Christopher Mims

@mims.bsky.social

38568 Followers 5620 Following

WSJ tech columnist. Author of How to AI, a bullshit-free guide to what AI is actually good for -- and also how our overestimation of its abilities can lead us astray.

crash of a commuter helicopter on a roof in in manhattan
a guy in a purple wizard outfit with a mushroom cloud behind him and a galaxy between his hands, like he just conjured it, by Barclay Shaw
OpenAI head of strategic futures says open-weight model dominance is AI communism
a still from the movie The Deayh of Robin Hood showing a very grizzled old man
dueling headlines on the homepage of WSJ: "The Battle for Hormuz: Trump Shifts Into Dangerous New Phase in Iran War" and "Warsh Tells Congress the Fed Has ‘No Tolerance’ for High Inflation"
count binface being interviewed by a serious journalist
the classic image of some Backrooms
Threads now increasingly resembles the social message board Reddit, as well as X. Users gravitate to specific communities on the platform, rather than a feed of news, to discuss television episodes, game recaps, celebrity gossip and current events. Among the most popular topics are K-pop, the W.N.B.A., dating, dramedy books and television shows like “Heated Rivalry.”
a hypnotic array of finished Twinkies moving down a comically wide conveyor belt in the Twinkie factory credit: Jill Toyoshiba/The Kansas City Star/Zuma Press
Why Smucker’s $5 Billion Bet on the Twinkie Flopped
spacex's market cap hits a new low
At the same time, sales of e-books have shrunk, even after all but replacing the mass market paperback during the 2010s. Since 2016, e-books dropped from 17 percent to 11 percent of trade publishing revenue, according to data from the A.A.P. that looked at the first 10 months of each year. But revenue from e-books this year was about the same as it was last year.
Katie Miller on X: Decided to breastfeed instead of use formula to save water for AI data centers.
infographic: left, the last time zuckerberg's chain was visible in a social post, when trump's disapproval rating was 49.5% right? trump's disapproval hits 53.3%, the chain is now hidden
a goblin shark, which looks like the gnarliest Kaiju ever
a guy on subway takes holding a MetroCard with a mic attached
Growing Crack Spreads Telling Us US Economy Undersupplied With Fuel chart: shows the divergence between the price of oil and the price of refined products such as gasoline and diesel; higher -- "The spread approximates the profit margin that an oil refinery can expect to make by "cracking" the long-chain hydrocarbons of crude oil into useful shorter-chain petroleum products." according to wikipedia
Use of an abacus, as illustrated in Margarita philosophica (1503) on the left is a regular accountant using written figures to do the same kind of calculation. an etching.
chart of share of u.s. electricity generation by source, renewables in green and gas in yellow. In October 2025 gas was 45% of u.s. electricity generation, renewables just 22% as of April 2026 renewables are beating gas -- 35% is from gas, a little over that is from renewables
Wyoming Man Hunter writes: I had a really great nap here
Why I Will Drive My 2005 Pontiac Vibe Into the Ground Americans are hanging on to their old cars longer than ever. I hope my General Motors-Toyota hatchback lasts forever
post on X by @Ebrahimazizi33 We're not afraid of fighting losers. The number of American casualties is already far higher than Trump confirms, and it will rise. This time, the war won't be limited to the region. We'll see what happens!
Ron fucking burgundy, y'all
Figure 1: The Futures Cone (a concept from futuring that shows what's possible, plausible, probable, preferable and what wild cards could throw the whole thing off)
Workplace deaths haven’t improved in 20 years. AI may change that.
a blue PT cruiser
Only half as many 13-year-olds regularly read for fun compared to a decade ago The share of 13-year-old students who reported reading for fun "almost every day" was lower in 2023 than in all previous NAEP long-term trend assessment years, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. 2012 27% 2020 17% 2023 14%
from the homepage of WSJ: "The Meltdown Inside '60 Minutes' and it looks like bari Weiss and Nick bilton are the villains in the Devil Wears Prada 3 or maybe Succession: The Movie
still from 1982 WABC New York report on buying a home PC, featuring WAYNE M. GURA COMPUTER EXPERT
20 years as a sailor and I've seen several rogue waves. None were quite as big as 84 feet, but were substantially larger than the waves at that time. Once, in 1982 on a trip across the Pacific on a small tanker, we were running into waves 12-15 feet. A rough enough ride on a 300 foot long ship, but the bow stayed dry. And then, while I was closing a fire hose locker that had come open, the watch officer blasted the ship's horn, and pointed to a wave significantly larger. They turned the ship to try and hit the wave head on, and I started to race aft. Just then the bow fell out from under me as it dove into the trough ahead of the coming rogue wave, and I was floating in the air. I caught my foot on the railing, and was able to pull myself down to the deck, just as the wave hit, driving the bow up and into it. The water surged over the bow, and snatched me up, washing me down the length of the tank deck, crashing into tank tops and deck cleats as I went. I was badly bruised and cut up, but didn't break anything. We estimated the wave at 50 feet, about four times larger than average. But I guess NOAA thought it was just a sea story.
a yuru-chara map of Japan -- a Japanese name for a category of mascot characters
vintage photo of a white AMC Gremlin
Iran warns of retaliation after US strikes
journal with pen, black and white sticker photo prints, the three pics are my dog running thru a field, sheep meadow in central park, Sam playing little league
screenshot of usenet on DOS - funky colored text in super low res
phone background of a field of grass with "touch grass" written on top in flowers
What if . . . Stock market correction fears become a reality? Gas prices keep rising as the war with Iran continues? The super El Nino predicted to hit becomes an environmental disaster?
5 star review of a running hat on Amazon: "Perfect Post-Op Hat I ordered two of hats from this company and they are perfect for post brain surgery. I have 20 staples in my head and they fit comfortably! Plus they are very cute!"
smol white dog panting while sitting in her dog bed
David Borough in front of a fossil-filled cliff face
It would be nice, and probably wiser from a communications standpoint, to have a less nakedly profit-motivated argument in favor of staying on the platform. But profit, especially in the context of the kind of discipline imposed by New York City housing and childcare costs, is pretty motivating.
elephant bird illustration, the biggest of them is twice as tall as a human
Can you pick a better name for vibe coding? The head of Claude Code says he’s not a fan of the term “vibe coding.” Got a better idea? Submit your alternative — and tell us what you’ve actually built with AI coding tools.
Stocks and profits would fall but the average worker, who depends more on wages than wealth, would be barely affected. And the mood might improve if the bosses talked less about doing everything with AI.
Chart of AI capex spending vs. national defense, as a percentage of GDP. 2025, Defense = 2x AI capex spending. 2026, Defense and AI capex are nearly at parity 2027, AI capex exceeds national defense spending
X post from official white house account: Trump as The Mandalorian
Iranian officials said Tehran could use previously unused weapons to attack U.S. warships, from submarines to mine-carrying dolphins. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has threatened to step up escalation by cutting phone cables in the Strait of Hormuz, which would disrupt internet traffic globally.
Chinese EVs Can Now Project Entire Movies From Their Headlights
chart: Since 2021, U.S. Wages Have Barely Kept Up With Inflation cumulative change in average (real) hourly wages and the Consumer Price Index in the U.S. since January 2021 chart shows earnings and the CPI growing in lockstep, meanwhile average real hourly earnings (which reflects the relationship between the two) is actually down 0.1% since 2021) chart runs through January 2026
yeah you don't have to describe the nihilism to me, I'm familiar with it