The issue is that generative AI systems don’t want messy perspective jumps. They want the median, the average, the most widely-approved of viewpoint on an issue, a kind of soft-focus perspective that is the exact opposite of how a good historian should be thinking.
To be in an archive is to be confronted with the contradictions, controversies, secrets, and unspoken facts of a person’s life or of a time and place.
— Read on resobscura.substack.com/p/ai-legibility-archives-future-of-research
Author: Jason
Farmers’ Almanac says 2026 will be its last edition – The Washington Post
“It is with a great appreciation and heartfelt emotions that we write to share some sad news,” editor Sandi Duncan and editor emeritus Peter Geiger wrote. “After more than 200 years of sharing a unique blend of weather, wit and wisdom, we’ve made the very difficult decision to write the final chapter of this historical publication.”
The almanac’s staff attributed the decision to the “growing financial challenges of producing and distributing the Almanac in today’s chaotic media environment.”
The Maine-based publication is sometimes confused with the Old Farmer’s Almanac, its longer-established and more widely recognized competitor that first published in 1792. The Old Farmer’s Almanac said in a statement this week that it “isn’t going anywhere.”
— Read on dcalrv8rg95znm.archive.is/
AI Didn’t Layoff 14,000 People. Amazon Did.
Amazon cut 14,000 jobs this week, citing, in part, efficiency gains from AI. But blaming AI for layoffs is like blaming the thermometer for the fever.
…
You can’t innovate in a climate of fear. And more than half of workers now fear losing their jobs in the next year. People stop taking risks. They comply. They play it safe. Ironically, at the dawn of the AI era, we’re engineering the conditions least conducive to innovation. At its highest and best use, AI could help us cure cancer, rebuild infrastructure, even reverse climate damage. But we may throw that future away. Not because machines failed us, but because we did.
— Read on www.forbes.com/sites/annkowalsmith/2025/10/31/ai-didnt-layoff-14000-people-amazon-did/
Stop Blaming Workers for Corporate AI Theater
These takes are frustrating.
October was a tough month for a lot of folks, with more jobs lost in a month since 2009 and in any October since 2003.
There seems to be two large camps trying to explain the why:
– People are failing to adapt so companies are saying toodles
– AI is taking/replacing jobs
Both takes have a problem, though.
The first one is the worst, honestly. Hoisting the blame or burden onto the workers is such victim blaming that it’s insulting.
Companies with major layoffs – Amazon, Target, Rivian, General Motors, etc. – are not making strategic, individual performance based reductions. They’re cutting swaths of departments and teams wholesale. In this environment, an individual can adapt all they want and it still not matter.
Is AI truly replacing any of these folks? Fully? Or even partially?
95% of AI deployments produce no or negative ROI. A report from Bain & Company says the AI sector needs to be grossing $2 trillion in the next 5 years in order to break even.
$2,000,000,000,000 by 2030 to just break even.
That’s more more than Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia and Meta’s grosses COMBINED.
So companies with those investments have to thread two needles: Creating cost savings somewhere today with an eye on marketing the value of AI in an environment with no ROI but a need to make a LOT of money in just a handful of years.
It’s a roadmap being followed in any number of companies:
- Throw money at the AI hype
- Overextend on capital expenses that can not be easily recouped in the short term
- Cut jobs (costs)
- Say it’s because your AI investments are creating efficiencies
- “If we can do it you can too”
- Sell all of the AI services!
Throw on top of all of this economic uncertainty, tariffs, tightening belts and wallets, and now growing unemployment and you’ve got a scary economic outlook going into the holidays.
My leave behind with all of that is: Let’s take a step back and evaluate what factors may really be driving these numbers instead of declaring outright that 150,000 folks were lazy in an effort to make the numbers fit a thought leadership narrative.
Understanding what “I am not ‘anti-AI’… I am pro-craft.” means to me | As in guillotine…
The job market continues to be a nightmare as layoffs haven’t slowed and almost every marketing-related job listing I’ve seen is either for some random AI-related startup or a legacy company claiming some vague AI-first angle, or better yet, it requires “expertise” with tools that are still relatively new and objectively mediocre to anyone with actual marketing experience.
Meanwhile, actual expertise continues to be devalued across the board. Intellectual curiosity that helps develop that expertise is steadily being devalued in favor of “productivity” hacks. And my absolute favorite, AI “solutions” to problems that were created by previous non-AI “solutions” that also didn’t understand the original problem they claimed to solve. (eg, practically every sales and marketing automation tool you’ve ever heard of, along with every “content generation” platform.)
— Read on loudpoet.com/2025/10/30/understanding-what-i-am-not-anti-ai-i-am-pro-craft-means-to-me/
‘I realised I’d been ChatGPT-ed into bed’: how ‘Chatfishing’ made finding love on dating apps even weirder | Dating | The Guardian
In a landscape where text-based communication plays an outsized role in the search for love, it’s perhaps understandable that some of us reach for AI’s helping hand – not everyone gives good text. Some Chatfishers, though, go to greater extremes, outsourcing entire conversations to ChatGPT, leaving their match in a dystopian hall of mirrors: believing they’re building a genuine connection with another human being when in reality they’re opening up to an algorithm trained to reflect their desires back to them.
— Read on www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/oct/12/chatgpt-ed-into-bed-chatfishing-on-dating-apps
AIn’t there yet
“Very few companies are actually replacing people with AI right now,” Jessica Kriegel, chief strategy officer at executive advisory firm Culture Partners, told CNN. “What we’re seeing instead are preemptive layoffs… Leaders want the financial runway to explore how AI might drive efficiency, but the technology isn’t yet ready to take over most human roles.”
High-ranking dumb
“I can guarantee that he’s not part of the Sinaloa Cartel,” Scott Alati said of his son, Tyler, who was charged in state court in Franklin with a felony-level drug sale and immediately released without having to post bail. “He isn’t a high-ranking member of anything. He’s high-ranking dumb.”
DEA claims of 171 ‘high-level’ Sinaloa Cartel arrests in New England are overblown
Why I’ll be rooting for the Blue Jays
The long wait is finally over.
After 5,231 games over 36 seasons as a player, coach and manager, Donnie Baseball is going to his first World Series.
“Obviously it feels great to get there, and I feel like we’re gonna play well too,” Don Mattingly, Toronto’s bench coach, told MLB.com on Tuesday, about 12 hours after the Blue Jays clinched the American League pennant.
Someone’s Ugly Daughter
Mariah Carey blew off steam while recording Daydream in 1995 by writing a grunge rock album under the name “Chick”:
A not-very-veiled dig at the frustrations she had with her then-husband and label head Tommy Mottola, the songs themselves have been circulating amongst fans for years, with lead vocals from Clarissa Dane, Mariah’s friend and collaborator on the project. (Mariah herself was barred from taking lead on the project due to her commitments to Sony at the time.)