After a year of study and more than 10,000 comments, the US Copyright Office issued its second report on AI and copyright. This report attempts to address the question of when works created with AI tools can be copyrighted. (A third report, to be released later, will address the contentious issue of the legality of…
There is an elephant in the room today. There is no point in talking about anything else today, when all anyone can see is the elephant. Soon, people will start blaming nearly everything on the elephant, or alternatively, giving it credit for nearly everything. This is a mistake. A lot what happens next has been…
When the Soviet Union fell, a collection of individuals took control of privatized industries and began to accumulate massive wealth and political power. These individuals were called oligarchs, a term meaning a small group who together hold political power. Now liberal pundit Robert Reich is talking about American oligarchs. Do we really have powerful oligarchs…
Newsletter 77. Toxic growth, journal editors resign, business novellas, three people to follow and three books to read. Bigger’s not better, for companies or countries Companies pursue size. If Donald Trump has his way, so will the United States of America. Observe what happens when companies get bigger and there are some relevant lessons. The…
Newsletter 73. A nuanced look at simplification, the Author’s Guild’s AI rights position; a mega-agency that might forget creativity, plus three people to follow, three books to read, two podcast interviews, and a partridge in a . . . no, enough of that already! It’s complicated We crave simplicity. Boiling things down to their essence…
Newsletter 73. Change you can believe in is change you can understand, merry Christmas to booksellers, how to stump ChatGPT, plus three people to follow and three books to read. How change feels There are two kinds of change: change in what you do, and change in who you are. Both create uncertainty. But the…
Two things are true. One: that many of our most important decisions depend on data generated by the government. And two: regarding the people who produce the government data, president-elect Trump has promised that “As many as 100,000 government positions can be moved out — and I mean immediately — of Washington.” Here’s why that…
I’ve lived in Portland, Maine since 2021. I moved here from Massachusetts, where I’d lived for 42 years. In Massachusetts, it seemed like nearly everybody I knew came from somewhere else originally. Lots of people come to Massachusetts for college and then never leave (which was my story, too). If you’re from California, it’s probably…
Newsletter 69. Some post-election reflections on blame, plus three people to follow and three books to read. The people we hate Socialists Educated people Bleeding-hearts Undocumented immigrants Homeless people Poor people People on public assistance Puerto Ricans Jews Muslims Hindus Palestinians Arabs Blacks Native Americans Indians Asians Gay people Trans people Old people Young people…