tinfoil bonnet

the revolution will not be fed to chatbots

It wasn’t that long ago that we regarded search engines as essentially magical. At any given moment, you had a smorgasbord of answers to any question you could possibly have, sitting right in your pocket.

Last week, I saw this reel on the Wired instagram asking speakers at a conference when was the last time they used AI:

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All of them answered sometime within the last day or so, but an alarming number of adults admitted they used ChatGPT or Claude to answer questions about their children’s health. Yesterday I saw another social media post calling it “privileged” to tell people to stop using TikTok to get their news and information about the political climate. The vibes in 2026 have gotten extremely weird.

I need to know — what happened to panic-Googling the way your foremothers did? What happened to the ancestral tradition of stumbling upon a “natural moms” message board, which was really an alt-right pipeline, and then just saying fuck it and calling the doctor?

The thing that felt so promising about Web 1.0 is that it was easy enough to view a few page descriptions and decide which link you were going to click. Importantly, you typed your question or topic into a search box and you were immediately presented with multiple solutions or perspectives, and you could decide which one you were going to trust based on source, relevance, etc.

Yes, Google enshittified the results for ads, and yes, the internet still had tons of bad information on it, and yes, SEO ruined everything, but the critical thinking and discernment muscles were still mostly being exercised when you had to look at a page full of links. Now with AI and social media, we’re just mainlining fatal advice.

I have my own qualms about using AI for research on anything — given that AI hallucinations are well-documented, I religiously believe that anything it writes needs to be fact-checked before using the advice or publishing it anywhere, so asking a chatbot is just adding unnecessary steps to using a search engine.

But the other, more philosophical and intellectual danger here is trusting a single source — one that’s packaged by a platform that is owned by a private entity that has its own commercial interests.

Every LLM and social media platform and search engine we use has guidelines for what is allowed to be presented to users. Yeah, sometimes it’s for our own safety and ensures that our feeds aren’t overrun by snuff films or CSAM (even then, Grok doesn’t seem bound by the same rules). But this also means these platforms have potential for propagandizing and censorship, if not being used explicitly for that purpose already.

Case in point: Bisan Owda’s TikTok account was permanently banned within a week of the US takeover of the platform. These platforms are not reliable places to get news or information on their own.

And given that we’re not just passive users on these platforms — we give them data on our location, what we’re searching, what we click on, and who we interact with, every time we use them — these platforms have literally been selling all of that data to advertisers, corporations, and three letter government organizations.

I am still very much anti-Google and don’t recommend ever going back. But we do need to find alternatives to go back to the old ways of the internet, using better search engines and decentralized ways of sharing (remember personal websites and blogs?).

And in terms of using social media for activism and political awareness, I’m sorry to say this as someone who has been terminally online for over twenty years now, but we also just need to go outside and touch grass and meet people in our communities doing work we can get involved in.

Using social media to be aware of what is happening in our communities and to find calls to action is great, but it’s not the same as action. And for your own mental health, constantly scrolling to see five different angles of someone being murdered by ICE isn’t actually activism. Going outside and buying an unhoused person some decent weed is probably doing more for your community than watching an endless scroll of bad internet leftist takes.

Continuing to use billionaire-backed platforms to livestream protests is likely actively putting ourselves and others in danger, and we actually need to find other ways to get and share information. It is not shaming social media users to say so. When we write about this stuff, we’re only trying to encourage you to find other, safer ways of using the internet, and trying to make it easy for you to find alternatives.

I know my stint working at the library was short, but it reawakened a passion for reading that had been dormant for months. I spent December running the numbers up after not having finished a single book since January of 2025, and I managed to get eight books read in a matter of weeks. I’ve already surpassed that number in the past three weeks alone. It was an extremely welcome alternative to doomscrolling over the holiday season.

Reading is really one of the last things available to Americans that:

1. Can be done for free.

2. Does not force you to view ads.

3. Is socially acceptable to do in public spaces for hours.

4. Is private and protected (seriously, you think librarians are square but they are on the front lines protecting our privacy and right to read, punk as fuck).

I know a lot of us vocally support the ethos of the public library and having a public library and want to encourage more library use, but having been here for a few months and being trained on my own local library’s ins and outs, I think a lot of people are still pretty unaware of exactly how much they can support and use the library without ever having to go into the library building or being much of a reader.

digital stuff

Most library-aware people know their library offers some kind of access to ebooks and audiobooks through apps like Libby, CloudLibrary, Hoopla, and Palace Project. (Nota bene: To my knowledge, only Libby books can be accessed through Kindle. If you’re in the market for a reader and are not sure what your library uses, I’d sooner recommend an iPad or your phone rather than investing in a Kindle. See me for further e-ink recommendations though.)

