2025-09-14

Why female pop stars are lambasting mediocre men #gender #relationships

Men are pushing back it seems 😂

Yet this current wave of songs reflects a social shift. Women in the rich world are enjoying more economic power, meaning they can be choosier about their partners. Many are willing to hold out for someone who will do the washing up and put the toilet seat down. According to Pew Research Centre, 35% of American women between the ages of 25 and 54 were single in 2023, up from 29% in 1990. Across many measures, from education to politics, young men and women are drifting apart. Nearly 60% of American university graduates are women. Given that most women prefer not to date or marry down, for many it can be, as Ms Carpenter says, slim pickings.

Men are pushing back, at least musically. In August the top album on the Billboard 200 chart was “I’m the Problem” by Morgan Wallen, an American country singer. “If I’m so awful,” he sings, “then why’d you stick around this long?”

Hangovers

Do hangover supplements work? #alcohol

Hangovers are complicated. Some symptoms, including fatigue, are brought on by the negative effects alcohol has on sleep. Others, such as headaches and dry mouths, are made worse by the dehydration that results from alcohol’s suppression of vasopressin, a hormone that regulates kidney function.

But many of the more severe consequences are caused by the toxic effects of the drink itself. Whether you imbibe grape or grain, aged or fresh, neat or mixed, you will mainly experience the intoxication of ethanol. And although the human body is capable of metabolising the stuff, it does so in a slow and uncomfortable manner. First, an enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) breaks down the compound into acetaldehyde, which can dilate blood vessels in the head, producing headaches, and irritate the lining of the stomach, leading to nausea. These pass when another enzyme, acetaldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH), in turn breaks down acetaldehyde into less harmful chemicals.

Most hangover supplements, therefore, claim to help ADH and ALDH do their jobs a little faster

ChatGPT tells me methanol is a kind of congener, something the paragraph didn't make very obvious.

Even if further trials justify the marketing claims, such supplements can do only so much. Chemicals structurally similar to ethanol, collectively known as congeners, are also present in alcoholic drinks in small amounts, and may have their own harmful effects. When methanol breaks down, for example, formaldehyde and formic acid are produced—even tiny quantities of which cause systemic poisoning, adding to the unpleasantness of a hangover. Boringly, for a headache-free route to being headache-free, drink a little less.

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2025-09-13

Should you have kids

Should You Have Kids? - by Josh Zlatkus - Living Fossils #kids #parenting

Ezra Klein, whom I generally respect, was once puzzled by why people aren’t having more children. In particular, he was surprised that incentive programs (like free daycare) have little effect.

I would argue that his surprise stemmed from applying the wrong rationality. From an academic perspective, incentives drive behavior, so lowering the cost of parenthood should increase births. But it doesn’t, because people generally don’t factor these kinds of incentives into their decision. They rely on a different rubric, a different rationality.

For most of human history, that rubric was simple: Do I want to bang this person? If so, and a child resulted, the next question was: Do I want to protect this offspring? At no point did anyone have to ask whether to have children. At no point did they have to list their values and imagine “living into” them. Reproduction just happened, without deliberation.

However, now that the question is asked, it seems as if people ultimately rely on more ecologically rational approaches—Is it expected of me? Is it part of the good life as my culture understands it? Does the person I love have a stronger opinion?—rather than academically rational approaches, such as: Are there more Pros or Cons? Do I like other children? How does it feel to say yes? How about no? Ultimately, will it line up with my values? Will I receive financial aid from my government? Honestly, these questions are neither here nor there.

Even with ecologically rational approaches, though, thinking about whether to have children is still like those dreams where we go to buy something but discover there’s nothing in our pockets to pay for it (sometimes we don’t even have pants). Similarly, on this major question of life, we reach inside ourselves and find nothing, no tool made for the purpose.

Vibe Code Cleanup Specialists

The Software Engineers Paid to Fix Vibe Coded Messes

Linkedin has been joking about “vibe coding cleanup specialists,” but it’s actually a growing profession.

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2025-09-12

The Matcha Obsession

Deconstructing the matcha obsession - Coffee Intelligence

With the caveat that this is a publication that covers the coffee industry, and hence there might be a bias - this is an excellect guide to the current matcha obsession.

But growth is not infinite. True ceremonial-grade matcha requires shade-grown leaves, painstakingly ground between granite stones. Supplies are thin and cannot be scaled overnight. As demand surges in Europe and North America, lower-grade powders – sometimes blended with green tea dust or other fillers – are sold as “authentic” matcha.

