workweek reading recs (18 August 2025)

[matsushima]

I was curating this and it turned into the "AI is bullshit" special edition because that's what I've been reading a lot about lately. So I broke it into two: the "AI is bullshit" special edition and everything else. I tried to focus on fun reads for "everything else" because the AI section was such a bummer.

Everything Else

• Thank You for Finding Me (2025/07)
• At the Six Bells Inn, Audrey Gelman Made the Dollhouse of Her Millennial Dreams (2025/08)
• How America Got Its Baby Back, Baby Back, Baby Back (2025/08)
• Another Rave Review (2025/08)
• Day 1,509 in the Big Brother House (2025/01)
• How Wile E. Coyote Explains The World (2025/01)
• From the archives: My Three Fathers (2020/09)
• How the sandwich consumed Britain (2017/11)
• There Once Was a Dildo in Nantucket (2015/10)
• Podcast/Multimedia: The Human Experiment: The Jen Saga (2021-2023)
  If you remember the "FFVII House" and the "Sarah Saga," this will answer some questions you've probably had since ~2008. If you don't know what I'm talking about: congratulations on not wasting your misspent youth on internet drama.
• I Want It to Go to a Good Home: Animism in Western relationships with personal possessions (2019)

AI Is Bullshit

• Academic: ChatGPT is bullshit (2024)
  Curator's note: Yes, that's the actual title of this academic paper.
• We need to stop pretending AI is intelligent – here's how (2025/04)
• The hidden labor that makes AI work (2025/07)
• ‘The Worst Internet-Research Ethics Violation I Have Ever Seen’ (2025/05)
• Meta’s AI rules have let bots hold ‘sensual’ chats with kids, offer false medical info (2025/08)
• Meta mocked for raising “Bob Dylan defense” of torrenting in AI copyright fight (2025/03)
  Curator's note: Please leave the good Mr. Zimmerman out of this.
• ChatGPT Goes to Church (2024/06)
• Podcast: American Hysteria: The Imaginary Gods of ChatGPT (2025/07)
• Podcast: Better Offline: Make Fun of Them, Pt 1/ Better Offline: Make Fun of them, Pt 2 (2025/11)

I don't think I am a draconian mod and I probably won't delete any article shares that are pro-AI unless they contain egregious misinformation or disinformation - in which case, I will provide documentation. [I will delete any posts with dis- or mis- information on any subject, BTW. I will also delete any posts that promote hateful (racist, transphobic, sexist, homophobic, antisemitic, Islamophobic, etc) worldviews.]
That said, don't #$^&!ing argue with me about this in the comments of this post. I'm not in the mood for it today and I won't be in the mood for it tomorrow.

This week's nonprofit/fundraiser is Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Comments

[zana16]

The ChatGPT Goes to Church article is very interesting to me!