We are living in a time of polycrisis. If you feel trapped – you’re not alone

“We are living in a time of polycrisis. If you feel trapped – you’re not alone

I hadn’t fully grasped how the idea of a better future sustained me – now I, like many others, find it difficult to be productive.

...

“What feels very different in the present moment,” Hershfield said, “is that it feels like it’s coming from multiple fronts. It’s everything from political uncertainty in the US and elsewhere, health insecurity from the very fresh memory of a global pandemic, job insecurity from AI, geopolitical insecurity, to environmental insecurity.”

All these crises are happening contemporaneously, and because they interact with each other, their effects pile up. Social scientists refer to these stacked crises as a polycrisis. During a polycrisis, radical uncertainty becomes rife.

The lack of predictability creates more doubt about the future, which blocks our ability to imagine ourselves in it.” - by Theresa MacPhail

Music Fridays: Khruangbin!

Khruangbin brought hypnotic “ii” reimaginings to KCRW’s Annenberg Performance Studio, weaving melodic bass, shimmering guitar, and deep-pocket drumming into an intimate, transportive flow. Posted Jan 12, 2026

Turn off all AI in Firefox.

Quick way to turn off all AI in Firefox to stop it from running so slow.

Type “about:config” in the address bar and click OK when it warns you that you can break stuff.

Next enter each one of these lines into the search bar and click the button to toggle them to “FALSE”. That turns them off.

browser.ml.chat.enabled

browser.ml.enable

browser.ml.linkPreview.enabled

browser.ml.pageAssist.enabled

browser.ml.smartAssist.enabled

extensions.ml.enabled

browser.tabs.groups.smart.enabled

browser.search.visualSearch.featureGate

browser.urlbar.quicksuggest.mlEnabled

pdfjs.enableAltText

places.semanticHistory.featureGate

sidebar.revamp

And that should turn it all off.

More on Bandcamp

I have been a big fan of Bandcamp for years now. I love that I buy my music and most the money goes to the artist direct. I was worried when they were bought out, but it seems like they are staying true to goal of “artists first”. And now they have banned AI from Bandcamp as well which is freaking awesome.

Keeping Bandcamp Human

“Today we are fortifying our mission by articulating our policy on generative AI, so that musicians can keep making music, and so that fans have confidence that the music they find on Bandcamp was created by humans.

Our guidelines for generative AI in music and audio are as follows:

  • Music and audio that is generated wholly or in substantial part by AI is not permitted on Bandcamp. 

  • Any use of AI tools to impersonate other artists or styles is strictly prohibited in accordance with our existing policies prohibiting impersonation and intellectual property infringement.

If you encounter music or audio that appears to be made entirely or with heavy reliance on generative AI, please use our reporting tools to flag the content for review by our team. We reserve the right to remove any music on suspicion of being AI-generated.

With this policy, we’re putting human creativity first, and we will be sure to communicate any updates to the policy as the rapidly changing generative AI space develops. Thank you.”

This comment from Hacker News I think sums up AI art pretty well.

“Whenever I see defences of AI "art" people very often reduce the arguments to these analogies of using tools, but it's ineffective. Whether you use MS Paint, Photoshop, pencil, watercolor etc. That all requires skill, practice, and is this great intersection of intent and ability. It's authentic. Generating media with AI requires no skill, no intent, and very minimal labor. It is an approximation of the words you typed in and reduces you to a commissioner. You created nothing. You commissioned a work from a machine and are claiming creative authorship.” - frakt0x90

The 70% AI productivity myth: why most companies aren't seeing the gains

“Now consider the narrative you've been hearing from vendors, executives, and LinkedIn thought leaders: AI has collapsed software development costs by 70-90%. Development velocity is through the roof. If you're not seeing these gains, you're doing it wrong.

These two realities don't fit together. If even Karpathy feels behind, what hope does the average enterprise engineering team have?

The answer is uncomfortable: the 70-90% productivity claim is true for about 10% of the industry. For the other 90%, it's a marketing hallucination masquerading as data.”