Green by association

Why does matcha feel so different from coffee, a drink it increasingly competes with in cafés? Part of the answer lies in colour. 

Consumers often equate green with health and sustainability. Colour psychology studies reveal that many consumers equate green with nature. A matcha latte, even when drowned in syrup and sweet frothy milk, still somehow manages to convey a halo of wellness.

The health claims themselves are more ambiguous. Matcha contains caffeine – roughly 60-70 milligrams per serving, less than coffee but more than many teas – alongside L-theanine, an amino acid thought to mitigate caffeine’s jitters. Some studies suggest it may aid focus, though evidence is limited. The antioxidant narrative is stronger: matcha is rich in catechins, particularly EGCG, which in laboratory conditions have shown anti-inflammatory, even cancer-fighting, effects on the body. While studies have shown associations between matcha and better health, causation is not yet proven and factors like amount per serving matter – matcha remains even less studied than brewed green tea.

“I think that demand begins at either the healthy side or the visually exciting and decadent side of the spectrum,” says Will. “Matcha-flavoured sweets and milkshakes attract a lot of consumers, especially when they’re presented in cheerful and colorful ways.”

“The science is pretty well-established when it comes to the health benefits of things like antioxidants and polyphenols, and L-Theanine – all naturally occurring in tea. Matcha is packed full of these things. But by the time it’s mixed with 10oz of milk and 30g of sugar, the health benefits are diminished. As long as the perception – and much of the scientific research – remains murky, folks will conveniently ignore the contradictions when treating themselves.”

The irony is that coffee – unsweetened, no additives, and in moderation – long derided as an anxious vice, has better scientific backing as a healthy habit. Dozens of large studies link moderate coffee consumption with lower risks of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. 

Still, matcha’s presentation as a “cleaner” alternative resonates, especially among consumers who dislike coffee’s bitterness or fear its caffeine spikes. 

Matcha’s cultural cachet has also been bound up with social performance. Online, the drink is often used as a prop in videos that parody hyper-optimised masculinity: the matcha-latte-drinking, feminist-literature reading, vinyl touting “performative male.” 

In that sense, matcha has become less a taste than a lifestyle symbol. And beyond social currency, like protein powders and collagen shots, it reflects a wider consumer shift where drinks are expected to stack functions like to energise, beautify, or detoxify rather than merely be a beverage.

The matcha craze may follow a similar trajectory: stabilising as a premium category, with a smaller base of genuine regulars once the hype ebbs. Already, hojicha – roasted green tea with a toasty flavour profile – is being hailed by many as “the next matcha.” The cycle of discovery and commodification continues to spin.

When consumers demand infinite growth from finite goods, the result is scarcity, price spikes and often quality erosion. The matcha craze is less about the drink itself, and more about the marketing playbook it represents: colour as health, scarcity as status, and ritual as lifestyle.

Models of Taxation

The Five Faces of the Taxman - by Brett Scott

This is a really good article which describes how different folks with different ideologies percieve the system of taxation. I really like this approach to look at different mental models, instead of arguing from one entrenched position - Robber, Provider, Redistributor, Technocrat and finally the most interesting one, the Anchorman.

I also like this description of chartalism (which underpins the MMT approach to money in recent times)

In the vision of the taxman as Robber, Provider, Redistributor, and Technocrat, it’s just assumed that money is a some kind of mysterious ‘commodity-like’ thing that exists outside of the state, hence the state needing to grab it, or to pull it from some to give to others.

Since the early 1900s, however, a school of thought called Chartalism has argued that the monetary system is anchored by the tax system, and that tax is required to make money work.

The basic chartalist observation is that states spend money into existence, pushing it out in exchange for real goods and services. Crucial to understanding this, is to understand what the state wants. The state does not want people’s money, much like an oak tree doesn’t want to collect its own acorns from squirrels. Rather, what the state wants is labour, and they get it by issuing credits that they want people to take.

In order to get people to take those credits, though, the state needs to create demand for them. It does this by imposing taxation - in other words, by imposing an obligation on people to give the state those credits back at certain points.

