Don't Sell Yourself for Cheap, Weekend Whats
You may not be keeping the receipts on your retail purchases, but retailers are definitely keeping the receipts on you. Journalists have requested the dossier McDonald’s has on them, and the reports have come back at over 500 pages (more if you wanted fries with that). You may be able to hide that trip to the donut shop from your family, but you aren’t going to be able to hide it from the host of retailers collecting, sharing, marketing and selling your information. It’s enough to make your eyes glaze over. As Christian Schneider explains in the WSJ (Gift Article): You’re in a Toxic Relationship With Your Retailers. “With every purchase, you are entering into a lifelong relationship with a needy lover who is never willing to set you free. Every product you buy is added to your curriculum vitae.” This is hardly a new story. So why focus on it now? Because we are moving into an era where people are starting to use AI agents (or computerized personal assistants) to take over many tasks, including making purchases. What the most sophisticated data brokers have collected about you is nothing compared to the amount of personal, financial, and behavioral information people are willingly handing over because, apparently, shopping online and having items delivered directly to your doorstep seems too hard. And if you’re sharing your contact list with your agent, you’re probably sharing some of my data, too. All this personal information is being surrendered without a fight to the very companies that have shown us, time and time again, that they will take as much of our data as they can and use it against us if it means increasing shareholder value. Definitely something to muse on. Or if that seems like too much work, maybe you can have Muse muse on it for you. It probably already knows you’re musing anyway. Even if you’ve surrendered, there’s still an ongoing fight between retailers and agentic AI companies. “Meta, Google, OpenAI, and others have all introduced some version of agentic shopping tools that promise to make buying things even easier than it already is. Demos show AI agents that can seamlessly book flights and hotels, browse billions of products to find the right one, and secure tickets to sporting events on a human’s behalf. But as AI companies — and their users — are finding out, buying things requires that the other party is willing to sell them in the first place.” The Verge (Gift Article): AI agents are ready to shop. Some retailers are wary. Maybe you should be wary, too. After all, ultimately, you’re the product. There’s an ongoing battle to see which companies get to own you. Don’t sell yourself for nothing.
Unmeasured Rulers
At this point, the two world leaders running America (and, in some cases, beyond) agree that they want to betray our ally, Ukraine to the benefit of their ally, Russia. They’re just not in total agreement as to how to execute that betrayal, which leads us to an incredible lede like this one from the WSJ: “President Trump called Elon Musk on Wednesday and asked him to lift restrictions on a military-grade version of Starlink in Ukraine that the SpaceX chief had throttled, U.S. officials said. Some U.S. and Ukrainian officials said the system was working more normally on Thursday, after Trump and Musk spoke, but wasn’t restored to full functionality. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday ‘the speed has not been restored.’ ‘I’ve heard it was fixed but if it’s not I’ll speak to him,’ Trump told reporters Friday, referring to Musk.”
+ Obviously, Musk has way too much power for an unelected (not to mention unsavory, untoward, unkind, and increasingly, unAmerican) citizen. And he’s spending bigly to make sure things stay that way. “Elon Musk gave another $76 million to boost Republicans in the first two weeks of October, bringing his total giving this cycle to more than $442 million.”
+ “Live by the sword, die by the sword.” WaPo (Gift Article): As Republicans brace for election losses, Musk prepares for war. (I guess he’s been preparing by starving kids in Africa, endangering civilians in Ukraine, and of course, trolling on X.)
Monkey See, Monkey Don’t
“Pasa and Yoyo, two female chimpanzees, are best friends. They spend their afternoons lounging together in the warm grass of the Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Uganda, grooming and sharing food. Sometimes they even try to escape the grounds together. They are also less likely to steal food from each other, according to the results of a new experiment that pitted friendship against pineapple slices.” NYT (Gift Article): Chimps Steal Less Often From Their Friends, Even When Offered Pineapple. “The discovery may hint at the roots of human norms around fairness and friendship.” (Either that, or Yoyo’s not that into pineapple.)
Weekend Whats
What to Movie: You undoubtedly know the name, Edmund Hillary. But there’s a good chance you don’t know Tenzing Norgay. Yet, the two men arrived at the top of Everest at the same moment. In fact, only Tenzing’s photo was taken up there. See the story you may have missed in the excellent Tenzing on Apple TV. (And then check out some minidocs on Tenzing on YouTube. The true story is even more amazing than some elements of the movie.)
