The issue is that AI is being invested in as if it can replace jobs. That’s not an issue for anyone who wants to use it as a spellchecker, but it is an issue for the economy, for society, and for the planet, because billions of dollars of computer hardware are being built and run on the assumption that trillions of dollars of payoff will be generated.

And correcting someone’s tone in an email is not, and will never be, a trillion dollar industry.

I think these are actually valid examples, albeit ones that come with a really big caveat; you’re using AI in place of a skill that you really should be learning for yourself. As an autistic IT person, I get the struggle of communicating with non-technical and neurotypical people, especially clients who you have to be extra careful with. But the reality is, you can’t always do all your communication by email. If you always rely on the AI to correct your tone or simplify your language, you’re choosing not to build an essential skill that is every bit as important to doing your job well as it is to know how to correctly configure an ACL on a Cisco managed switch.

That said, I can also see how relying on the AI at first can be a helpful learning tool as you build those skills. There’s certainly an argument that by using tools, but paying attention to the output of those tools, you build those skills for yourself. Learning by example works. I think used in that way, there’s potentially real value there.

Which is kind of the broader story with Gen AI overall. It’s not that it can never be useful; it’s that, at best, it can only ever aspire to “useful.” No one, yet, has demonstrated any ability to make AI “essential” and the idea that we should be investing hundreds of billions of dollars into a technology that is, on its best days, mildly useful, is sheer fucking lunacy.

They’re not. They never are.

There are no smoke screens with this government. They don’t “do X to cover for Y.” None of it is “a distraction.” They’re impulsive children. They do X because they want to do X. But what they have learned is that if you move fast and do a lot of bad things all at once, you usually get away with at least some of them.

God, Dillon’s gin is great. The Unfiltered No 7 especially is one of the best gins I’ve ever tried.

I also rate Ungava and Georgian Bay quite highly. Georgian Bay is very mild, not a huge amount of flavour, but it’s a good base for a lot of gin based cocktails, like a Tom Collins. Something to give the drink some backbone without being too present. Ungava has a lovely bitterness from the Labrador tea that I find really works in a gin and tonic, especially with a sweeter tonic like Fever Tree.

Actually the Crown Royal Northern Harvest Rye, specifically, is absolutely fantastic. Won awards all over the world too. It’s an incredible bang for your buck whisky that makes a superb base for cocktails.

I’d recommend Firefox over Brave. And I’m not sure Proton are worth recommending anymore with all the weird right wing nonsense their CEO is posting.

Joplin for a while, but most recently I’ve been trying out Notesnook and really liking it.

What he wants is autarky.

Trump has always had this really skewed understanding of business and trade where he sees everything as a zero-sum game (whatever someone else gains, you must be losing). This, combined with his middle school understanding of economics, causes him to see trade deficits as fundamentally negative, as if they somehow represent money that the country is losing.

This just isn’t how reality works. I could look at the balance of trade between me and my grocery store and it would be 100% negative, but I’m still getting food in return for the money I spend. The question is “Am I getting good value for money, and am I spending within my means?” Trade deficits haven’t really mattered since we all moved off of precious metal backed currencies.

Trump doesn’t get that, so he thinks it’s somehow important for the US to at least run a surplus with all their trade partners, or better yet simply not trade at all and keep the entire economy 100% self contained.

Also, on a more personal level, he just wants trade wars because they make him feel good. He’s a deeply insecure man and slapping tariffs on other countries feels big and muscular, like he’s swinging punches but with money. That’s why his tariffs are always blanket, never precisely targeted.

That’s why NAFTA got renamed to the USMCA; a new name that put America first made Trump feel like he was getting a win.

Nice to see I’m not the only person pointing this out. Yeah, he needs to invoke the IEEPA in order to be allowed to impose tariffs by executive order.

I’ve said this elsewhere, but the fent thing is bullshit. Trump is using a 1977 law called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to enforce these tariffs without going through congress. In order to do that he has to be applying them for the purpose of addressing a specific state of emergency. That’s why they keep talking about fent and migrants; it’s a figleaf to let them end run around congress because they don’t have the votes.

As someone who supports the carbon rebate and thinks it’s a good policy, I have to admit that Carney is right.

Regrettably true. At this point trying to convince people of the value of it is a losing battle. If Carney’s plan is basically “Do climate incentives, but slightly differently so we can say we got rid of the Carbon Tax” I’d say that’s a very savvy move.

If anything, this is exactly the kind of leader we need; someone who knows how to pick their battles, and how to achieve good progressive policy goals in ways that will get public support. I’m not a fan of the Liberals in general, I think their centrist corporatist politics are drowning us slowly, but God do I wish the NDP could learn to think like this.

“Remember, remember the fifth of November, gunpowder, treason and plot. I know of no reason why gunpowder treason should ever be forgot.”

LOL. I look forward to seeing them postponed again on Feb 28th.

OK, that’s fair. I’d forgotten about that particular detail. More fool me. But it’s notable that no such catastrophe existed in 2008, and no such catastrophe exists today, and yet we’re still struggling to put food on plates despite more than enough food existing for everyone.

It’s also a testament to Altman’s dealmaking prowess: a progressive San Francisco tech leader walked into an administration that opposed everything he publicly stood for, and within days, he secured a crown.

Bullshit. Absolute steaming mountains of bullshit.

These techbros don’t stand for anything. They’re a bunch of objectivist libertarian assholes who enjoy the aesthetics of being perceived as progressive because it’s trendy in the kind of social spaces they want to inhabit.

This isn’t about “dealmaking skills”, it’s about Trump being a giant baby who will do anything for anyone who kisses his ass, and Altman not giving a flying fuck about Trump being a fascist because sucking up to him makes him money.

Even the great depression was, itself, an entirely artificial crisis.

I’m not saying that it occurred artificially; the causes were all real, and happened naturally.

But if you consider for even a moment the idea that a stock market crash leads to widespread starvation, it doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense.

Times of hardship used to be caused by things like droughts or harsh winters; stuff that actually impacted our ability to support ourselves in a physical way.

But how does someone’s investments failing prevent a farm from growing food? Does crop fertility track with the Dow-Jones? Does soil become less tillable because the FTSE is down?

The idea that people should starve, in a world that has no less ability to produce crops than it did yesterday, just because there is suddenly less money moving around, is absolute lunacy. In a sensible world, we’d think less about money and more about resources. Resources do not depend on the stock market. Resources do not become more scarce because a bunch of people made bad bets on the housing market.

No one should starve in a world with the capacity to feed everyone. And we have more than the capacity to feed everyone.

I both love and hate comments like this (and say that having made more than a few of them myself). It’s great to see people sharing advice on how to cook better, do more for yourself, do more at home, etc. I really enjoy making my own pickles, baking bread, making home made stock from scraps.

On the other hand, it disgusts me that comments like this are necessary. It’s the twenty first century, humanity has built flying machines, travelled into space and harnessed the power of the atom, and we’re out here sharing basic survival advice with each in the hopes of making it through one more day. Shouldn’t our basic standard of living be better than that of hunter-gatherers by now?

As funny as this is, in practice we want them coming up here to spend money.

What we’ll do, like last time, is tariff in a very targeted way, hitting specific products where consumers have easy access to alternatives. Like slapping tariffs on bourbon, for example.

+1 for LocalSend. Well worth checking out.