What I’ve just said normally horrifies libertarians, because in their imagination capitalism is peaceful and markets are natural. In the chartalist worldview, and also in the worldview of many economic anthropologists, large scale markets are constructed by states and are always underpinned by violence. The tax circuit used by states to extract labour for themselves, underpins the subsequent monetary system, which in turn catalyses, kickstarts and grows markets to scales previously unimaginable, and therefore scales up private wealth accumulation too.

In this view, state violence is symbiotic with private wealth accumulation, rather than parasitic upon it, because there would be no such thing as large-scale capitalism with its large-scale billionaires if there wasn’t a large-scale monetary system anchored by state taxation. Eliminating taxation would not ‘save capitalism’ from states. It would undermine the entire structure of capitalism. The state isn’t a needy parasite extracting from a host, but rather the very thing that leads to the host growing.

How to look at social media

how to look at social media - by Adam Aleksic

I like the different terms that the author uses for the different modes to consume social media - umsicht (immersion), flânerie (a mode of detached viewing) and the dérive (interact, but from a state of observation)

The philosopher Martin Heidegger would identify this pre-reflective mode of looking as umsicht: a state of immersion in our environment, where perception occurs without active thought. In umsicht, you intuitively know how to cope with your experience, but you don’t actively think about it.

To me, this alternate state of perception is analogous to the nineteenth-century French concept of flânerie: a mode of detached viewing, originally for the purpose of observation while walking through elements of urban life. To be a flâneur of the algorithm, you have to similarly embrace your role as an observer and coolly analyze events as they occur. This is a conscious, actively reflective state of consumption.

This third mode is inspired by another theory of walking: the dérive, a type of unplanned journey formulated by the Situationist philosophers in reaction to the overstimulation of media and spectacle. By allowing you to intuitively “feel out” an urban environment, dérive lets you interact, but from a state of observation. You still dissociate into umsicht, but you take note of disruptions. Over time, you can train yourself to both experience and learn from that experience.

The solution is to radically build up your awareness through the very way you perceive the scroll state. Let yourself engage, but not fall victim. Feel, detach, learn, repeat. It’s going to be work, but it’s how we start reclaiming power for ourselves.

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2025-09-11

Third Places

What Is A Third Place? And How To Find One - The Good Trade

A third place is a familiar public spot where you regularly connect with others known and unknown, over a shared interest or activity. The term was coined by Ray Oldenburg in the early 1990s, as increasing work hours and more heavily siloed communities (think: Suburbs) became the norm. Because when you have access to everything you could possibly want or need at home (or online), leaving the house becomes optional.

The best kind of third place is accessible and is one that invites us into close proximity with people we may not meet otherwise. These days, third places look like a bar or cafe with an affordable happy hour, but they can also look like community meeting spaces, churches, or libraries. Particularly, these locations can be especially important for seniors and for anyone living in areas facing economic hardship. By breaking down social siloes, third spaces put people in touch.

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2025-09-06

How Anime Took Over America

How Anime Took Over America: From Pokemon to Demon Slayer and Dragon Ball Z - The New York Times #anime #america

From this early stage on, Black Americans were overrepresented in anime fandom. Arthell Isom, whose D’ART Shtajio is Japan’s first Black-owned animation studio, shared his theory with me that Black Americans identified with anime protagonists who often come from the margins of society. Perhaps, he suggested, they were also so used to being absent from the media they consumed that they had an easier time watching and identifying with Asian protagonists than white audiences did.

No aspect of pop culture has remained untouched: In the fashion world, the streetwear label Supreme marketed a line of clothing festooned with images from “Akira,” and in recent years a number of Olympians and professional athletes have modeled their victory poses on anime characters.

Above all, though, anime may be saved by its sheer madness. There is nothing especially marketable, after all, about a film like “My Neighbor Totoro,” in which a pair of children whose mother may or may not be dying follow anthropomorphic dust mites into a hidden world where they befriend a cat who is also a bus. The psycho-spiritual trauma of the mecha-versus-monsters epic “Neon Genesis Evangelion” can scarcely be described, much less audience-tested for the sake of nervous financial backers. Anime is the realm of the underdog and the weirdo, whose fantastically bizarre imaginations have created a medium defined by its difficulty. And if there’s one thing Hollywood doesn’t seem up for right now, it’s a challenge.

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2025-09-05

LLMs are slot machines

Pluralistic: LLMs are slot-machines (16 Aug 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow #llms #ai #coding

Glyph proposes that many LLM-assisted programmers who speak highly of the reliability and value of AI tools are falling prey to two cognitive biases:

1. The "availability heuristic" (striking things are easier to remember, which is why we remember the very rare instances of kids being kidnapped and killed, but rarely think about the relatively common phenomenon of kids dying in boring car-crashes); and

2. The "salience heuristic" (big things are easier to remember, which is why we double-check that the oven is turned off and the smoke alarms are working after our neighbor's house burns down).

In the case of LLM coding assistants, this manifests as an unconscious overestimation of how often the LLM saves you time. That's because a coding program that produces a bug that you have to "futz with" for a while before it starts working is normal, and thus unmemorable, while a coding tool that turns a plain-language prompt into a working computer program is amazing, so it stands out in your memory.

But that's not the only way in which an LLM coding assistant is like a slot machine. Reg Braithwaite proposed that AI companies' business model is also like a casino's, because they charge every time you re-prompt the AI. He writes:

When you are paying by the "pull of the handle," the vendor's incentive is not to solve your problem with a single pull, but to give the appearance of progress towards solving your problem.

But there's an important difference between an intern and an LLM. For a senior coder, helping an intern is an investment in nurturing a new generation of talented colleagues. For a reverse-centaur, refining an LLM is either an investment in fixing bugs in a product designed to put you on the breadline (if you believe AI companies' claims that their products will continue to improve until they don't need close supervision), or it's a wasted investment in a "dense intern" who is incapable of improving.

AI Psychosis

Found in this article by Ted Gioia: Our Shared Reality Will Self-Destruct in the Next 12 Months

In this new degraded world, we will see these six behavior patterns from everybody, even (or especially) those who under other circumstances would be well integrated into their communities:

• Skepticism: If events can’t be validated, I can’t give credence to anything.
• Aloofness: If everything gets called into question, I have no basis for shared communal actions.
• Silence: If discussion no longer resolves anything, I have no purpose in speaking.
• Indifference: As I lose connection with people and events, I lose interest in them.
• Distrust: In a world without shared reality, no expert or institution can earn my total trust.
• Hostility: As these traditional connections break down, it doesn’t take much to set off conflicts and violence.

Lithuania and The Digital Euro

In Lithuania, the Digital Euro Is No Longer Theory — It’s Infrastructure

According to data from the Bank of Lithuania, the country is almost entirely dependent on international card schemes for everyday payments. Neither Lithuania nor 13 other eurozone countries currently have a domestic card system — a dependency that European officials describe as a strategic vulnerability.

In 2022, the EU paid an estimated €1 billion in card fees to U.S. providers. Lithuania alone handles nearly all of its digital transactions through Visa, Mastercard, Apple Pay, and Google Pay.

“That kind of reliance on external infrastructure isn’t sustainable,” Lasmanis says. “Especially when you consider that geopolitics now includes cables, chips, and payments.”

The goal is not to eliminate cash, but to create a parallel, digital means of payment: one that is free to use, widely accepted across the eurozone, and capable of functioning even during internet outages or political instability.

Key features include:

• Offline payments, even without mobile or data signal
• Free basic services for individuals, including transfers and point-of-sale payments
• No commercial data harvesting, with strong privacy guarantees
• Programmable capabilities for governments (like automatic tax refunds or disaster relief)

The plan, currently in the preparatory phase, is to roll out basic infrastructure by 2027, with a full rollout by 2030. The ECB emphasizes that it has no commercial interest in transaction data and that privacy will be “as close to cash as possible,” particularly for offline transactions.

“It’s designed to be neutral and foundational,” says Christine Lagarde, ECB President, in a recent speech. “A public option for digital money.”

The evils of social media

what the evils of TV reveal about the evils of social media

The important thing to remember about “engagement” is that it started out as a metric for “attention” but has since become the target. Now people make ragebait and clickbait just to generate engagement to go viral, giving us all content we would rather not see. This is an inherent problem of social media that didn’t exist on TV, and affects our cultural conversations at large.

I feel like echo chambers have been talked about ad nauseam, but the fragmentation of content consumption is probably an equal threat to our collective well-being. People have come to expect tailor-made videos on their “For You Pages,” creating a more individualistic culture where everybody wants to be the “main character,” and reducing our sense of community with one another.

Today, social media makes those decisions for you; the implication is that the algorithm already knows what you want to see. Even when it seems like you do have choices, like with long-form content on YouTube and Netflix, the choices that are presented are algorithmically predetermined. The simple difference of not being able to choose what channels you’re watching means you’re playing a less active role in shaping your own identity.

