About that Cyberpunk Dystopia You Ordered

Oh, it's here alright, but as the old saw goes, it's just not evenly distributed.  Here's a long-ish essay on the matter [tldr below], with respect to a semi-functional AI on-the-fly cheatsheet generator, cluely (no, I won't link that), and the culture that brought it into existence.

Personally, I am tired of seeing these "hyper-agentic" boy-childs thrashing about for a few years, leaving Chesterton's fence ajar at every turn, before finally burning out and departing stage left for Bora Bora and an early death at the hands of their local coke dealers.  This is what, three generations? of them I've seen come and go.  Anyway, it's sort of amusing to watch one more cycle of crash and burn.  Just don't take my cash with you via some sort of taxation for a national need.

Meanwhile, using century-old shortwave technology, Iran is either waking sleeper cells worldwide or pulling a head-fake freak-out by broadcasting seemingly random strings of numbers.  Also, they're also making the Straits of Hormuz unusable via some pretty nasty quarter-century old tech about which I have absolutely no comment.

Anyway, here's the tldr you were promised.  It's AI-generated of course.  What, you didn't expect me to read through and summarize all of that lit-school rambling, did you?  But you probably ought to read the entire thing when you get a chance, if only for the amusing parts about what Scott Alexander is up to these days.

Sam Kriss's essay "Child's Play" in the March 2026 issue of Harper's Magazine is a sharp, satirical critique of Silicon Valley's latest wave of AI startups and their young founders, focusing on Cluely—a glitchy, controversial AI interface tool co-founded by Chungin “Roy” Lee (a Columbia dropout who gained fame by cheating on job interviews with AI and posting the videos online). Kriss portrays Roy and similar "highly agentic" figures—like teenage founder Eric Zhu with his absurd ventures—as emblematic of a shift in tech culture, where relentless action, hustle, and "agency" (a bulldozer-like drive to dominate and leverage AI) now trump traditional intelligence, creativity, or expertise, since AI itself handles thinking and problem-solving.

The piece weaves observations of San Francisco's surreal atmosphere—homeless people chanting, bizarre viral ads, Waymo cars, fratty startup offices stocked with protein bars and toys—with anecdotes about Cluely's hype-driven rise (including a blind-date ad using AI scripts), rationalist influencers like Scott Alexander warning of AI's risks or absurdities, and opportunistic grifters. Kriss argues this heralds a dystopian bifurcation: a small overclass of hyper-agentic individuals using AI for unchecked power and wealth, while most people become a "permanent underclass" rendered obsolete and mindless. The tone blends dark humor at the absurdity (e.g., sperm-racing apps) with foreboding about eroded human thought, purpose, relationships, and creativity in an AI-saturated, capitalism-fueled void, where even the founders seem driven by childish hungers for control rather than meaningful innovation.

Yeah, GTFO my lawn while you're at it, but stay tuned because I have a rant about e-bikes queued up for later this week.