WSJ gets around to fact checking Industry.

The show “feels truthful to us in a way that’s far more interesting to us than the reality of whether it would happen or not.”

This sentence also sounds more interesting than the reality of whatever it means.

https://www.wsj.com/finance/banking/industry-television-finance-errors-d9364a3a

Book review: Void Star

Story: A new retelling of Neuromancer, updated for 30 years of tech advancement, and with the Japanophilia replaced with what if Elon Must lives forever. With a little Westworld and Diamond Age sprinkled in. Are you excited to read about epic cyberbattles between cyber AIs cybershredding each other in cyberspace? There's certainly some of that, but not too much actually. It's not very action heavy, but still intriguing.

Characters: There's the street kid who learned everything there is to know from a laptop he found in the trash. There's the rich kid who's a bit lost, but drives around in a car whose fully autonomous mode includes the armor piercing gun turrets. And there's the AI whisperer, who tells the megacorpos what their electric sheep are dreaming about.

Style: It's very stream of conscious, and two of the three perspective characters have brain damage which preventing them from always knowing what's happening, let alone reliably narrating it. The median sentence has 27 commas. Maybe that's your thing, just letting you know. It's a bit of a slower read.

Example: In fact the buildings are rotting, reverting to geology under their furs of vegetation, and over these ruins rises a tower, black even in the dawn's light, and his heart rises as his gaze follows it up to where its heights are lost in the celestial blue of morning, and the answers he needs are at its apex, if only he can reach it, and he'll hunt it down the nights, and he'll hunt it down the years, but he keeps losing his way among the cul-de-sacs and the endless winding streets, and it's not long until he realizes he's in the city's derelict periphery, and hasn't seen the tower in a long time, for the city is many cities, concentric and innumerable, and he's forever lost the core.

Overall: I liked it more than I thought I might at the start, so if you're looking for something new to read, it's one for the list, but if your reading schedule is already fully booked, probably skippable. Also recommended if you're the kind of person who refers to the left side of their car as the loboard.

(#bookreview)

Should I sign Elon Musk's free speech petition for $100? How likely is it he'll pay out?

In today's edition of I can't get by on my $400k salary.

one former Meta staffer wrote they had used $25 credits on items such as toothpaste and tea from the pharmacy Rite Aid, adding: “On days where I would not be eating at the office, like if my husband was cooking or if I was grabbing dinner with friends, I figured I ought not to waste the dinner credit.” The person, who indicated they had a salary of about $400,000 at Meta.

https://www.ft.com/content/7d1a2738-2518-4ddb-811b-8abf9a745590