The instant access and connectivity completely changes our interaction with the medium, engendering a greater sense of immediacy and further blurring the line between media and reality.

…

The phone is the culmination of the other dangers—it’s simultaneously designed to be engaging, and personalized, and remove agency. It makes sense that social media as a whole mirrors these attributes.

Online Disinhibition Effect

Insulation Makes Artists and Assholes - by Josh Zlatkus

Taken together, these protections make digital life a textbook case of evolutionary mismatch. Humans evolved in small groups where every word and action carried physical, emotional, social, and reputational consequences. When those consequences are diluted, distorted, delayed, or erased online, people unsurprisingly act like jerks. Psychologists even have a name for it: the Online Disinhibition Effect.

Well, the distortion—or downright absence—of social feedback from online environments creates something of an incubator for behavior that would not be viable in the face-to-face settings humans lived in until very recently. This is why I was not surprised that Musk might have become his Twitter personality: having successfully product-tested a new personality online, he felt comfortable bringing it into the real world. Twitter gave him the chance to try out a side of himself that may not have gotten off the ground otherwise. The same has been true for millions of people on thousands of platforms worldwide.

Viewing human behavior through the lens of self-interest can feel bleak, especially if you were raised to believe people are naturally selfless. But to me, it isn’t depressing. It’s clarifying. It gives society a clear goal: create conditions that channel selfishness into cooperation. In other words, get the incentives right.

Evolution has already solved much of this puzzle. Emotions like anger, empathy, shame, and gratitude both advance the selfish gene and hold groups together. They represent a blueprint for “selfish cooperation.” As we continue to build new environments, we should be careful about tampering with these ancient levers. Predictable results follow when people can act anonymously, with no reputation at stake, or when they exist disembodied, with no risk of a punch in the face.

By scrambling the old checks and balances on behavior, the Internet helped engender a version of Elon Musk—and countless others—that would never have existed otherwise.

Is ADHD Real

Went back and read this article again: Is ADHD Real? - by Josh Zlatkus - Living Fossils

Mostly because this article showed up on HN: Notes on Managing ADHD | Hacker News After having read so many Living Fossils articles, this articles and the comments on HN seemed so ham-fisted. Instead of going deeper into the subject matter, everyone is just posting "hacks".

Here was one sensible comment tho

Further, of course ADHD has a biological cause - human beings are biological beings so every human behavior has a biological cause when you come down to it. But the implication that proscriptions drugs designed based on a deep and verified understanding of the mechanisms of ADHD is completely false - ADHD drug prescription, like all behavior-altering drug prescription, is based on just "bucket chemistry", maybe-educated guess work. Which isn't implying drugs don't work for some people. But I think it's important to be clear the various drugs aren't ADHD cures in the way that antibiotics are cures for infection. But again, I support the right of people want ADHD drugs to have them. But I think drug use shouldn't be automatic.

Below are the quotes from the Living Fossils article that I found useful, especially the evolutionary approach to overcome ADHD like symptoms.

To me, the evidence is clear and the logic straightforward. ADHD isn’t a “disorder” of the person as much as it is of the modern world and its expectations. People with ADHD are probaby part of a normal spectrum, living in an abnormal and unfortunate (for them) world. We could even say that the modern world preys on the distractible. The easier it is to grab a piece of someone’s “mindshare,” the better for those who can monetize it.

Finally, remember that the reason a spectrum of distractibility evolved is that in some situations it will be good, and in others bad. High distractibility or impulsivity isn’t bad in general, just in specific circumstances. The way the environment has changed since hunter-gatherers roamed the earth has been in the direction of rewarding those who have lower distractibility and less impulsivity. But each of us has the power to shape our environment to some extent. For example, travel, socializing in big groups, and certain kinds of jobs might all benefit from higher distractibility and more impulsivity. These traits will obviously interact with other dimensions of personality, e.g. introversion/extroversion, but by themselves will thrive in some situations as they detract in others.

There is no doubt, though, that people vary in the dimensions that ADHD tries to measure. So what’s a person to do who is (relatively) highly distractible, inattentive, hyperactive, and/or impulsive?

