This week, we’re examining the hidden infrastructure—and inherent fragility—of the systems we rely on. Guided by a collection of articles from the Pythoness Programmer, we investigate why advanced AI models aren’t “thinking” but delegating, and how this clever plumbing might be masking a stalled foundation. We then trace this theme of fragility from the massive, global impact of a single cloud server outage to the personal anxieties of non-consensual recording and insecure apps.
The conversation also expands to the geopolitical stage, where human lives become pawns in diplomatic tensions, and high-stakes pardons reshape the future of finance. We explore how brands are now selling narratives instead of products, and conclude with a vital coping mechanism for navigating it all: the messy, necessary concept of “ugly progress.”
Join us as we question the stability of the platforms we’ve built and the pipe dreams they sell.
Articles and Resources Mentioned:
AI browsers are here, and so are attackers [IT Brew, Eoin Higgins]
Creeper glasses just got creepier [404 Media, Samantha Cole]
Financialization of culture [Substack, The Sociology of Business, Ana Andjelic]
Massive Amazon cloud outage has been resolved after disrupting internet use worldwide [AP News, Kelvin Chan & Barbara Ortutay]
Reasoning Is Not Model Improvement [Developer forever, Mani Doraisamy]
Ugly progress [Substack, Rulerless, Casey von Neumann]
‘Illegal in own homes’: Afghan refugees caught in Pakistan-Taliban tensions [Al Jazeera, Abid Hussain]
‘War on Crypto Is Over’: Donald Trump Pardons Binance Founder CZ [WIRED, Joel Khalili]
