Katherine Argent

Search is full of ads and wrong answers. Every other email is an ad. Prime Video charges you and shows ads. Paramount? Ads. Peacock? YouTube? Hulu? Ads followed by more ads. Netflix full of ads. Meta and X, every other thing is an ad. Pinterest is nothing but ads. AI is in everything. AI finishes sentences incorrectly and won’t stop. AI reads your email and search history to target you with more ads. Every time you open an app or visit a site there’s an update making it worse. In a hurry? First, click here to agree to terms you don’t have time to read and must accept. You need an account to do that. Change your temporary password. Enter your 2FA code. Check your email and enter that code. Now use a passkey. Your password is too simple to remember. Change it. No, not like that. Now log on. Enter your 2FA code. Check your email for a code… Welcome back! We’ve updated our terms of service and privacy policy (you have none). Subscribe to the site. Subscribe to Netflix. Subscribe to toilet paper. Subscribe to these groceries. Pay a membership fee for the right to subscribe then tip your driver who delivers the subscriptions your membership lets you subscribe to. Time to work? We’ve got to update your laptop and will slow down everything you do until you agree to update. But first, click here to agree. Update installed — your laptop’s broken now. It doesn’t matter, since your boss just replaced you with AI. Go to your phone to complain on social media. Wait, your phone needs an update so we can add more AI. Click here. Oh sorry, your phone can’t handle this update. Now it’s useless. Go get the newest phone. Here’s a text from a friend, an email, a voice mail they left three days ago but you didn’t see until now because of sync problems with the cloud. It’s their GoFundMe. Their MLM. Their Patreon. Never mind, you didn’t respond to their text within 9 minutes and now you’re no longer friends. They blocked you. Make new friends. Download this app to find people in your area. In your neighborhood. On your street. Two doors down from you. Do you know this person yet, we think you’d get along. You need an account to use this app. That username is taken. Enter a password. Not that one, you used it on another site. You need to be connected to WiFi to download the app. Allow the app to connect to other devices on your network. Allow the app to access your contacts, know your precise location, store your credit card details. Oops, sorry, we got hacked now all that info is available on the web. There’s a class action suit. You can join. It’ll take a decade to get your $3.73 share of the ten billion settlement. We’ll send it via PayPal or deposit it to your bank, just tell us those details. Oh no, another hack. That info is circulating now, too. Here’s a spam call, a spam email, a spam text. Why are you angry? Why are you talking about getting rid of your phone? Why don’t you like AI, it lets us make all of this easier? Do you know how ridiculous that sounds? This is progress. You’ll be left behind. Do you want to be left behind? Do you???

@EricPatrickMarr @Apple Have you updated to the new Pages?

Seriously, @Apple. I’m gonna keep banging away at this. Pages absolutely sets my MacBook Pro M3 Max almost on fire. It gets crazy hot, and fast… and can’t be right.

@TBQuarterly Identify the topics that get the most likes and reshares. Do more like that. Every time you deviate away from that leads to unfollows, blocks and mutes. Then you have to fight harder to get engagement back.

I got to make the algorithm love me over here again. What do you have to do? Get naked? Start a fight? Open up about my daddy issues like this is my personal diary? I have a book coming out

NO.

@Playerinthgame - you’re right to push back

Contribute your least favorite to this list of chatbot tells that have taken the place of the em dash: - in a hoodie - dressed up as - quiet / quietly - it's not X; it's Y - this is where it gets interesting - just vibes - sits at the intersection of

@BrendaRoel36624 I’ve been reading about the heat wave there. It sounds miserable! I hope things cool off for you soon.

@effthealgorithm Jazeker, maarja, het is hier vandaag bloedheet, dus kan toch niet slapen.🥵

I have never in my life experienced something like the Oranje tide that has taken over Kansas City today. This is the joy and the togetherness the world has so desperately needed of late. Dank je wel, Oranje Legioen!

@BrendaRoel36624 I hope the rain cooperates. That’s very late for you to stay up!

@effthealgorithm Geweldig. Ik joop dat de wedstrijd op tijd begint. Het is bij ons in Nederland dan 1 uur in de nacht.

@taylorhemness Now don’t you regret not wearing that dayglo orange polo this morning, Taylor?

@visitop @jonathandveal83 Thanks!

@effthealgorithm @jonathandveal83 Tap Ins at The Greenhouse in OP!

World Cup 2026 day 16: The long awaited pilgrimage from Boston to Joe’s BBQ. It did not disappoint. Worth the hour wait after a bus of Netherlands fans turned up. Finished a long travel day with a round of mini golf. Love Kansas City.

For some reason, I find myself thinking today of the demands that Nero, in his descent into madness, made on Seneca.

Queridos escritores y escritoras, tenemos necesidad de vosotros, de vuestra imaginación, de vuestra creatividad narrativa, de vuestro pensamiento vivaz. Necesitamos todo ello para crear espacios de libertad y autenticidad en los que la gracia divina pueda hacer resonar la promesa de consuelo y paz. vatican.va/content/leo-xi…

Also, because mine is ultimately a literary-oriented account, I should point out that Kurt Vonnegut had to hand-illustrate an asshole because his publisher would not include a photo and damned if Anthropic didn’t rip that off, too.

@NewYorker Do we get to stand in line to bitch slap @jaketapper now?

A new book by the Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan provides a vivid, rigorous, and unavoidably depressing chronicle of the first year of Donald Trump’s second term in the White House. “Regime Change” is packed with news that will stay news, David Remnick writes. It is particularly strong on the Administration’s colossal financial corruption, its heedless destruction of invaluable agencies such as U.S.A.I.D., and the sordid and unhinged nature of Trump and the culture over which he presides. Haberman and Swan contend that Trump ran in 2024 for one reason above all: “This was about staying out of prison.” Read Remnick on their “exceptional” book: newyorkermag.visitlink.me/zMeXnh

@Playerinthgame Can’t argue with the numbers. 🤷🏻‍♀️

@effthealgorithm What can we do? It’s the free market.

The market has spoken.

@Playerinthgame The data says users want something else.

That’s what they say, right? Just wasn’t meant to be.

Listen, you hold onto that. Take it slow, but hold on. Because life doesn't give you too many people who know how to make you feel good about yourself. When you find them, and when there aren't strings or an agenda, thank the skies then hold tight. Best wishes for you, Travis. Enjoy.

@juscarts She makes me feel good about myself, Justin. That’s worth more than a few bucks off a honey chipotle chicken sandwich.

Stupidly in love with Chili’s girl. Not sure what that all means rn but it’s a nice way to feel.

These are how all juice glasses must've looked to our proto-Silicon Valley parents in the late 70s on the Sunday morning after hosting their first swingers' party when they realized that deciding to stay home and sleep late invited more questions than showing up in church red-eyed and reeking of Marlboros with the family and praying to God they didn't hurl the communion wafer before they got back to the station wagon.

So, they studied the ‘08 playbook on “too big to fail” then crammmed AI into everything whether we wanted it or not, convinced the control junkies in Washington this was their fix for permanent power, and told struggling businesses “adopt or die.” But now they’re realizing people don’t want this crap. That we aren’t paying premiums for it. That maybe they shouldn’t have built their business model on theft and putting us all out of work. That we will cancel services rather than put up with it or pay them. Now they want bailouts. Fuck ‘em.