One thing I love to do because I am a kindergartener in a 40 year old body is borrow a physical book from the library, then borrow the audiobook from one of the apps and do a little immersive reading experience. Best done on older books without a huge wait list.

And libraries offer access to a bunch of other things too! Here are a couple of apps I’ve seen offered by libraries across California and the East Coast, and can usually be found through your library’s Digital Collection or eLibrary heading:

Kanopy – Yes, your library has DVDs, but if you don’t have a DVD player anymore, you can stream a bunch of movies through Kanopy. Recent movies you’ve heard of too, not just classics.

Rosetta Stone or Mango Languages – Learn a new language, or a few of them.

Udemy – Lots of training and tutorials online to help you pick up a new skill.

Proquest – I’ve only seen this available through LA Public Library, but this search gives you access to tons of news articles and journals to support your research. Very helpful if you’re not currently a student or educator and are researching/writing for funsies or outside your real job.

non-resident? non-problem!

If you’re between the ages of 13-21 (or 26) and don’t have access to a library or your resident library has been targeted by book bans, the Books Unbanned program offers access to banned books and digital collections for certain libraries across the country.

Additionally, some states have programs for digital media access to all state residents. In California, it’s called California’s Bookshelf. Check if your state has a similar program.

non-digital stuff

Beyond physical and digital media, libraries offer tons of other great stuff that you may not have known about.

Passes to museums and state parks – My library offers parking passes to any state park for about two weeks, which many patrons use for camping. Library systems in bigger metropolitan areas also usually offer passes to museums for free or reduced rates.

Wi-fi hotspots – Many libraries also offer checkout of wi-fi hotspots for at least a few days (if not weeks) at a time, in case you do not have internet access at home, or need internet access outside of the library.

Seed libraries – Some libraries offer seed packets for beginning gardeners, and might be part of larger sustainability projects. Meaning these seeds are probably provided by local companies and are native to your region and will help pollination.

Library of things – You’ll have to check in with your local library to see what they offer, but lots of libraries offer access to just random stuff. My library has hiking backpacks (?! I guess we have a lot of hikers). Larger library systems around me have maker spaces, or at least some access to 3D printers and cutting machines. The LA Public Library has a pretty legendary maker space dedicated to Octavia Butler that has access to 3D printers, cutting machines, sewing machines, and even music and film production equipment. The LA County Library (different system) offers power tools and musical instruments. The Hartford Public Library also has a pretty wide range of stuff in their Library of Things including tarot decks, air fryers, and knitting kits, and that’s all the way in the tiny state of Connecticut, so it’s worth a search in case libraries in your state have similar things for checkout.

Other community resources – As someone who has been recently unemployed, I know that trying to figure out what resources are available to you is confusing and scary (and often intentionally so). The library, or at least the library website, is a great place to start. Many libraries have programs specifically for veterans, immigrants, decarcerated individuals, unhoused people, seniors, or adults with disabilities. But if you don’t fall into any of those categories, they still offer information on regular degular services like legal help, starting a business, food pantries, emergency preparedness, and health referrals. The websites usually have some good information on what is offered and when it is offered, but I know our library also keeps a bunch of flyers on a wall by the door for easy access.

support your library

Again, I know it’s cool and great to perform support for libraries on social media and among your friends, and I promise I don’t mean that in a bad way. We love the free publicity. But it’s really important to also keep the numbers up to continue funding and actual support for the library. And again, it’s easy and completely free to do.

Get a library card. Lots of libraries will let you apply online, or at least start the process (after which you’d just need to show up to the library at some point to verify your address).

Take out materials. I’ve already listed loads of ways to use your library card online without having to go to a physical location, which definitely counts, but if you’re more of a physical book reader, you should know that lots of libraries have gotten rid of overdue fines and will automatically renew books for you if they’re not waitlisted. As long as you don’t outright lose or damage books regularly, you’re in the clear, so don’t let the anxiety of a late return stop you from checking out books.

Tell your friends and family! Seriously, get library cards for your kids. Drag your partner and parents and cousins. Make your next friend date at the library. You can plug in your laptop or phone for free and sit there for hours and chat (at a hushed volume that is not disruptive to other patrons — or hell, just go outside, they usually have gardens to hang out in).

I start a new job in a couple of weeks, and this will hopefully be the last unemployment update for a while.

In total, I applied to 54 jobs over the course of two months. Of those, I got phone screens with six recruiters. Four went to the next round, and two progressed all the way to employment if we are including my part time job at the library.

My parameters:

• I never did the “I’m looking for a new role!” post or turned on the OpenToWork banner on LinkedIn.

• I did not apply to jobs that had anything to do with AI or defense.

