Sunday Morning Reading

The days are getting longer and things are getting scarier in this week’s Sunday Morning Reading.

We’re getting closer to Halloween, Dia De Los Muertos, and perhaps the more frightening of the days ahead, Election Day in the U.S. With just three editions of Sunday Morning Reading to go before whatever tricks, treats, and horrors might befall us on or after the votes are tallied, enjoy the somewhat frightening reading ahead.

Aimee Ortiz takes a look at how Halloween has turned into a retail bonanza in Halloween’s Mutation: From Humble Holiday to Retail Monstrosity.

For some every day is fraught with peril. Philip Ogley wonders Why Do We Find It So Hard To Get Through the Day?

Approaching Dia De Los Muertos, David Todd McCarty remarks on turning his father’s passing into a celebration in We Called Him Papa.

Artificial Intelligence continues to be the dominant ghost story in tech with ups, downs, and promises everywhere. So far, most tech promises make good hype, but not necessarily good products. Matteo Wong thinks delivering on promised deadlines for superintelligence might be the truly scary part in The AI Boom Has an Expiration Date.

Could copyright law be a part of the solution to the horror story that is gun violence? Robin Buller takes a look in Mass Shooting Survivors Turn To An Unlikely Pace for Justice—Copyright Law.

Perhaps the scariest story linked in this week’s edition is Franklin Foer’s What Elon Musk Really Wants. There’s no trick, and there’s certainly no treat in what this madman aims to do.

Equally, if not more frightening is this piece from back in July from George Michael called An Anti-Democratic Philosophy Called ‘Neoreaction’ Is Creeping Into GOP Politics. I would say it’s moved from a creep by creeps into a gallop by goblins.

Be afraid. Be very afraid. Paul Rosenberg examines Fighting Demons: The New Apostolic Reformation Is Waging A Holy War Against Democracy.

Paolo Bacigalupi takes us on a little science-fiction journey into what a future shaped by climate change might look like in Azalea: A Science-Fiction Story. A great piece. I’m just not so sure we can call what we’re living through science-fiction anymore.

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. You can also find me on social networks under my own name.

Sunday Morning Reading

Fears rise as the election nears in this week’s Sunday Morning Reading

Time for some Sunday Morning Reading, with more than a dash of politics, culture, and tech mixed together and served up for your pleasure.

Why Do Politicians Lie? My $.02 is because they can and not enough of us seem to care. Bill Adair takes a look at What I Didn’t Understand About Political Lying.

Michael Moore thinks Joe Biden should use the immunity and powers granted the office of the presidency by the Supreme Court in his final days to take care of some business. I may not agree with everything on Moore’s list, but check out what he thinks in Bucket List Joe. I do agree with the principle though.

The election is just around the corner and having served previously as an election judge I know first hand the anxiety election workers up and down the chain are feeling. The New York Times Editorial Board takes a good look at the stakes for those folks, paid and volunteer, in The Election Will Need More Heroes.

The Atlantic, famous for not endorsing a presidential candidate each and every election, has endorsed Kamala Harris. The endorsement is no surprise. Endorsements are choices and Trump has increased their pace of doing so. Check out The Case for Kamala Harris.

Life is a gamble and sometimes you need to go all in. Natasha MH pushes her chips forward with Into the Battlefield Armed with a Toothbrush.

A bit or two on tech and AI that I found interesting this week. Apparently we’re running out of data to train these AI engines on, and we’re also running out of space in data centers to do that environment crushing work. Check out Microsoft Azure CTO: US Data Centers Will Soon Hit Size Limits from Reed Albergotti.

And on a frightening note, apparently Silicon Valley Is Debating If AI Weapons Should Be Allowed To Decide To Kill. Margus MacColl explores this tricky issue, which really shouldn’t be a tricky issue.

There’s also apparently slippage in the great gold rush to Artificial Intelligence as everyone chases a less than Holy Grail of turning these data crunching engines to machines that can reason. Gary Marcus says that LLMs Don’t Do Formal Reasoning-And That Is A HUGE Problem. For the investors, shareholders, and suckers perhaps. I’m guessing the rest of us are just fine with that.

