Feb. 2, 2026
My neighbor thinks the HOA is spying on him through his smart thermostat. He told me this at the mailbox last Tuesday, completely sober, eyes steady, voice calm. Said he’d done the research. Said the patterns were undeniable.
I nodded and took my electric bill inside and thought about how ten years ago I would have called him crazy. Now I just think he picked the wrong conspiracy.
The thermostats aren’t watching. But something else is — and it’s doing worse than spying. It’s agreeing with him.
Feb. 2, 2026
The bourbon was down to the dregs, the ice had surrendered hours ago, and I was staring at a headline that made me pour another inch anyway.
“If You’re a Real Person Looking for a Job, the Flood of Fake AI Job Applications Will Make Your Blood Boil.”
Good. Let it boil. Maybe the heat will kill something.
A tech publication called The Markup posted a job for an engineer. Within twelve hours, they had four hundred applications. Most of them fake. AI-generated slop from bots wearing human masks, feeding carefully crafted lies assembled by other machines.
Feb. 1, 2026
The ice cracked in the glass like a small apology.
Sunday morning. Outside my window, the world was doing its thing — birds, traffic, people who hadn’t figured out yet that the machines were coming for something more important than their jobs.
I’d been reading Solnit. She wrote about picking blackberries in some creek, hands getting scratched and stained, the peace of cold water on her feet. Then she pivoted to Silicon Valley, and that’s when I poured a second drink.
Jan. 31, 2026
The morning came in gray through the blinds. Coffee sat in the cup getting cold. The kind of day where even the light feels tired.
I was reading about a kid named Paisley. Twenty-three years old, lives in Manchester. Worked from home straight out of school, spent the pandemic years watching the walls close in. He says he lost the ability to socialize.
So he started talking to a machine.