• If a job required me to record a video of myself or an AI interview, I did not respond.

I haven’t written much about my actual career on here, but after working remotely since 2010, the job I landed is five days a week in the office. It’s also outside of the tech industry, in a sector that’s at least a little less unethical, and therefore I’m taking a pay cut. I also have to quit my job at the library if I have any hope of seeing my family. None of this is ideal, but I felt a lot of pressure to take what I could get.

All things considered, my ratios aren’t terrible compared to the folks I’ve seen posting about unemployment on LinkedIn. There are lots of posts on my feed right now from people who have been unemployed for over six months, who have applied to hundreds of jobs. Nothing is ideal.

a couple of things about the state of the market

First, I’m convinced all “remote” job postings are fake, or worse, data harvesting operations. I should have known this, as even the company I was just laid off from stopped hiring for fully remote positions over a year ago.

Second, LinkedIn has never really been useful to me as more than a job board, but right now it is in a hilarious spot as a social media network. My feed is full of posts I could not imagine divulging in an actual professional setting. Mostly other unemployed people giving TMI about their job searches, fielding sketchy advice from other equally unemployed people. But also a lot of recruiters complaining about candidates (don’t work for those companies), or talking about how the hiring process is broken, which makes me think LinkedIn is just a bunch of recruiters and robots talking to each other.

Third, everyone is hurting. Not a single layoff-proof job exists in 2026, and probably never will again as long as our society values capital over people. Working conditions for everyone in every sector are terrible and unilaterally getting worse.

All that is to say that most career and job hunting advice is bad and unhelpful. Landing a job is mostly luck and locality, and there’s not much else to get around broken hiring methods, broken hiring managers, and broken companies. If you’re unemployed for a very long time, it’s not you — it’s literally everything.

the future of work

Most companies don’t care about the quality of their products anymore, as they have no incentive to care (for more on this, I highly recommend reading Enshittification by Cory Doctorow). The robots will eventually eat up my job, and likely will eat up the jobs of all other information workers as well. When there’s no value placed on quality or accuracy, it’ll just be easier for the CEOs not to care.

The average age of new hires in 2025 was 42 — literally my age. I have a masters degree and over 15 years of experience in my field, with my last two positions at the Staff level, and I had a recruiter tell me last month that their hiring manager didn’t think I was experienced enough for their Staff-level position. The ideas I was raised with around career — about putting time in and getting ahead — don’t exist anymore.

I’m starting to hate the term “pivot” but I’m facing the reality that I’m going to have to find something else to do if I intend to be alive past the age of 50. I can’t even advise my kids, who will soon be off to college. I don’t say this out of fear or nihilism, but out of absurdism.

Nothing works the way our parents told us it would. So maybe we need to throw out all those rules and start something new.

I’m at an age where I don’t really do New Years Resolutions anymore, and even if I did want to make life changes, I wouldn’t be using the Gregorian calendar to tell me when I should. But over the past few months and especially during this period of funemployment, I’ve been making yet another attempt at trying to get off of my phone.

No matter how I tune my social media algorithm, the feeds always seem to give me an endless barrage of bad news mixed with an endless barrage of ads. Every streaming service is funding genocide, and the Oracle/TikTok deal (wherein TikTok goes away for users in the US and Oracle assumes control of both the algorithm and user data) closes on January 22nd. My phone feels like a bad place, but I don’t feel like I can go nuclear on modern tech and downgrade to a dumb phone and several separate devices.

I know many of my friends are feeling the same way, and we’re all getting ads for things like Brick, Bloom, and Pausebox — pricey physical NFC devices that block and unblock certain apps, adding some friction to accessing Instagram, games, or other distracting goodies on your phone. They range in price from $20 to $60, but on iOS you can create this system for closer to free.

Disclaimer: The best and most obvious option is always to just delete your accounts on social media platforms and remove them from your devices entirely so they’re not continuing to make money by tracking you, but IG is the only way I can keep in touch with my five friends (by which I mean sending each other memes every few days to say “I love you and am thinking of you”), so I’m not ready to let go just yet.

There are tons of focus apps available, but the one I’ve found to have the best level of flexibility on iOS is a free app called Foqos, namely because you can set it up in a few different ways:

1. Block and unblock with the same NFC tag or QR code of your choosing, thereby behaving just like the aforementioned Brick/Bloom/Pausebox devices

2. Block manually with a widget, and unblock with ANY NFC tag

3. Block manually with a widget, and unblock with ANY QR code

4. Plus the same manual/automated (scheduled) ways every other focus app works

Additionally, there’s flexibility in blocking, allowing you to block only certain apps or websites, or really going back to the 90’s and turning your phone into a dumb phone.