The two hurricanes that hit the U.S have caused so much damage and for those suffering that has been multiplied by the political BS that has followed. Who would have thought that on the ground Neo-Nazi’s showed up to “help” but. more to the point, use the disasters and their aftermath as recruiting tools? Tawnell D. Hobbs, Jennifer Levitz and Joe Barrett explore When The Hurricane-Relief Worker Turns Out To Be a Neo-Nazi. Who would have thought it? Anyone who has read a history book.

Sunday Morning Reading

Halloween is around the corner and the election is nearing. Sunday Morning Reading is full of scary politics and a tech ghost story.

There’s one month to go prior to the election that will decide the fate of the U.S. and possibly the world. After today that’s four more Sundays for Sunday Morning Reading. Fair warning those four Sundays will have more than a normal dose of politics in the mix. That said, enjoy this week’s edition of Sunday Morning Reading.

Politics has infected everything and in my opinion in the worst ways imaginable. Nothing points this up like the storm around the storm recovery from Hurricane Helene. Juliette Kayyem in The Atlantic tells us The Fog of Disaster Is Getting Worse, and she’s correct. Perhaps a better way for journalism to cover this beyond just complaining would be to do what Chantal Allam and Joe Marusak did in the Charlotte Observer and tackle each bit of disinformation, (which I prefer to call lies) head on in Helene Fact Check: Here Are The Rumors and the Reality in Western North Carolina.

The mythical swing voter has become larger than myth. Parker Malloy in Dame tells us The Real Swing Voters Aren’t Who You Think.

Phillip Bump usually nails it. He does so again in Trump and His Allies Are Not Planning To Concede Another Election Loss. Nothing is over on November 5th.

LZ Granderson in The Los Angeles Times also nails it in Trump Blames Immigrants As If That Were A Policy Position. It’s Just Racist. I’m losing hope we’ll ever recognize that we’ve recognized this and don’t seem to care.

Trump and his delusional followers couldn’t be this close to turning the clock back unless they had help from our transparently corrupt Supreme Court. Bill Blum takes a look at the awful immunity decision in John Roberts and the Second Coming of Dred Scott.

Speaking of the Supreme Court, Andy Kroll, Andrea Bernstein and Ilya Marritz take a look at why We Don’t Talk About Leonard: The Man Behind the Right’s Supreme Court’s Supermajority.

Joyce Vance is worried that even if Trump loses he won’t face any consequences in Trump Must Be Tried. She’s right to worry.

And the final link on the politics beat is and is not about politics, but it is about endings. Sunita Puri looks at how promises at the end of life, like Jimmy Carter’s to stay alive to vote one last time, can affect our last days in Death Has Two Timelines.

The WordPress saga continues and it seems to get muddier with each clarifying new chapter. Dave Winer says WordPress Has a Greater Destiny. I agree with his premise. I think those screwing things up do as well. In a competition between destinies unfortunately everyone loses.

I’m preparing some thoughts on the new iPhones and Apple releases for later this week. I won’t have to write much about the new Camera Control after reading José Adorno’s piece Apple’s Biggest Hardware Change On the iPhone 16 Is A Huge Disappointment. I feel much the same.

As if the political moment wasn’t harrowing enough, Halloween is also around the corner. Angela Watercutter tells an intriguing tale that weaves tech (TikToK), a haunted house, the cops and a rolled up rug in her backyard in She Asked TikTok If Her House Was Haunted. Then The Cops Came.

Sunday Morning Reading

Social Media, AI, and exoskeletons are all in this week’s Sunday Morning Reading

It’s Sunday. It’s a morning. Time for some Sunday Morning Reading with a bit of history, some looking forward on social media, and as usual, a mix of reading on AI and politics. Around here it’s always free for your reading pleasure.

Speaking of free, some say The Best Things In Life are Free. Not always. At least according to Natasha MH.

Molly White has some more than interesting thoughts about social media and how we use it. Check out POSSE: Reclaiming Social Media In a Fragmented World. Also check out Dave Winer’s Making The Social Web Really Work for his thoughts on POSSE and this discussion.

On the AI front Mike Elgan takes on a New AI Trick: ‘Synthetic Human Memories.’ I’m not sure if we’ll measure that in gigabytes or what.

