Foraged Info - 2026.06.10
Questioning the AI race and the problems with America, Canada, and Genius - among others.
It has been a while – a break foreshadowed in the last post. But you know what that means, the information I’ve foraged over the past few weeks is more hodgepodge than usual.
What’s the point of the AI race anyway?
Not being a close watcher of all things AI, I found Vivian Wang’s interview on The Daily insightful. She does a great job outlining the different approaches to Chinese and American AI development - with one focused more on economic development, and the other pursuing agentic AI. Given how different their approaches are, and just how dominate AI is in the US market, one really has to wonder about the nature of this supposed race to develop it - especially considering this piece from Wired, entitled “A Dark-Money Campaign Is Paying Influencers to Frame Chinese AI as a Threat”.
I’ll take that as a slightly related cue to drop this ad dressed up as a Public Service Announcement. If you aren’t paying for the product, you are the product - but then again, with few regulations, there is no guarantee that even when you pay for something your data isn’t being used to target you.
The Problem with America
That was a loaded headline. Here are some things that stood out over the past few weeks.
Billionares
Alright, to be fair, the US isn’t alone in this - but the numbers are disproportionately in their favour. CBC’s Ideas aired an insightful, if depressing, look at the rise of billionaires and what that means for society that is worth a listen.
Declining Local Media
The American media ecosystem continues to face challenges - even Trump’s once beloved Fox. As my friend Libby pointed out “over-air broadcasters in the US depend on sports revenue to cover the “public service” obligations” that make local stations possible. So any shift by professional sports organization, like the NFL, to move towards streaming options threatens what little local news access remains.
Incoherent Foreign Policy
NPR’s It’s Been a Minute ran an excellent interview with Daniel Immerwahr about America’s history of empire building - by any other name.
And Ezra Klein and Ian Bremmer take a dive into incoherency of American foreign policy.
Speaking of Ian, there were so many links to his Puppet Regime videos in my collection, that I’m just going to give it a shout out and leave this one in here - which warms my ecology-oriented heart:
Meanwhile Up in Canadaland
If you haven’t heard, some people in the Province of Alberta want to separate. It’s a crazy notion to me, but I’m from Ontario - the main target for the grievance politics that helped get people to this point. For anyone wanting to know more, CBC’s The House did a great episode on the situation.
If only the madness ended there. We recently had a national census, which some people decided to publicly protest by refusing to participate. Their reason? They reject the legitimacy of the current government. To their mind, Members of Parliament switching parties does not a majority make. Both ideas indicate a lack of civics understanding, which maybe shouldn’t be too surprising in the midst of an education crisis. The protest only hurts themselves. Census participation informs government resource allocation. And no matter how much its hated, floor-crossing is permissible in our Westminster parliamentary model.
The Problems with Genius
Yair Rosenberg’s piece on a new Broadway play about Roald Dahl is worth a read. In it he explores how perceptions of greatness distort expectations, and excuse awfulness.
Some Politics to Get Behind
And as usual, I’ll end on a lighter note with some political views I can finally get behind: