If today was ten years ago, this article would be excellent science fiction. It’s long, and written by someone I’d like to punch in the head, but it’s gotta be read and I couldn’t stop.

Anyone who wants to debunk it, tell me it’s all wrong, I’d sure appreciate that so please do, because it reads like the end of everything.

Excerpt: This is different from every previous wave of automation, and I need you to understand why. AI isn’t replacing one specific skill. It’s a general substitute for cognitive work. It gets better at everything simultaneously. When factories automated, a displaced worker could retrain as an office worker. When the internet disrupted retail, workers moved into logistics or services. But AI doesn’t leave a convenient gap to move into. Whatever you retrain for, it’s improving at that too.

… Imagine it’s 2027. A new country appears overnight. 50 million citizens, every one smarter than any Nobel Prize winner who has ever lived. They think 10 to 100 times faster than any human. They never sleep. They can use the internet, control robots, direct experiments, and operate anything with a digital interface. What would a national security advisor say?

Excerpt: There’s this whole conversation, very active here where I live in Silicon Valley, that if A.I. is conscious, then we’re going to have to give it moral consideration. Well, really? Have we given moral consideration to one another? Have we given moral consideration to the chickens and the cattle that we eat? The answer is no. It doesn’t automatically follow. So we’re going to have to sort out the ethics.

Excerpt: Scientists don’t know why the Centennial bulb has continued to burn for so long, although it could be tied to its design. Manufactured in the late 1800s by the Shelby Electric Co. in Ohio, the 60-watt light bulb was designed by French engineer Adolphe Chaillet. According to Bramell, the lamp was made out of plastic cellulose and baked until it was almost carbon — compact and hardened like a diamond.

In 1897, engineers from Shelby and other companies ran endurance tests, leaving light bulbs running continuously in a room. By the end of the test, all the lights had fizzled except one: the Shelby. Chaillet later promoted his invention saying it was more efficient and longer lasting than other bulbs, Bramell said. Shelby light bulbs were a commercial success at the time but were discontinued in 1912 after the company sold to General Electric.

Excerpt: As a lawyer, I feel most strongly about the least-discussed benefit: Eliminating bus fares can clear junk cases out of our court system, lowering the crushing caseloads that prevent our judges, prosecutors and public defenders from focusing their attention where it’s most needed.

I was a public defender, and in one of my first cases I was asked to represent a woman who was not a robber or a drug dealer — she was someone who had failed to pay the fare on public transit. Precious resources had been spent arresting, processing, prosecuting and trying her, all for the loss of a few dollars. This is a daily feature of how we criminalize poverty in America.

Me again: For years I’ve been saying that free transit is one of the biggest, easiest, and most affordable ways to fight climate change and generally improve human life, but I hadn’t considered that legal aspect. What boneheaded cruelty, to prosecute anyone for such a petty “theft.”

Excerpt: George enjoyed needlework and pursued it as a pastime. As he stated in a 1931 letter to Isabelle Coleman, “If I had leisure time from roaming the woods and fields, I put it in knitting, crocheting, and other forms of fancy work.” All of these skills he picked up at a young age (he only lived with the Carvers until he was eleven years old) and sometimes in the most unorthodox ways. George watched Susan knitting and decided he wanted to try. Apparently, Susan’s needles were either all in use or he wasn’t permitted to use them, so he stripped the barbs from two turkey feathers, leaving a little tuft at the tips. Then, he raveled the tops of an old mitten and sock, and he began knitting a strip with colored stripes.

George found crochet even more fascinating than knitting. The Carvers were frugal, buying little in town except sugar and coffee, but the boys were allowed to take turns accompanying Moses on his twice-yearly trips to Neosho. George might be given a little spending money, and on one trip, he bought a steel and bone crochet hook. George could barely read and had no pattern books, but he must have had some brief instruction combined with experimentation. Mariah Watkins, with whom Carver would board from age eleven to twelve, commented, “He could walk uptown and see a set of collar and cuffs on a woman’s dress, come home, and crochet the same.”

It’s Henry Mansfield & Digital Velvet performing “Bend Your Knees” at Southgate Roller Rink, a mile or so from my house.

… and whoever’s working the camera doesn’t know she’s the star.