Continuing on the AI front, Karen Hao takes a look at Sam Altman’s consolidation of power as OpenAI (and others) keep making moves behind the scenes that I doubt any LLM will ever be able to summarize. Check out OpenAI Takes Its Mask Off.

While we’re talking the Internet behind the scenes, Emma Roth gives us an explainer on what’s happening at WordPress in The Messy WordPress Drama, Explained. Hint: It’s always about the money.

Politics and the coverage of it continues to ratchet up anxiety levels. Dan Fromkin wonders What If The Media Has The Election All Wrong? At this point I don’t think they or we would have anyway of knowing.

Peter Wehner walks us through The Republican Freak Show, listing out most of the freaks most are already familiar with. It’s a good summary of the lineup, but as the cliché goes, it’s only the tip of the iceberg.

Speaking of MAGAt freaks, it’s one thing to be given a presidential pardon. It’s another to keep on committing crimes. Check out Trump Gave Them a Second Chance. They Could Not Stay Out of Trouble by Kenneth Vogel and Susanne Craig.

Here’s a couple of interesting reads that provide some necessary historical context. First up Paul Rosenberg takes a look at Who Created “The Constitutional Sheriff” Myth. Hint: It’s Not in the Constitutio n. Also check out The Fire of The Grand Dragon by Phil McCombs. The piece dates back to 1991. It’s not dated or old. It should serve as a reminder that what we’re seeing out in the open these days has been smoldering under cover for as long as most people keep conveniently forgetting.

Here’s one more for some history and context: Blake Lindsey and Taylor Malone take a look at The Wide Awakes: The 1860 Election Was Influenced By Young People Advocating Against Slavery.

And to close this out this week, issues surrounding the Right to Repair are always stewing around, but they are not hot button these days. Unless you’re a Paralyzed Man Unable to Walk After Maker Of His Powered Exoskeleton Tells Him It’s Now Obsolete. Check out the piece by Frank Landymore.

Sunday Morning Reading

There’s no crying in baseball or politics, but there’s always reading on a Sunday Morning.

Time for a little Sunday Morning Reading from a week that was wacky. Politics continues to resemble anything other than politics, new iPhones and Apple software were released, the Chicago Cubs finally quit teasing their fans and dropped out of contention for the playoffs, and everything we associate with this weird world just seems to keep getting weirder.

Things may be weird, and it may feel like It’s enough to make you wish for winter and to curl into a cocoon and isolate yourself. Instead check out Jessica Stillman’s piece This Is What 8 Hours of Social Isolation Does to Your Brain and Body (It’s Not Pretty.)

While we’re talking health, Dave Winer penned this piece, Health Is Nothing To Screw With. Damn straight.

David Todd McCarty looks at how the insignificant details of life can add up to big answers in All Things Great And Small.

Turning the page, (oh, how I want to turn so many pages) to politics check out Jay Willis on how Political Betting Could Soon Be Legal — and It’s the Last Thing This Election Needs. Bet on it.

If you’re like me you might believe that the only thing more troubling than our politics is how our media covers it, check out Jeff Jarvis on How They Have Failed Us.

One of this week’s horror stories in politics was the Mark Robinson story. No one should be surprised by his actions or the rush to resuscitate what should be a dead campaign. David French says MAGA Wants Transgression. Mark Robinson Is The Result.

95% of what this political moment is all about is race and racism. We’re never going to learn the right lessons in my lifetime. Dustin Arand in Ellemeno learned one. Read What Two Racist Jokes Taught Me About The Nature of Bigotry.

Bots are everywhere. Some are taking your reservation for dinner. As Dwight Silverman asks (he gets the h/t for this piece) what happens when a bot working for you gets a bot on the other end of the line? Check out When You Call A Restaurant, You Might Be Chatting with an AI Host by Flora Tsapovsky.

As has become predictable one of the best places to read about Apple’s new software each year is MacStories. Their reviews are excellent. Check out Federico Viticci’s iOS and iPadOS 18: The MacStories Review. Check out their other reviews as well.

Closing out with baseball, Paul Sullivan looks at the fitting end to the Chicago Cubs season. Why fitting? Because the Cubs started their hero of yesteryear who turned into essentially a guaranteed loss each time he took the mound this season. There’s no crying in baseball. There shouldn’t be this much sentimentality either. Check out A Day In The Life of Wrigley Field At The End Of A Lost Summer for the Chicago Cubs.

