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What To Read This Weekend
The news cycle has been moving at hyperspeed and sometimes it is really hard to keep up with so much information, most of it not much more than a drop in the bucket. So, I did what I usually do. Take a step back from it all, and decided to just slow down the cycle around my own interests. As a result, most of my writing this week is a bit more personal.
Whether it was celebrating my 23 years in San Francisco or simply using AI to identify the right phrase to describe myself, it was quite fun, and an exercise in some philosophical meandering. I also took the time to write about broadband, and yes, I got all worked up about Google flipping my favorite internet service provider to a PE-owned company. Now I am going to be looking for a new service.
Nonetheless, I took the time to enjoy reading what others are writing, especially the longer, less covered articles.
Here are seven stories I recommend.
- American Diner Gothic. Robert Mariani writes that economic stagnation, the death of regional culture, and the internet have converged to produce a new American type he calls the “dinergoth.” The pierced-up, anime-watching, gender-fluid Amazon warehouse worker who streams on Twitch and dreams of voice acting. I don’t normally even think about this. Now I do. [The New Atlantis]
- When ChatGPT Broke an Entire Field: An Oral History. Quanta Magazine interviewed 19 current and former natural language processing researchers to tell the story of what happened to their field when the transformer arrived. This is a fantastic read. Read it, and then read it again. [Quanta Magazine]
- How Oregon’s Data Center Boom Is Supercharging a Water Crisis. Rolling Stone and FERN investigate what happens when Amazon builds data centers on top of an aquifer already poisoned by decades of agricultural runoff. The water used to cool the servers evaporates, but the nitrates don’t. The wastewater gets sprayed back onto farmland. It seeps into the same wells people drink from. It leads to miscarriages and others losing a kidney. This is ugly. [Rolling Stone]
- Despite Doubts, Feds Approved Microsoft Cloud Service. Oops. Microsoft has a history of overpromising and underdelivering. Microsoft cloud is no different, as federal reviewers found out after five years and 480 hours. They wanted to verify how Microsoft protects sensitive government data in its cloud. They couldn’t. One reviewer called the documentation “a pile of shit.” They approved it anyway. [ProPublica]
- The $165 Billion Annoyance Economy. The “annoyance economy,” the cost of being on hold, fighting cancellation flows, disputing junk fees, navigating health insurance bureaucracy, costs American families $165 billion a year. This is capitalism gone wrong, and it rankles me no end. [Business Insider]
- How AI-Assisted ABS Will Impact MLB. It was Opening Day 2026. And it was also the introduction of robot umpires. Cornell researchers studied what happens when you replace human umpires with an automated ball-strike system. A nice reminder that “more accurate” and “better” are not always the same thing. [Cornell]
- Operation Red Wings: The True Story Behind Lone Survivor. Reality is not a movie. Politico Magazine revisits one of the most mythologized events in recent military history and finds a story far more complicated than the book or the movie. Read it slowly. [Politico]
What I wrote this week, ICYMI:
- Jargon Sucks — A short rant on why we hide behind words that mean nothing.
- Seeker — I used AI to find the right word to describe myself. The answer surprised me.
- 23 Years — A short photo-filled love letter to San Francisco on the anniversary of making it home.
- We Are Now an Upload (Broadband) Nation — Upstream usage is surging 21.7% year over year. It is the biggest challenge of infrastructure.
- Meta’s May Day — Meta has lost two cases in court. The problem is the way it lost them. Will it force them to rethink their entire operation?
- More Magic Math from OpenAI — The numbers still don’t add up.
- ‘Astound’ed. Google Flips Its Fiber to PE — Google sold GFiber to a PE-owned company called Astound. I am taking it personally.
March 29, 2026. San Francisco