Welcome back, valued Tech Bubble Consumers. This is a regular feature for paid subscribers, where I'll be going through some of what I've been reading and watching and listening to. If you enjoy my writing and would like to support me so I can keep doing it, then consider subscribing for $7 a month (how much your child or younger sibling likely makes on Roblox each week) or $70 a year (the cost of Ghost of Yotei—which will only last you 80+ hours).

My next two free essays: one on how Saudi Arabia’s post-oil ambitions are sustaining the longstanding tech bubble, then another contrasting the Silicon Valley Consensus to more narratives about the AI economy.

On Substack, I have been reading essays about: total mobilization in the information era, the case against social media, the Pentagon's entanglement with our tech sector, China's AI & chip strategies, the decline of literacy, various narratives and frameworks for talking about AI, and data center infrastructure.

Off of Substack, I’ve been reading essays about: climate change fatalism and optimism(?), the consequences of the DoD's obsession with venture capital, more on AI bubbles, Elon Musk’s reliance on Gulf capital, a DHS job fair, meta-commentary on generative AI commentary by writers and critics, Bari Weiss’s media empire, how the Sinaloa Cartel smuggles fentanyl into the United States, Peter Thiel’s Antichrist obsession, JP Morgan’s role in Jeffrey Epstein’s pedophile empire, and more.

Some of what I’ve been reading: books on Brazil’s recent history, how Silicon Valley Bank blew up, the collaboration between Silicon Valley and DHS that has birthed pervasive borderland tech targeting all of us, a book on antitrust & tech from a neo-Brandeisian critic, and the effect of endless quantification on capitalism and society...