Sunday Morning Reading

Fall is creeping in and things are creeping me out.

The world continues its whirl, the vultures continue circling, and down here on the ground we keep working hard to turn the tide on the ignorant before it’s too late. Still, it’s time to sit down, breathe and enjoy if you can some Sunday Morning Reading.

Perhaps you aren’t aware of the Second Circuit of Appeals decision rejecting the Internet Archive’s fair use defense. You can check out info on the decision here. Reading beyond that check out Matthew Ingram’s post The Second Circuit’s Decision in the Internet Archive Case is Bad. It is bad news for all of us. As a side note, Matthew has recently struck out on his own and you might want to check out his writing on The Torment Nexus. It promises to be a great place to read about issues in the intersection of technology, media, and, well…life.

Politics, or what passes for it these days, continues to dominate much of our attention even as it gets darker and more stupid with each passing day. Springfield, Ohio found itself the unwelcome center of the political world with all of the talk about eating pets and immigration. Isabel Fattal has a very good piece in The Atlantic titled The Springfield Effect. FWIW I don’t think Springfield is going to catch a break anytime soon, but then neither are the rest of us.

Voting is just around the corner, but the discussions and machinations around it now dominate our lives all the time. Check out Eli Saslow’s 3 Georgia Women Caught Up in a Flood of Suspicion About Voting.

Sanewashing is just a new name in a long line of new names for ignoring the crazy, idiotic, and dangerous ways of the decaying orange convicted felon/child rapist and his followers. Parker Malloy tells us Why The Atlantic’s Critique of Sanewashing Doesn’t Hold Up. There’s a link to the Atlantic piece in Malloy’s article. When a thing becomes a thing to criticize it becomes just another excuse for ignoring the truth.

There’s sadly a chance of some sort of carnage, physical or psychic, post-election. Certainly there will be political casualties. Perhaps that’s why we should read Ian Rose’s piece The Hidden Value of Vultures. Let’s hope the vultures doing the cleanup are only feasting on those who caused the mess.

Karen Hao takes a look at Microsoft’s Hypocrisy on AI when it comes to Microsoft working with fossil-fuel companies while purporting to fight climate change.

In a world full of what feels like willful ignorance, Daniel R. DeNicola takes a look at Plato’s Cave and the Stubborn Persistence of Ignorance.

Elizabeth Laura Nelson has a very poignant piece called Friends for 16 Years. Lovers for One Night. Don’t let moments and opportunities pass you by.

Before you clear your palette and move on to whatever you move on to, take a brief trip along with NatashaMH to Bangkok City in When The World’s Your Oyster.

Sunday Morning Reading

Sunday Morning Reading is taking a hiatus this weekend to spend time with the grandkids.

Sunday Morning Reading is taking the week off. It’s a travel weekend to visit the grandkids, so most of my reading this weekend has been bedtime stories which I won’t be sharing.

Enjoy your Sunday. Enjoy your kids and grandkids.

Sunday Morning Reading

Summer begins to fade into fall with this week’s Sunday Morning Reading.

It’s Labor Day weekend here in the states, which means a three-day weekend, yielding more than a little extra time for some Sunday Morning Reading during the last lake visit of the season. Kick back and enjoy.

I’m a Shakespeare geek so my senses perked up when one of my favorite writers, Natasha MH. revealed her reasons for not appreciating the bard in Much Ado About Nothing, Something, and Everything. Excellent read and I know she’s not alone. But then lots of folks are wrong about lots of things.

Jeff Jarvis tells us How Murdoch Makes a Meme (and how the rest of the media helps it spread). No real secrets here. Jarvis is correct about Rupert Murdoch’s malign influence. The single most destructive human on the planet during his lifetime of muckracking.

Preetika Rana takes a look at how the political moment is ruffling the feathers in the halls and salons of big tech in Clash of the Tech Titans: Silicon Valley Fractures Over Harris vs. Trump.

Ted Chiang explores Why A.I. Isn’t Going To Make Art. I agree with the thesis, but I’ll add that it’s going to screw up a lot while trying.

Why are software glitches and problems called bugs? Check out Matthew Wills’ The Bug in the Computer Bug Story.