…

“A randomized controlled study by METR (Model Evaluation & Threat Research) found something that should terrify every CTO: experienced developers using AI tools took 19% longer to complete tasks than those working without them.

Not beginners. Not interns fumbling with ChatGPT. Experienced engineers. On codebases they knew. With tools designed to make them faster.

They got slower.

The Stack Overflow 2025 Developer Survey adds nuance. While 52% of developers report some positive productivity impact from AI tools, only a minority experience transformative gains. 46% now actively distrust AI output accuracy, up from 31% last year. The number-one frustration, cited by 66% of developers: AI solutions that are "almost right, but not quite", leading to time-consuming debugging.”

…

“This isn't learning a new library or framework. This is learning to work with something that is:

For experienced developers, this may actually be harder. They have decades of muscle memory around deterministic systems. They've internalized debugging strategies that don't apply when the "bug" is an LLM hallucination with no stack trace.

The data supports this. Only 48% of developers use AI agents or advanced tooling. A majority (52%) either don't use agents at all or stick to simpler AI tools. 38% have no plans to adopt them.”

The Brutality of Tillamook Rock Lighthouse - Terrible Tilly

First lit on January 21, 1881, the Tillamook Rock Lighthouse is one of the most isolated lighthouses in the United States. Built on a desolate rock a mile off the Northern Oregon coast, Terrible Tilly endured the worst that the rugged Pacific could throw at it. Through it all, the light remained for 77 years. Now, long abandoned, the derelict lighthouse continues to spark the imagination

AI explained in one Comment from reddit.

Last quarter I rolled out Microsoft Copilot to 4,000 employees.

$30 per seat per month.

$1.4 million annually.

I called it "digital transformation."

The board loved that phrase.

They approved it in eleven minutes.

No one asked what it would actually do.

Including me.

I told everyone it would "10x productivity."

That's not a real number.

But it sounds like one.

HR asked how we'd measure the 10x.

I said we'd "leverage analytics dashboards."

They stopped asking.

Three months later I checked the usage reports.

47 people had opened it.

12 had used it more than once.

One of them was me.

I used it to summarize an email I could have read in 30 seconds.

It took 45 seconds.

Plus the time it took to fix the hallucinations.

But I called it a "pilot success."

Success means the pilot didn't visibly fail.

The CFO asked about ROI.

I showed him a graph.

The graph went up and to the right.

It measured "AI enablement."

I made that metric up.

He nodded approvingly.

We're "AI-enabled" now.

I don't know what that means.

But it's in our investor deck.

A senior developer asked why we didn't use Claude or ChatGPT.

I said we needed "enterprise-grade security."

He asked what that meant.

I said "compliance."

He asked which compliance.

I said "all of them."

He looked skeptical.

I scheduled him for a "career development conversation."

He stopped asking questions.

Microsoft sent a case study team.

They wanted to feature us as a success story.

I told them we "saved 40,000 hours."

I calculated that number by multiplying employees by a number I made up.

They didn't verify it.

They never do.

Now we're on Microsoft's website.

"Global enterprise achieves 40,000 hours of productivity gains with Copilot."

The CEO shared it on LinkedIn.

He got 3,000 likes.

He's never used Copilot.

None of the executives have.

We have an exemption.

"Strategic focus requires minimal digital distraction."

I wrote that policy.

The licenses renew next month.

I'm requesting an expansion.

5,000 more seats.

We haven't used the first 4,000.

But this time we'll "drive adoption."

Adoption means mandatory training.

Training means a 45-minute webinar no one watches.

But completion will be tracked.

Completion is a metric.

Metrics go in dashboards.

Dashboards go in board presentations.

Board presentations get me promoted.

I'll be SVP by Q3.

I still don't know what Copilot does.

But I know what it's for.

It's for showing we're "investing in AI."

Investment means spending.

Spending means commitment.

Commitment means we're serious about the future.

The future is whatever I say it is.

As long as the graph goes up and to the right.

-@gothburz

Cat cat catcat

Vanessa Stockard aka Derek Milkwood (Australian, b. 1975, Sydney, Australia) - It Fell (By Itself), 2024, Paintings: Oil