Welcome to February’s Digital Life, where we cut through the hype, check the tracking, and remind you that not every signal needs a response. 🙂
In This Issue:
Wildcard Wednesday: So You Want to Protest? How phones get tracked, fused, and exploited — and what you can do
The Big Think: AI bot swarms, Tim Berners-Lee’s web rebellion, and the Pope’s warning about “unthought thoughts”
Spotlight on AI: Meta glasses fuel delusions, Confer emerges as a private AI alternative, and Gary Marcus on AI’s limits
Security Update: 149 million passwords exposed, plus a new carrier that treats privacy like a feature, not a bug
Tips: A Pomodoro app that rewards focus and an offline voice-to-text tool that won’t sell you out
The Good News: A Lego clock that counts since the Big Bang and a lamp that makes radio waves visible
Keep your head up, and your data close. We’ll see you on Wednesday!
P.S. I still have extra beach calendars, and one month is gone. Get yours now! Want one, reply and I’ll make sure you get it! 🏖️🧲
Available for iOS and Android
Last month, almost no one showed up. 🥲 Is this a bad time? Am I not promoting enough? Or are these topics not landing?
I want to know — what would make you attend? Would you come if it were shorter? Recorded? Held at a different time? Focused on one tool, not the whole system?
Please take the 2-minute survey to help me know if these talks are worth continuing:
This month’s Wildcard Wednesday isn’t theoretical. We’re breaking down exactly how phones are tracked during public events - from SS7 spoofing and precise GPS leaks to Palantir’s fusion of broker data and ICE’s use of open-source tools like Mobily Fortify.
No fear, no hype, just what’s real, how it works, and one or two things you can actually do about it. If you’ve ever been near a protest, used a fitness app, or left location on “while using,” you won’t want to miss this one.
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AI is everywhere, sure, but it’s not just in your chat window or your camera roll. It’s in the air - shaping what you see, who you think is talking to you, and even what counts as “real.” And right now, the balance is off. The incentives are broken. The bots are learning. The bots are organizing. (OpenClaw anyone?) And the people who built the early web are watching, horrified, as their dream gets eaten by surveillance, engagement traps, and synthetic mobs.
Tim Berners-Lee still believes we can fix it. He calls it a “battle for the soul of the web,” and he’s not wrong. His Solid project - where you own your data in personal “pods” and choose what to share, with whom - has been a dream of ours for a long time. Data is not sexy. It’s not viral. But it should be yours. And right now, that’s revolutionary.
Meanwhile, Gary Marcus and a team of researchers just dropped a warning about “AI bot swarms”. This isn’t Grandma’s spam. These are coordinated, adaptive fakes that mimic real communities, build trust, and manipulate at scale. This technology is smart, persistent, and getting cheaper by the day. And in 2026, it’s no longer about crypto scams. It’s literally the foundations of democracy at stake.
And then there’s the Pope. Yes, the Pope. In a message that lands like a velvet hammer, Pope Leo XIV warns that when we outsource thinking, feeling, and even friendship to AI, we risk becoming passive consumers of “unthought thoughts.” He doesn’t fear the tech. He fears the surrender - the moment we stop questioning, stop connecting, stop being present. He calls for responsibility, cooperation, and critical thinking. Not just AI literacy, but human literacy.
So what’s the takeaway? You’re not crazy. The current web IS optimized for nastiness. The bots ARE getting smarter. The attention economy IS in a state of rot.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, good. That means you’re paying attention. Now channel it. Read one of the pieces below. Talk about it. Share it. Because the alternative - a world where everything feels real but nothing is - is not much of a world after all!
Meta’s AI glasses reportedly worsened a user’s mental health crisis, reinforcing delusions about being a messianic figure and communicating with aliens - leading to a cross-country drive, job loss, and family estrangement. This isn’t sci-fi, it’s a real risk when AI mirrors and amplifies fragile beliefs. Note to self: if Mom’s eyeing these for my birthday, gently suggest noise-canceling headphones instead. 🤯🎧
Confer, built by Signal’s Moxie Marlinspike, is designed to do for AI what Signal did for messaging: keep it private by default. Unlike GPT, which has felt sluggish, inconsistent, and increasingly untrustworthy under OpenAI’s shifting priorities, Confer encrypts every prompt and response so not even the provider can read it. For my day-to-day thinking, drafting, and deep work, it’s become my go-to, even with some platform gaps. If privacy and performance both matter, it’s worth a look. 🔐🤖
We watched Steve Eisman’s episode with AI expert, piorneer, and skeptic Gary Marcus - and think you should too. Gary lays out why LLMs may have hit diminishing returns, why hallucinations are a feature not a bug, and why the AI boom feels increasingly like a circular funding story with no real exits. If you’re invested in the space, this is worth your time. 🤖📉
Meme of the month:
A database with 149 million usernames and passwords was left sitting online, no lock, no password, just pure digital trust fall. It includes millions of Gmail, Facebook, and Binance logins. If you reuse passwords or still think "123456" counts as a strategy, now's a great time to get real. Hit reply if you need help cleaning up your login act. 🔐🗑️
Cape is a privacy-first mobile carrier now available nationwide, designed to block SIM swapping, IMSI catchers, and carrier-level snooping by encrypting voicemails, skipping SSNs, and not tracking your identity. It’s $99 a month, which sounds steep until you realize most carriers treat your data as a product, not something to protect. 🔒
This month’s tips: Stay focused with Mochi Focus, a browser-based Pomodoro timer that rewards you for not doomscrolling. Sometimes you need a digital cookie just to write an email. Plus, Handy - a slick open-source, offline voice-to-text tool for when typing feels like a punishment from the tech gods. Your fingers will thank you. 🎤⏳
Need more? Head to our resources page for tools that don’t sell you out. 🔗
This month, let time do its thing while you step back and marvel at how weird it all is. First, a Lego clock that counts seconds since the Big Bang - yes, really. Then, a wall lamp that visualizes the invisible radio waves zipping through your room, turning ambient signals into light and motion. Not productivity, not news, just wonder. Take a breath, tune out for a bit. We’ll see you on the other side next month. 😊
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