The evolutionary approach is typically much more straightforward, practical, and realistic than alternatives. Instead of assuming that there is something wrong with the person, it locates the problem between the person and their environment. And it locates the solution there, too. Here are a few solutions that seem like easy pickings to me:

Develop a healthy lifestyle:

• Exercise (especially in natural settings)
• Sleep more or less, depending
• Watch diet (sugar and caffeine in particular)
• Meditate (one of the easier ways to reacquaint yourself with slow thinking)9

Reduce or eliminate routine distractions:

• no phones in schools; fewer notifications on phone; keep phone silent and hidden if you can; delete time-consuming apps
• close out of email, or pause it, for meaningful chunks of time at work
• make anything analog that you can (print out recipes, read physical books)

Create focus:

• lean into structure and routine (read every day during the same block of time, make the same lunch throughout the week)
• prioritize long-form activities (walk with a friend, clean entire apartment)

Lower expectations:

• do less
• be OK with doing less

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2025-09-04

You're Not Interviewing for the Job. You're Auditioning for the Job Title

You're Not Interviewing for the Job. You're Auditioning for the Job Title

I once read that "a complex system usually reflects an absence of good design." It's brilliant. True. And if you're prepping for a system design interview, forget it immediately.

In real-world engineering, simplicity is king. In interviews, complexity is currency.

Job interviews aren't assessments. They're auditions for a job title: The Architect Who Solves Hard Problems™.

You're not being evaluated on whether you can build the described system efficiently. You're being evaluated on whether you can perform the role of someone who could theoretically build Google.

I'm not advocating dishonesty, I'm acknowledging reality. Interviews are a ritual, and rituals have rules. Here's how to navigate them:

Separate Performance from Practice: Playing the interview game doesn't make you a hypocrite. It makes you pragmatic about a broken system. You can excel at interview theater while still being a principled engineer once you're hired.

Learn the Sacred Texts: Study distributed systems patterns even if you'll never use them. Memorize the CAP theorem even if it's mostly irrelevant to your daily work. Practice drawing architecture diagrams that look impressive on whiteboards. Think of it as learning a foreign language you'll only speak during interviews.

Embrace the Tropes: Always start discussions with "At scale, we'd need to consider..." Mention monitoring and observability early and often, even for simple systems. Add redundancy everywhere, even for non-critical components. Use the magic words that signal competence in interview-land.

Then Drop the Act: Once hired, advocate ruthlessly for simplicity. Be the voice of reason who asks "Do we actually need this complexity?" Use your hard-earned credibility to push back against unnecessary over-engineering. This is where the real engineering work begins.

The “Selvedge” of Knitwear

What is Loopwheeled Cotton? All About Loopwheel Goods #selvedge #cotton

The AI Jobs Crisis - Translator Edition

AI Killed My Job: Translators - by Brian Merchant #ai #jobs #automation

To wit: After I put out the call for AI Killed My Job stories, I heard from a lot of translators, interpreters, and video game localizers (essentially translators for in-game text, design and dialogue). Of all the groups I heard from, translators had some of the most harrowing, and saddest, stories to share. Their accounts were quite different from those described by tech workers, who were more likely to lament managements’ overuse of AI, a surfeit of dubious code in digital infrastructure, hasty layoffs, or the prospect of early retirement.

In an interesting—and rather telling—wrinkle to the AI boom story, many translators noted that generative AI didn’t usher in any revolutionary improvement to already-existing technologies that have been used to automate translation for years. Long before AI became the toast of Silicon Valley, corporate clients had been pushing lower-paying machine translation post-editing (MTPE) jobs1, or editing the output of AI translation systems, though many translators refused to take them. Others said Google Translate had long been able to essentially what ChatGPT does now.

Yet many describe a dramatic disruption in wages and working conditions over the last two years, coinciding with the rise of OpenAI. Though my sample size is small, these stories fit my thesis that the real AI jobs crisis is that the drumbeat, marketing, and pop culture of "powerful AI” encourages and permits management to replace or degrade jobs they might not otherwise have. More important than the technological change, perhaps, is the change in a social permission structure.

Not one but two accounts detail how many translators dismissed ChatGPT at first, because they’ve heard companies tout many automation technologies over the years, all with limited impact—only to see the floor drop out now. And it’s not that ChatGPT is light years better than previous systems (lots of post-AI translation editing is still required), it’s just that businesses have been hearing months of hype and pontification about the arrival of AGI and mass automation, which has created the cover necessary to justify slashing rates and accepting “good enough” automation output for video games and media products. Everyone else is doing it, after all.

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