Has this ever happened on such a huge scale before in human history. I’m reminded of the Pharaohs who forced a million slaves to push huge limestone blocks in order to build enormous pyramids. That’s an apt comparison. The grandeur of a few leaders demands the sacrifice of everyone else. Surely we’re too smart to do this again in an advanced democratic society? Maybe or maybe not. Time will tell. But at least there’s clarity now. Nobody can pretend that this trillion-dollar boondoggle is in the public’s interest. The people don’t want it—and they will tell you that unequivocally. So the only unanswered question is how they will respond. Don’t think for one moment that they won’t push back. My sense is that the battle has barely begun.

The article starts with a recommendation for Tidewater Dreams by Isabel Allende. This is Allende’s ”first climate fiction novel” where “magical realism meets environmental activism.” It’s a shame that Allende never wrote this book. Nor did anyone else—the book simply doesn’t exist. (I’ll predict, however, that an AI-generated book with this title will show up on Amazon within a few days. When you live in a world of AI hallucinations, this is how the business model plays out.) The next book on the Sun-Times list is The Last Algorithm by Andy Weir. This novel is also non-existent. But the storyline—about rogue AI that gains consciousness—makes me think that the bots are now mocking us. It doesn’t get better. The first 10 books on the summer reading list are entirely hallucinated. As the story of the fake reviews spread on social media, the Sun-Times got into damage control mode. It issued a public statement denying responsibility. But that just makes matters worse. Why are they publishing garbage without…