-an OD of Toughts-

That question shows up under almost every post I write about artificial intelligence. A hundred times a week, in a thousand different versions. And it may be the smartest question in the entire AI debate. So smart, in fact, that it was asked long before ChatGPT, long before Silicon Valley panic, and long before “AI disruption” became a daily headline. Seventy years ago, in fact. The 1954 answer Cleveland, Ohio, 1954. Ford has just opened the first fully automated engine plant in history. A company executive is giving Walter Reuther, the head of the American auto workers’ union, a tour. Standing in front of machines that work on their own, he cracks a joke: “Walter, how do you expect to collect union dues from these robots?” Reuther doesn’t hesitate. “And how do you expect to get them to buy cars?” It’s hard to improve on that answer. In seventy years of papers, conferences, books, and panel discussions, nobody has come up with a sharper one. And yet the robots at Ford are still there. ...

Casottel is one of Milan’s most authentic historic trattoria, but its future is uncertain after the lease expired. Here’s why this farmhouse restaurant matters. I still believe cities need places like this I have a soft spot for restaurants that do not try too hard to impress me. Maybe it is because most places now arrive with a concept, a brand story, and a mood board, and very little actual soul. Casottel, in southern Milan, is the opposite of all that: it feels like memory, not marketing. That is why the idea of losing it lands badly. Casottel has been part of Milan’s fabric since 1963, and although the current restaurant grew out of that history later on, the farmhouse itself has long been a place of food, gathering, and community. In a city that moves fast and reinvents itself constantly, that kind of continuity matters.  What Casottel is Casottel sits in Via Fabio Massimo, near Porto di Mare, in the kind of Milan that still feels like it has a bit of soil under its fingernail...