853 tacks
Why owning nothing is so expensive
Subscription services exist for nearly everything consumers buy. Many, like Netflix or Spotify, start out affordable, but the cost adds up over time. And while signing up is effortless, cancelling can be difficult. Companies such as Adobe and Amazon have even been accused by the Federal Trade Commission of using dark patterns to trap consumers in subscriptions. But rising costs are only part of the problem. The subscription model is eroding consumer’s opportunity to own what they buy. So how did we get to the point where practically everything is a subscription? And why is owning nothing making everything so expensive?
The Internet is Being Deleted (And You Haven’t Noticed)
Right now, we are witnessing a massive, systematic erasure of digital history. From war crime investigations to grassroots activism and historical archives, the "permanent" web is vanishing. In this episode of Free Speech Friday, Taylor Lorenz breaks down the escalating censorship from Big Tech and governments that is burning our collective digital archive. Documentation of major historical events, war crimes, police violence, videos documenting things like ICE abductions, but also thousands of photos, websites, and archives that play a crucial role in documenting our cultural and political history are being systematically erased from the web.
After the Bondi attack, a deepfaked Guardian video went viral. It won't be the last
A video of Australian federal police commissioner Krissy Barrett claiming four Indian nationals had been arrested, with a Guardian watermark on screen, was in fact a deepfake made from a genuine video of a press conference Barrett had given on 18 December. The video was flagged by online factcheckers, but not before being watched hundreds of thousands of times. As Guardian Australia's technology reporter Josh Taylor explains, these deepfakes are only getting easier to make.
Understanding Focal Length In Cinematography
When you watch a movie you’re looking through a lens that has a specific viewpoint, a specific way of interpreting depth, scale, and distance. And that viewpoint, expressed as a focal length, affects everything.
Why Is Everyone Running In Rom-Coms?
The Nerdwriter1 video explores why the classic romantic-comedy trope of someone running to declare their love resonates so strongly. It argues that such scenes externalise an inner emotional drama and reflect a deeper modern desire for meaning. As traditional shared moral frameworks weakened after the 1700s, individuals began seeking purpose through personal narratives, a shift reflected in the rise of the novel. Romantic love became a cultural “quest” promising fulfillment and identity, offering a comforting, simplified fantasy in an uncertain modern world. 
We Didn’t Ask for This Internet
Ragebait, sponcon, A.I. slop — the internet of 2026 makes a lot of us nostalgic for the internet of 10 or 15 years ago. What exactly went wrong here? How did the early promise of the internet get so twisted? And what exactly is wrong here? What kinds of policies could actually make our digital lives meaningfully better? Cory Doctorow and Tim Wu have two different theories of the case, which I thought would be interesting to put in conversation together. Doctorow is a science fiction writer, an activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the author of “Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It.” Wu is a law professor who worked on technology policy in the Biden White House; his latest book is “The Age of Extraction: How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity.”
What Do the People Building AI Believe?
The Atlantic's Galaxy Brain explores the culture of this boom with the writer Jasmine Sun, who’s been chronicling San Francisco’s AI scene. Sun describes what this moment feels like on the ground, including a subculture of massive salaries, and a weird pride in leaning into tech’s strangeness. Together, Warzel and Sun unpack two major factions shaping the industry: the AI “doomers,” and the accelerationists. The conversation also traces Silicon Valley’s rightward drift—the “founder mode” backlash against regulation and employee activism and the rise of “Trump style” provocation-first tech marketing. Finally, Sun and Warzel address the jagged reality of today’s models, which are brilliant at some tasks and weak at others.
Tech Billionaires Want Us Dead
Taylor Lorenz argues that a strand of Silicon Valley ideology treats biological humanity as temporary and sees AI or digital beings as our “successors.” She traces this worldview from early cyber-utopianism through transhumanism, long-termism, and accelerationism, claiming billionaires are funding AI, bunkers, life-extension, and escape plans while accepting human harm as collateral. Her conclusion is that this future is not inevitable: society should regulate big tech, challenge billionaire power, and defend a human-centred technological future.
The dangerous trend ruining modern television
Modern TV is being hurt by long gaps between seasons and shorter episode orders, unlike older shows with 20+ weekly episodes. These changes disrupt audience engagement and storytelling rhythm, weakening series’ cultural impact and fan loyalty. The trend toward irregular schedules and fewer episodes is presented as a key factor undermining television’s traditional strengths.
Why are people starting to sound like ChatGPT?
Through feedback loops, AI systems influence how people think and communicate.
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