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This episode, we chat with feminist journalist Lyz Lenz about the agony of dating apps – their deceptive mechanics, the illusion of choice, their impact on gender inequity, and why the f*ck Trevor from Iowa thinks he can do better?? In Falcon Mode, we discuss app options for supporting older friends and family members as they navigate increasingly sophisticated scams. 

Check out Lyz’s…

Books: This American Ex-Wife, Belabored, and God Land

Newsletter: Men Yell at Me

Podcast: Dingus of the Week

We’d love to hear from you. Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram and TikTok (reluctantly).

We chat with author Justin Feinstein about his new novel, Your Behavior Will Be Monitored, about how weird it is to accidentally predict the future, and the role science fiction plays in defining our expectations of AI. In Falcon Mode, we investigate the surprisingly predatory world of teleprompter apps.

Links:

justinfeinstein.com or Justin’s instagram

Your Behavior Will Be Monitored

Flesh and Code podcast

Hank Green’s video – Josh can you add the link for this

Justin’s interview with Claude

Akinator, the mind-reading genie game

We’d love to hear from you. Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram and TikTok (reluctantly).

We chat with author Kate Crow about the economics and illusions of the self-publishing industry, how Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program has changed both traditional publishing and book culture, and which art form is the polar opposite of AI slop. In Falcon Mode, we tell you how to avoid paying for subscriptions when you inevitably forget to cancel during the free trial period.

Links:

Til Death Do We Start on Amazon or Bookshop.org

Kate Crow on Instagram and TikTok

Kate’s website

That terrible Fortune article Josh mentioned

Draft2Digital

Kobo

We’d love to hear from you. Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram and TikTok (reluctantly).

We chat with Jeremy Carrasco (@jeremyfindsai) about the most common uses of AI-generated video, what to make of the US-Iran meme war, and why beloved intellectual property can only be what it is when it’s created by humans. In Falcon Mode, we chat about the new DualShot Recorder iPhone app, made by @derrickdowneyjr to solve his own frustrating problem. 

Links:

@jeremyfindsai on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube

Jeremy’s publication, riddance.ai 

404 Media articles on the US-Iran slopaganda war and where Facebook’s AI slop comes from

We’d love to hear from you. Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram and TikTok (reluctantly).

We chat with Meta whistleblower Kelly Stonelake about Meta’s toxic culture being encoded into their products, how much they’re willing to exploit kids for profit at any cost, and what meaningful social media regulation might look like – especially after the landmark trials Meta lost in the days before we recorded this episode. In Falcon Mode, we chat about tools to help gig workers discover which delivery app is the least punishing to them.

Links:

Kelly’s Substack, Overturned

Kelly’s website, kellystonelake.com 

Kelly’s documentation

We’d love to hear from you. Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram and TikTok (reluctantly).

We chat about “human fracking,” how little we actually know about human attention, and the growing Attention Liberation Movement – a radical idea of agency that you’re probably already practicing! In Falcon Mode, we discuss platforms to strengthen renters’ rights.

All the books we’ve mentioned in this episode:

Attensity! by the Friends of Attention

Mutual Aid by Dean Spade

How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell

The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein

Vulture Capitalism by Grace Blakely

The Twilight of Democracy by Anne Applebaum

We’d love to hear from you. Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram and TikTok (reluctantly).

We chat about the explosive rise of sports betting, the underlying tech that makes it especially insidious, and how relentlessly gambling products are marketed to young men. In Falcon Mode, we give flowers to a hobbyist developer who solved the problem of creeps with smart glasses.

Links:

VICE Sports’ Out of Bounds, “The Sports Betting Boom”

r/problemgambling keeps an incredible wiki of recovery resources (that aren’t funded by the gambling companies).

We’d love to hear from you. Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram and TikTok (reluctantly).

We chat with Natalie Ponte from Libro.fm about generative AI abolitionism, the cult of early big tech, and why book people are so obsessed with Libro.fm, the audiobook platform that supports independent bookstores. In Falcon Mode, we chat about a crowdsourcing tool where people vote on whether or not something includes AI-generated content.

Links:

Libro.fm 

Natalie’s LinkedIn

NYT article about woman who “wrote” 200 romance novels using generative AI

Is This AI? subreddit 

Voice narration studio’s example of professional narration vs. AI (at about the 40% scroll mark)

We’d love to hear from you. Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram and TikTok (reluctantly).

We chat with recruitment fraud expert Jay Jones about scam jobs, the grift of hustle posting, and how LinkedIn profits from unemployment. In Falcon Mode, an app Ariel has imagined for over a decade is finally brought to life.

Links:

TheProfiler.org and JonesDoYouCopy.com

NeighborCats - on iPhone, on Android

We’d love to hear from you. Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram and TikTok (reluctantly).

We chat with AI strategist Allen Martinez about constitutional AI, the cost of multiple AIs conflicting with one another, and how operators tasked with implementing AI can do it without making their product worse. In Falcon Mode, we have another “give me Google but make it actually work” – this time for city cyclists frustrated with Google Maps.

Links:

Noble Digital, Allen’s personal site, and his book, The Brand Experience AI Operating System

From our news segment - 404 Media’s coverage of Palantir’s tech powering ICE

We’d love to hear from you. Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram and TikTok (reluctantly).