Archive

The complete OZ Talking archive of analysis across technology, economics, and the humanities.

2026

Issue #154Business

Ferrari's Designers Still Start With a Pencil

When AI erased the grunt work, it also erased the ladder junior employees used to learn on

Issue #153Society

Your Thinking Muscle Collapses in 10 Minutes

AI isn't taking your job—it's taking your ability to think.

Issue #152Business

What Took PCs 15 Years, AI Did in 3

Prices are collapsing, yet AI spending keeps rising — bankers, scientists, and founders are all saying the same thing.

Issue #150Society

GoPro Workers Training the Robots That Replace Them

China owns the brain, India builds the eyes—but who owns the data?

Issue #149AI & Tech

3,800 Hours of Speech: Inside a Brain Implant's Record

In March, brains trained robots. This time, a brain reclaimed its voice.

Issue #148Business

The €9 Parcel Fee Redrawing the World's Trade Map

Shirts, toys, sunglasses: how the EU's new per-item customs fee quietly redraws global shipping routes.

Issue #151AI & Tech

Why Big Tech Wants a Camera on Your Face

We asked for Samantha, and what showed up is an eye watching you.

Issue #147Business

Palantir Grew Revenue 85%—Then Declared SaaS Dead

As software starts finishing the work itself, the price tag underneath it is quietly changing.

Issue #146Society

Fable Can't Enter China, But GPT Can

Chips got blocked, but the models didn't—and that gap is sovereign AI's real face.

Issue #145Society

Laid-Off Workers Share One Surprising Trait

Gallup surveyed 23,717 U.S. workers and found it wasn't skill that predicted layoffs — it was attitude.

Issue #144Society

Korea's 710,000 'Resting' Youth Would Be Patients in Britain

44% of UK youth not working cite health issues as the reason—Korea's data tells a different story.

Issue #143Society

The Hidden Bill for 588,000 Remote Workers' Mental Health

They loved working from home — but 588,000 Americans didn't see this mental health bill coming.

Issue #142AI & Tech

The Agency That Stole a Logo, and a Word Called 'GEO'

'Guaranteed exposure' and 'algorithm domination'—these two phrases are the scam signal.

Issue #141Business

Data Centers Aren't Stalling for Money or Chips

A power bottleneck is quietly hastening the exit from the GPU era.

Issue #140Society

Polymarket Faked Bets to Rack Up 140 Million Views

A prediction market sold FOMO instead of transparency.

Issue #139Business

Meta's Plan: Build a Refinery for Spare AI Compute

If tokens are the new oil, the real prize isn't selling crude—it's refining it.

Issue #138AI & Tech

The Price of Not Looking at China Properly

Two large-scale studies show Western scientists barely cite Chinese papers — and Korea has the same blind spot in batteries and chips.

Issue #137Society

China Optimizes, Japan Orchestrates, Korea Bets ₩800T

Three countries, three different bets on where the real AI fight happens — and the layer Korea's plan leaves empty.

Issue #136Business

Selling Fear to Job Seekers

How one careful Stanford paper about a single hiring tool got stripped of context, step by step, and repackaged as AI panic.

Issue #135AI & Tech

The Houseplant That Talked to Me

The moment we can speak to something, we start a relationship with it.

Issue #134Society

The Coupang Leak Meant Spam. This One Meant Lives

A hack of the UN World Food Programme exposed the names and home locations of 600,000 Gaza households living in a war zone.

Issue #133Business

Amazon's Math: Cut 30,000, Hire 10,000

Employees gaming an internal AI usage leaderboard exposed the cracks in that logic.

Issue #132Business

Silicon Valley Lines Up for Picks and Shovels

Four of the 11 standout YC Spring 2026 startups build testing, security and audit infrastructure—not AI agents. Here is why investors care.

Issue #130AI & Tech

Venezuela's Quake Alert Came From Phones, Not Seismometers

How Google turned billions of smartphone accelerometers into the world's largest earthquake early warning network.