+ What to Book: “For decades, we’ve explained corporate corruption as a problem of bad actors, moral weakness, or isolated scandals. But that story doesn’t match reality. Again and again, companies founded with strong ideals drift toward short-term thinking, extractive behavior, and mission abandonment—often despite the best intentions of the people inside them. Incorruptible argues that this failure is not primarily ethical. It is structural.” Eric Ries is famous in the tech world for his book on lean startups. Hopefully, his latest book gets as much attention. Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad… and How Great Companies Stay Great. Or, how we went from “Don’t be evil” to this: Finns Are Seething After Google Illegally Toppled 250,000 Trees for a Data Center.
+ What to Read: Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic: What the U.S. Is Really Doing in Venezuela. “Searching for a model or a reference point, I asked Hausmann how he would describe it. ‘A coalition of two kleptocracies,’ he said.”
Extra, Extra
And So It Begins: With polling looking bad for Trump, you can expect efforts to overcome the vote to accelerate. And these efforts will done in plain site. If you somehow miss the corruption, they’ll remind you that it’s happening. “Donald Trump said he ordered the Justice Department to file a lawsuit to block the certification of Alaska’s US Senate results if the Republican incumbent on the ballot does not win. ‘I’m the one that said do it,’ Trump told reporters on Friday.” And, Blanche won’t rule out DOJ post-election action in a ‘doomsday’ scenario.
+ Timing is Everything: Speaking of election-related efforts: “Israel has launched a campaign of collective punishment against Palestinians in Hebron after gunmen killed two Israeli soldiers and injured three near a checkpoint outside the city. Benjamin Netanyahu announced a siege on Hebron and neighbouring Halhul and said residents of the gunmen’s home neighbourhoods would all be forced out. He promised mass demolitions of homes.” (The Israeli election is in 3 days.)
+ GOP Bottom: “It’s quite a feat, in this numb and debased era, to create a political advertisement so shocking and indecent that people from across the political spectrum feel the need to denounce it. The Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who has long fashioned himself as a kind of Donald Trump 2.0 — younger and brainier but just as brash — has managed it.” It’s sickening. It involves a childhood sexual assault suffered by his opponent. Trump is for it. Vance has defended it. Is this the bottom? (And if it isn’t, is there one?) Michelle Goldberg: The Meaning of the Republican War Over Ramaswamy’s Vile Ad.
+ We Need to Talk About the Cyber: We spend a lot of time worrying about AI destroying humanity. I’d worry a lot more about it hacking the hell out of us. If Anything Happens to This Guy … Everyone Is Screwed. “Ondřej Surý was a relatively anonymous volunteer working on PHP security. Then the internet exploded.” Meanwhile, Mark Cuban says AI hack agents are like cockroaches, but can be controlled. (Since cockroaches are likely to survive whatever apocalypse kills us, I’m not sure I love the metaphor.)
+ Makers Mark: “For six years, I lived in China and observed how Chinese companies became global leaders, in part because American firms brought them better technology and management. In Arizona, I saw how Taiwanese engineers are training American workers to build some of the most complex technologies in the world … And guess what? TSMC engineers and their families are having a great time. In interviews, they marveled at their new lives in the Sunbelt: the large homes, the friendly community, the opportunities for their kids.” The Factory Outside Phoenix That Could Save American Manufacturing.
+ Shape of Things to Come? “Could the geometry of our brains increase the risk of Alzheimer’s disease? It’s a provocative question, but one that some scientists are beginning to explore.” Alzheimer’s Researchers Look at an Unusual Data Point: Head Shape. (My head shape changes every time I bang it against my laptop.)
Feel Good Friday
“In Japan, where many citizens prioritize public order and quiet streets, Mr. Utsumi is seen as something of a nuisance and rule breaker. He has been told he is too sloppy, too undisciplined, too gimmicky and too old to dance. ‘I know I stand out,’ he said. ‘That’s why it’s very difficult for an ordinary salaryman like me to dance like this.'” Rain or Shine, Japan’s ‘Dancing Salaryman’ Can’t Stop Grooving.
+ Why Has This Teenager Tracked Down 11,377 Moths Since April?
+ Marin athlete completes 900-mile swim off California coast.
+ Hegseth Barred Trans Troops. Military Boards Are Rejecting Those Orders.
+ The NFL’s $192 Million Bet on Flag Football Is Paying Off With Teen Girls.
+ “The three men conjured up a legend of their own: they would find the golden ring and return it to its rightful owner in a Lord of the Rings-style quest — an epic journey that, they joked, would take more than a thousand years.” Three Italian ‘hobbits’ flew to Ireland to return this man’s ring — and it was precious.
