The age of vapor

This week on my podcast, audio from Sunday’s launch in Menlo Park for The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI at Kepler’s Books with Angie Coiro. Catch me next tonight in Toronto at Osler Records, tomorrow in NYC with Jonathan Coulton at The Strand, Thursday in Philly with David Williams and Friday in Chicago... <a href="https://craphound.com/news/2026/06/23/the-reverse-centaurs-guide-to-life-after-ai-launch-at-keplers-books-with-angie-coiro/" class="more-link" title="Read The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI launch at Kepler’s Books with Angie Coiro">more <i class="fa fa-chevron-right"></i></a>

This week on my podcast, I read a recent post from my Pluralistic newsletter, “The World Has Moved On,” which analogizes Stephen King’s Dark Tower series to the Enshittification hypothesis. In the Dark Tower novels, we crisscross a fallen world in which decay is all around us. The buildings are rotten, the machines have stopped... <a href="https://craphound.com/news/2026/06/14/the-world-has-moved-on/" class="more-link" title="Read The world has moved on">more <i class="fa fa-chevron-right"></i></a>

This week on my podcast, I read my latest Locus Magazine column, “The Age of Vapor,” about the role science fiction imaginaires plays in fueling high-tech investment bubbles. It’s one thing to make everything about imaginary technology when you’re writing SF. The point of those imaginative exercises is to illumi­nate: To provoke reflection on our... <a href="https://craphound.com/news/2026/06/07/the-age-of-vapor/" class="more-link" title="Read The age of vapor">more <i class="fa fa-chevron-right"></i></a>

This week on my podcast, I read AI and a world without migrants, a recent essay from my Pluralistic blog, which psychoanalyzes the sociopathic fantasies that are driving the AI investment bubble. I don’t care who you are, there will always be times when hell is other people. Not because other people are horrible –... <a href="https://craphound.com/news/2026/05/31/ai-and-a-world-without-migrants/" class="more-link" title="Read AI and a world without migrants">more <i class="fa fa-chevron-right"></i></a>

This week on my podcast, I present an hour-long excerpt from the audiobook for The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI, which is currently on pre-order through my latest Kickstarter campaign: A short, provocative guide to what’s good, bad, and stupid about AI and the discourse around AI, by the author of Enshittification. In... <a href="https://craphound.com/podcast/2026/05/17/the-reverse-centaurs-guide-to-life-after-ai/" class="more-link" title="Read The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI">more <i class="fa fa-chevron-right"></i></a>

This week on my podcast, I read Comrade Trump, a recent column from my Pluralistic newsletter, which will be syndicated in The Nerve. All of which means that my experience of the Trump years is decidedly weird. On the one hand, I exist in a near-perpetual state of anxious misery, as Trump and his chud... <a href="https://craphound.com/news/2026/05/03/comrade-trump/" class="more-link" title="Read Comrade Trump">more <i class="fa fa-chevron-right"></i></a>

This week on my podcast, I read Not Normal, my latest Locus Magazine column, about the surreal and terrible world we’ve been eased into thanks to anti-circumvention laws. If you were paying attention in 1998, you could see what was coming. Computers were getting much cheaper, and much smaller. From cars to toast­ers, from speakers... <a href="https://craphound.com/news/2026/04/05/not-normal/" class="more-link" title="Read Not Normal">more <i class="fa fa-chevron-right"></i></a>

This week on my podcast, I read All laws are local a recent post from my Pluralistic.net blog, about the ephemerality of our seeming eternal verities. In other words, things that seem eternal and innate to the human condition to you are apt to have been invented ten minutes before you started to notice the... <a href="https://craphound.com/news/2026/02/08/all-laws-are-local/" class="more-link" title="Read All laws are local">more <i class="fa fa-chevron-right"></i></a>

This week on my podcast, I read “Threads’ margin is the Eurostack’s opportunity,” a recent post from my Pluralistic.net blog, about the tactics that digital sovereignty advocates can deploy to counter Meta’s (further) enshittification of Threads. The funny thing is, the OG App creators were just following the Facebook playbook. When Facebook opened up to... <a href="https://craphound.com/news/2026/02/01/threads-margin-is-the-eurostacks-opportunity/" class="more-link" title="Read Threads’ margin is the Eurostack’s opportunity">more <i class="fa fa-chevron-right"></i></a>

This week on my podcast, I read “Code is a liability (not an asset),” a recent post from my Pluralistic.net blog, about the bad ideas behind the drive to replace programmers with chatbots. Code is a liability. Code’s capabilities are assets. The goal of a tech shop is to have code whose capabilities generate more... <a href="https://craphound.com/news/2026/01/19/code-is-a-liability-not-an-asset/" class="more-link" title="Read Code is a liability (not an asset)">more <i class="fa fa-chevron-right"></i></a>