NFC stickers, tags, or cards are readily available online and be placed strategically in inconvenient places to force you to be more mindful about unblocking distracting apps. Setting the app to unblock with a specific NFC tag is probably the best and most restrictive, as there will only be one key to unblock, but using any NFC tag allows you to hide other keys for emergencies.

The QR code can be set similarly — either unlocking with a specific QR code or barcode (which you can either create with a QR generation app or use an already printed one you have at home) , or unlocking with any QR code or barcode. Yes, this means you can unlock your phone with a can of beans or bottle of shampoo, so it may not be restrictive enough for people who are truly addicted and need more obstacles.

I personally went the QR code route and printed myself a bookmark so I might be redirected to a better activity instead.

Other ideas:

• Sticking the key on your mirror, forcing you to look at yourself before you unlock those apps.

• Placing a key inside your walking or running shoes or gym bag.

• Placing a key above your toilet paper (the real emergency — just don’t scroll for too long while on the toilet cause that’s how you get hemorrhoids).

• Placing a key on your dog’s leash, hopefully redirecting you to walk your dog before you reach for your phone.

It’s a worthy endeavor. All the news online will be bad anyway, so you may as well live in reality.

adventures in funemployment

I lost my job at the beginning of November. This is the second time it’s happened since 2020, and all of it is another story for another day. But about a week after my layoff, on a lark and to stave off unemployment depression, I researched how to get a job at my local library. As a thing to hold me over until I figured things out or found a “real” job, as it were. I figured I could take a break to pursue my high school Party Girl dream for a bit.

It was not a straightforward process. My local library is part of a county system that uses a third party for hiring and HR. I had to do at least a little bit of digging before I found the proper website to see if my library was even hiring. I mention all this to say that I thought I was doing this for shits and giggles, and I could’ve easily given up the pursuit like fifteen minutes in if that were really the case. I didn’t. I found the third party company for my county system, found the listing for my local branch, and applied.

And I got the job.

What you must know is that I haven’t worked outside of the home for almost as long as my kids have been alive — about fifteen years. I’ve basically always been in tech, which is its own self-selecting group of weirdos, and this has sustained us through several moves, giving me a great excuse to never leave my house and find community.

The thing is, I may be weird but I’m not socially awkward. I can be a normal human being in society and have regular degular conversations, so even though I have been yearning for years for community, I didn’t think being a shut-in was really affecting me.

Welp, I started my job at the library this week and it has been wonderful, but my god, I am too soft and sentimental for this job.

The other day I helped an older gentleman check out a bunch of DVDs to help him pass the time as he recovers from a medical procedure. And a tween came up to my workstation to check out at least a dozen books — many of which were loved by my own kids — and I watched her carefully stack them in order before putting them back in her grocery bag.

Each time I put any of the board books or picture books through the sorter, I think about how somebody just read this book to their baby. Some kid out there wanted to learn more about how to be a great soccer player. And because I live in a conservative area, my heart is filled with joy every time I come across any book on race or social justice in the book return. Like, I hate people but I also love people. People hold so much possibility and curiosity and potential for good.

As a patron, I have always known the library to be a magical place. But as a worker, I now see the library as a rare treasure that bears a heavy burden for a community. It’s not the same as a retail space or a corporate job, where every individual piece is a part of a capitalist machine.

The library is a building that houses free shit for everybody in the community, that is still somehow clean and respected (for the most part). It has books and storytime activities and computers and water fountains and power strips and copy machines, and you can literally sit there all day; and as long as you’re quiet and not making a mess or harassing others, nobody is going to bother you. There is no other place in this capitalist hellscape where that is allowed.

More than that, imagine you’re a kid being raised in a conservative household, and you’d like to learn something about Buddhism, or your period, or non-binary people, or maybe even what it’s like to live in New York City. You can literally go to the library, find a book on any one of those subjects, spend three hours reading it, and you don’t even have to check the book out or even put the book back on the shelf. You’ve learned something that will never show up in your search history that your parents will never find out about. This is why libraries are so powerful and also in so much danger.

I’ve spent fifteen years working in technologies that have benefited corporations at the expense of people, that have drained vital natural resources, and that have aided the violence of the American empire. This is the first time in my twenty years of working that my labor has contributed to something that actually matters, something that might actually be a net positive in society.

It pays almost nothing compared to my previous salary, so I’ll eventually have to find something else to supplement this, but this is the most engaged I’ve ever been at a job. It’s more physically demanding — I’m standing and walking around all day rather than sitting my ass at a desk — but I’m using far less mental resources on the cognitive dissonance of doing work that’s incongruous with my values.

It’s nice. I may be broke but at least I’m not morally bankrupt.