (large, growing) mad-at-Capitalism demographic needs to have.
Speaking of the pathologies of late-stage capitalsm, Paul Krugman’s Bezos, Backlash and Zombies describes a Bezos TV appearance in which Jeff said some really dumb things. Which is a bit surprising because while fewer and fewer people seem to like him, most people think he’s pretty smart. Krugman tears apart Bezos’s deep and broad misunderstanding of how taxation works. He attributes it to what he calls “Billionaire Brain”; the notion is plausible. The discussion goes on into popular perceptions of business in general, technology in particular. And (*sigh*) AI. Good stuff.
People like reading books on screens and most public libraries now support that. I believe a high proportion of such loans go through Libby, which is what I use. But the publishers don’t actually sell e-books to libraries, they rent them, a price for a fixed number of loans. And as you might expect, that price keeps going up, to the point that public libraries all over the world are hurting. So, Library Orgs Urge Big Five to Address Digital Pricing. Paper books are looking better and better.
It turns out that America’s capital is a good experimental platform for crime research. Check out Washington, D.C.’s crime decline and its lessons for American policing from the Niskanen Center. Guess what: There’s little correlation between the number of cops and the amount of crime. Also, when Trump sent in the National Guard to stand around with their thumbs up their asses being visible, the effect was tiny and only on “property crimes of opportunity”. Does that mean graffiti?
Funnies · Staying in the political lanes, here’s an evening briefing from Talking Points Memo, my favorite US-Politics blog. It’s got two unintentional jokes. First of all, this little sequence on the subject of Trump wanting to print a $250 bill with his face on it.
… two political appointees at the Treasury Department … repeatedly urged staff at the agency’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing to prepare prototypes of the note, according to the employees, who said the move raised concerns because federal law currently allows only deceased people to appear on bills.
There’s more than one way to read that… I’m suddenly starting to see the advantages of printing that bill.
Then, a little further down, it turns out JD Vance gave a speech at the Air Force Academy, from which:
So as AI transforms the battlefield — in some ways positively, in some ways not — I ask that you be jealous and selfish about your role as a decision-maker in warfare,” he continued. “Use technology to make you better, but never submit to it. You are the masters of warfare…
Yeah well Bob wrote a whole song about Masters Of War and got the trade-offs about right. JD’s cluelessness is mountainous.
OK, here’s an organized-crime story that makes me smile because it’s just so hilariously blatant. It’s like this: Worldwide, cricket is a big-money sport. Any readers who come from India or English-speaking southern-hemisphere countries are nodding because well of course. Cricket in Canada is not a big deal; our South Asian and Caribbean immigrants may be seen playing in the park on weekends with nobody but spouses and kids are watching.
Nonetheless the International Cricket Council has been sending a few million dollars a year to Cricket Canada to develop the sport hereabouts. But no longer. It seems that Cricket Canada has been a comical hotbed of theft, fraud, extortion, and match-fixing. Recently gunshots were fired at its president’s house. The TV segments have been hilarious, with leaders of Canada’s cricket establishment sweatily denying everything while looking over their shoulders. Anyhow, if you like colorful true-crime drama, start with Cricket Canada surprised after “unexpected” suspension by governing body over breaches of membership.
Photography · I visit Petapixel more days than not; it’s got the goods in the world of cameras and photography. There are solid camera and lens reviews, and a lot of focus on individual photographers. Here’s The photographer who never stopped chasing the perfect shot (and, on the evidence, got plenty). Next, Jeff Austin has been shooting the same parts of Tokyo through vintage glass for decades; he contributed Twenty Years, One City: What Tokyo Taught Me About Patience and Glass and has a Web site, Tokyo Forgeries.
Not just metal and glass; here’s an interesting camera bag: The Pilot 88 Is a Limited Edition Wotancraft Messenger Designed by Chris Niccolls. Finally, the story of Edith Tudor-Hart, in The Hidden History of a British Female Photographer Turned Soviet Agent.
Disturbing Evidence · Now, I said I liked Petapixel, and I do. But there’s a dark side; one can’t help notice the many many stories about the terrible things that happen to photographers. Then there’s the sub-genre of terrible things that happen in the context of wedding photography, which seems a swamp of suffering and pain. Well… why not both? Wedding Photographer Seriously Injured After Being Stabbed by Guest. I mean, it goes on and on: Photographer Bitten by “Shark or Sea Lion” During Surf Competition and Woman Pleads Guilty to Manslaughter After Gun-Themed Polaroid Photo Shoot Ends with Photographer’s Death! Mommas, don’t let your babies grow up to be photogs.
Personalities & misc · In the world of Big Biz generally and Big Tech specifically, PR leaders are very near the center of everything. CxOs are basically never allowed to say anything that isn’t carefully scripted in advance; PR does the scripting. When somebody fucks up and things (including the share price) go off the rails, PR owns the problem.
During the years when I was a blogging in a relatively unsupervised way while employed in BigTech, I became pretty intimate with some of those PR folks. I remember not too long after I joined Amazon, my manager, a really good person who’d gone to lots of work to hire me, grabbed me in the hallway and said “PR is pissed about what you wrote about Microsoft” and I said “Don’t worry, talking PR people down off the ledge is one of my core competences.” He looked worried: “Well, good luck.” But it was OK.
Anyhow, Claire Stapleton was in PR at Google during the glory years, and was close to the center of things. She got laid off in 2023 and wrote game over - some thoughts on layoffs and life. A few things in there widened my eyes and I suspect they’ll do the same for anyone else who’s been in the Google ecosystem. Anyhow, recently she wrote a book which I have to say looks pretty promising.
JA Westenberg’s On wintering speaks to me. One of the nice things about being (mostly) retired is I get lots of time for this. It’s hard to see how the machineries of Late Capitalism could allow this kind of space though; another reason to find something better.
At least once a year I point excitedly at something by Paul Ford; this time it’s Canons. Beautiful stuff.
Product pitch · For the last few years, we’ve had induction stovetops, which I totally love: Responsive, hot, easy to clean, low carbon load. but, I like to stir-fry and you can’t really balance a wok on an induction top. So we picked up an Abangdun 1700W 100V～185V Induction Cooktop Concave Curved Surface 2026 New Electric Stove Wok. It’s great; I stir-fry a couple times a month and get good reviews. Its built-in fan is kinda noisy.
Music · Recently I ran across The Sleeveens, Irish punks in Nashville. I said “punk” and I mean it, it’s nearly the pure stuff, somewhere on the Clash-to-Ramones axis, and like those bands, the tunes are good, and like the Clash, the lyrics are political and gonna make you sit up. Their recent outing National Anthem is just one banger after another. My favorites are If I Was A Casual and Cowboy Queen and then there’s the title track, which begins “Burn your fuckin’ country to the ground in the name of love…” oh yeah.
Now let’s lean into a fertile field of musicological scholarship: Guitar solos! Rolling Stone let their dimbulb flag fly with The 100 Greatest Guitar Solos Of All Time, which unforgivably omits Ry Cooder on Amandrai, Susan Tedeschi on Pity the Fool, David Lindley on Do Ya Wanna Dance, Neil Young on Love To Burn, Megan Lovell on Preachin’ Blues, also [Tim, enough -Ed.].
But wait, there’s more. Not to be outdone, Consequence (of which I know nothing) came up with 70 Best Guitar Riffs of the 21st Century (So Far), which is full of smiles. I have to confess that I’d heard less than 10% of these.
But anyhow Japanese metallistas Boris, about whom I’ve blogged not once, not twice, but thrice, are on both lists! #61 on the solos, #7 on the riffs. Which they noticed, and took a bow. Here’s Akuma no Uta and also a pretty hot live capture.
Finally, if you like Arvo Pärt and art that strains at the edges (what other kind is worth liking?) check out Robert Wilson’s “Adam’s Passion” (Music of Arvo Pärt). An hour and a half of fine music, well-played, and live human movement following Pärt’s slow pulse. Nakedness is involved.
Tech · I gather that Marcin Wichary is name to conjure with in design circles; he’s recently launched Unsung, my blog about software craft and quality and boy, it’s outstanding. A lot of it is simple celebrations of typographical or UI excellence, but what got my attention was a polite-but-savage takedown of a recent Photoshop release: Parts 1 and 2. You’ll learn a lot about how to think about UI construction by reading this.
Armin Ronacher, to whom it seems I’ve been linking a lot recently, offers Before GitHub, which to be fair contains equal parts of Current GitHub and After GitHub thinking, pretty well all of which seems good to me. Single points of failure are just bad, we should know that now, particularly when they start failing.
Finally, have a look at The Age of the Amplifier by Brian Potter at a Web site called “Construction Physics”. There are several different kinds of amplifiers, and most of the interesting ones were developed at Bell Labs during the 20th century. This is a history of that, based on the premise that “Amplifiers in general are important”. They are! The history is interesting, assuming you know what “voltage” and “current” are. It pleases me that people will still write long-winded pieces about narrow slices of history and apparently have fun doing it.
That’s all folks · Well except for the companion aggregation of Long AI-related Links.
Until next time.