Private Equity continues to gobble up everything it can get its teeth into. Apparently Private Equity Is Coming for Youth Sports according to Ira Boudway.

And to close out this week as summer begins to fade into fall, Mike Tanier gives us The Amusement Park Falls Cold and Dark.

Sunday Morning Reading

Fiction, fears, dreams, and Chicago Corruption dot this Sunday Morning’s reading.

Good Sunday morning. I’m in Memphis for a few days to participate and celebrate in The Ostrander Awards in which my recent production of The Lehman Trilogy was nominated for seven awards, so this will be an abbreviated version of Sunday Morning Reading.

Designer (3). There was lots of joy at the Democratic Conventon in Chicago nominating Kamala Harris as candidate for the presidency. There was also lots of joy (and some disappointment from the media) that this year’s convention didn’t turn into 1968 all over again. Nevertheless, Chicago is still Chicago. Rick Kogan gives us a terrific look at some of Chicago’s colorful and sordid history of corruption in Boodlers, Bandits, and Notorious Politicians. Fun read.

No One’s Ready For This by Sarah Jeong takes a look at the question we’re all going to be asking more frequently in the age of AI: “What the hell is a photo these days anyway? That question has been around for awhile, but in the wake of Google’s release of its Reimagine Tool for the Pixel 9’s Magic Editor, that question might be asked with a bit more urgency in the near future. Or not.

Joan Westenberg tells us Why We Need Fiction.

David Todd McCarty wanders into our dreams or rather how we might be able to realize them by overcoming our fear of failure in The Magic of Failure And The Perils Of The Very Good.

Sunday Morning Reading

From James Joyce to finger painting, some Apple spoiling, some Peter Falk, some politics and what will the LLMs spit out next?

“Every life is many days, day after day.” But Sundays are for reading. Here’s a mix of politics, tech, and culture into what I hope is a tasty smorgasbord of good writing and good reading. Also some good fun. Enjoy this edition of Sunday Morning Reading.

There aren’t many areas of interest I follow that don’t seem to be fraught with tension and turmoil these days. Apple, its technology and business practices, is certainly one of those. One of the best recent pieces I’ve read on how the tides of popular and populist opinion may be shifting against the folks in Cupertino is one written by Matt Birchler. Check out Is This The Slow Decline of Apple’s “Cult”?

This is a terrific read and a terrific piece of theatre and entertainment history. Wayne Lawson’s When Peter Falk Was My Roommate, and Theater Ruled NYC is a trip down a memory lane most of us probably never were aware of.

Joan Westenberg takes a look look at The Bruised Egos of the Intellectual Narcissists that want to populate our thoughts. Joan also takes a good look at Truth Social, Twitter and the Loneliest Reich.

David Todd McCarty thinks we should rekindle some of what we lost as we pass through the years and recommends borrowing a four-year-old to help us see the world through their eyes in Finger Painting Through Life.

On the politics front, Marc Elias is doing the work for us all in his legal efforts to secure voting rights and the all important counting and certifying of the vote. Best piece of political news I’ve heard this week is that Elias has joined the Harris campaign’s legal team. Check out The Fight To Certify Elections Has Already Begun. We can’t say we haven’t been warned.

Perhaps you remember when the Nord Stream Pipeline exploded earlier in the war between Russia and Ukraine. Bojan Pancevski gives us one helluva story in A Drunken Evening, A Rented Yacht: The Real Story of the Nord Stream Pipeline Sabotage.

It’s easy to think this tempest of a political moment we’re in is something that’s suddenly sprung upon us. Aaron Timms reminds us that it’s been brewing for awhile in The Decade That Mangled The American Right.

Artificial Intelligence may be losing some of its luster as its purveyors continue to lust after our data. For those who enjoy seeing this play out, Aaron Drapkin gives us AI Gone Wrong: A List of AI Errors, Mistakes and Failures. I wonder how the LLMs will incorporate Drapkin’s work and spit it back out.

If you don’t recognize the quote that begins this week’s Sunday Morning Reading, perhaps Natasha MH gives us a clue in her piece Reading James Joyce Ulysses Will Be Fun, They Said. Tackling Joyce may or may not be worse than a trip to the dentist, but you can risk being “embalmed in spice of words.”