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They're Selling Your Brain, And Calling It Healthcare.
Some companies aren't in the business of helping you. They're in the business of collecting your family member's brain data and selling it. I want to start with something Marcus Aurelius wrote. "The second rule is to look things in the face and know them for what they are." Not what they claim to be. Not what the marketing says when you're scared and searching for something, anything, that might protect someone you love. What they actually are. That's what today's post is abo
Michael Routhier
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130 Years in Chains: What One Man Did That Governments, Corporations, and Technology All Failed To Do
Four generations. One family. One man who did what no government or corporation would. This is the story nobody stopped to be angry about. On May 14th, 2026, a family in the Kasur district of Punjab, Pakistan, walked out of a brick kiln for the first time in 130 years. Not metaphorically. Literally. Four generations of one family had been born into debt bondage at that kiln; meaning they were slaves in every practical sense of the word, legally prevented from leaving until a
Michael Routhier
May 275 min read
The Man Who Built AI Says It Could End Us. Nobody Is Listening. [Podcast Transcript]
The most-cited living scientist on earth helped build AI. Now he's warning we may have a decade to change course. Hey, welcome back to today's episode. If you're new here, new to the show, or if you've been listening to me for ramble on for quite some time, welcome back. I'm glad to have you. Before we get into today's episode, I need to do a little bit of house cleaning. If you've been listening to this show for as long as it's been, we are new, um, you, I think you might be
Michael Routhier
May 2710 min read
WhatsApp's New "Read and Delete" Feature Is Coming, And It's Actually a Big Deal for Your Privacy
WhatsApp is testing a new feature that deletes messages after they've been read, not just after a timer. Here's what you need to know. Okay, this is a good one. WhatsApp, the messaging app owned by Meta and used by over two billion people worldwide, is quietly testing a new feature that will delete your messages automatically after the other person has read them. Not after a timer. After they've actually read it. That's a meaningful difference. And if you care about your priv
Michael Routhier
May 264 min read
Disney's Dark Secret: Your Child's Face Is Now in a Database [Podcast Transcript]
This summer, Disney scanned your child or grandchild's face at the park entrance, converted it into a permanent biometric identifier, and stored it in a database. They did it without asking you, and now there's a $5 million lawsuit because of this. We live in a world where the most powerful technology ever built is being handed to you without instructions, without warnings, and without anyone asking whether it serves you or uses you. That question has a name, the virtuous mac
Michael Routhier
May 267 min read
The Man Who Built AI Says It Could End Us. Nobody Is Listening.
The man who helped build modern AI says we have roughly ten years to change course. He is not guessing. I want to tell you about a man. Not a journalist. Not a podcaster. Not someone with a book to sell or a documentary to promote. The actual man. One of three or four human beings on earth most responsible for making AI what it is today. And he is terrified of what he built. Who He Is And Why It Matters His name is Yoshua Bengio. He is the most-cited living scientist in the w
Michael Routhier
May 216 min read
Kodokushi: The Lonely Death Epidemic Nobody in the West Is Talking About
In Japan, 77,000 people died alone last year; unnoticed for days, weeks, sometimes months. The conditions that caused it are assembling here. I want to start with a word. A Japanese word. Kodokushi. It translates, roughly, to "lonely death." And it means exactly what it sounds like. A person dies, alone, in their home, and nobody notices. Not for days. Sometimes not for weeks. Sometimes not for months. In Japan last year, nearly 77,000 people died that way. 77,000. In over 7,
Michael Routhier
May 208 min read
Transcript: Episode 18 - Kodokushi: The Lonely Death Epidemic Nobody in the West Is Talking About
77,000 lonely deaths in Japan last year. The conditions that caused it are assembling here. Full podcast transcript below. Hey everybody, and I hope you are having a great week so far. Today's show is going to be a little deep. It's a conversation that I've been wanting to have for some time and for some might find it depressing. Some might find it absolutely ludicrous that this is occurring, but we need to have this conversation as a society and as just human beings. And I w
Michael Routhier
May 1910 min read
Zuckerberg Just Fired 8,000 People to Pay for AI. And His Stock Barely Flinched.
8,000 jobs. $145 billion in AI spending. The stock barely moved. Let me give you the short version first. Meta, the company that owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp; is cutting approximately 8,000 jobs starting this week. On top of 1,000 cuts in January. On top of hundreds more in March. That's before whatever they're planning for August. At the same time, Meta has increased its capital expenditure projections for 2026 by up to $10 billion. Total AI spending for the year:
Michael Routhier
May 196 min read
A Reader Stopped Me Cold. Here's What He Said About Grief, AI, and the Brain Nobody Understands.
Grief is not a problem to be solved. It's something you go through. That distinction is everything. A few weeks ago I published a post about AI resurrection. About the companies building services that let you have conversations with a chatbot trained on the texts, emails, and voicemails of someone who has died. About a man in our community who lost his wife of 44 years and told me quietly, like he was admitting something he wasn't sure he should, that he was thinking about us
Michael Routhier
May 196 min read
The Great Dumbing Down: How Tech Is Making Us Weaker and Calling It Progress
One half of your brain still belongs to you. This post is about keeping it that way. Let me ask you something. When was the last time you were bored? Not "waiting for your coffee" bored. Genuinely, uncomfortably, nothing-to-do bored. No phone in your hand. No podcast in your ears. Nothing to scroll through. Just you and your own thoughts. Can you even remember? I'm not sure I can. I've been thinking about this for a long time, longer than I've been comfortable admitting, and
Michael Routhier
May 186 min read
Your Bank Just Abandoned Your Town. And They Called It Progress.
In towns across rural Ontario, the closed sign in the window isn't just inconvenient. For seniors without transportation or internet access, it's the end of a lifeline. There's a small town in Ontario called Brussels. Population just over a thousand people. About a hundred kilometres north of London. Surrounded by farmland. The kind of town where you know your neighbours and the main street has been there for generations. CIBC just closed its last branch there. Done. Gone. Th
Michael Routhier
May 155 min read
Forgot Your Apple Account Password? Read This Before You Do Anything Else
You pick up your phone and it's asking you for your Apple Account password. You try the one you think it is. Wrong. You try a variation. Wrong again. One more attempt. Nope. And now there's a little message on the screen that says your account has been locked for security reasons. I want you to take a breath. Because this is fixable. Completely, easily fixable. And it happens to a lot of people, way more than you'd think. I was talking to a member of our community last week;
Michael Routhier
May 145 min read
The Great Dumbing Down: How Tech Is Making Us Weaker and Calling It Progress | Full Episode Transcript
One half of your brain still belongs to you. This episode is about keeping it that way. When was the last time you were genuinely, uncomfortably bored, with nothing to scroll through, nothing to look at, nothing to listen to? Most of us can't remember. And that might be exactly the problem. In this episode, Michael Routhier delivers one of his most personal and unfiltered conversations yet; a no-holds-barred examination of what technology is actually doing to us. Not what it
Michael Routhier
May 146 min read
IMF Warns AI Could Hit Your Bank - What It Means for You
The IMF just said something that I think deserves more attention than it's getting. Last week, the International Monetary Fund, the organization that monitors the health of the global financial system, published a warning. Not a speculative one. Not a "this could theoretically happen someday" kind of statement. They used the word inevitable. AI-powered cyberattacks on the global banking system, they said, will happen. The only question is how bad the damage is when they do. I
Michael Routhier
May 135 min read
Your Bank Is the Target - The IMF Just Said It's Inevitable | Full Episode Transcript
The IMF used a word you don't hear from the world's most cautious financial institution very often: inevitable. This episode explains what that actually means for your money, and what's genuinely in your control. The International Monetary Fund just used a word you don't hear from the world's most cautious financial institution very often: inevitable. Not possible. Not likely. Inevitable. AI-powered cyberattacks on the global banking system, they said, will happen. The only q
Michael Routhier
May 1310 min read
Rogers Free iPad Scam: How Canadians Lost $2,300
They called it a free iPad. It cost her $2,300. I want to tell you about two real women, both Canadians, both targeted by the same scam, both left holding a bill for a device they never actually wanted. And I want to tell you about the company that, when they found out what happened, offered a $50 credit and said essentially; not our problem. This is one of the most sophisticated scams currently targeting Canadians. And the reason it works so well is the same reason it's so h
Michael Routhier
May 125 min read
Tech That Actually Matters - Part 2: The Stuff Worth Your Time | Full Episode Transcript
Part 2 of the series that started a conversation. This one gets into video calling, medical and safety tech, medication apps, the stuff you can safely ignore and ends with something that has nothing to do with technology at all. In Part 2 of Tech That Actually Matters, we get into the technology that genuinely makes a difference in daily life; video calling, medical alert systems, medication management apps, and the growing category of tech you can safely ignore. We end with
Michael Routhier
May 126 min read
Samsung Galaxy Watch Fainting Prediction - What It Means for You
Your smartwatch just got a whole lot more interesting. Samsung has announced the results of a clinical study showing that the Galaxy Watch can predict fainting up to five minutes before it happens, with 84.6% accuracy. This is a world first. And if you're an adult over 55 who wears a smartwatch, or who has been thinking about getting one, this is worth knowing about. Let me break down what the study actually found, what it doesn't mean yet, and what you can do right now with
Michael Routhier
May 114 min read
How to Report a Scam in Canada - 2026 Complete Guide
You got the call. Now what? Whether it was a fake CRA agent, a Canada Post text, or something that just felt wrong, this post walks you through exactly where to report it and what to do next. Canadians lost over $638 million to fraud in 2024. That's the number the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre officially recorded. And here's the part that should make your jaw drop: that's only what got reported. Most people who get scammed never report it at all. Not because they don't want to.
Michael Routhier
May 88 min read
Apple's $250M Siri Settlement: Here's How to Claim Your Money Before the Deadline
You bought the phone. You trusted the advertising. Turns out the features Apple was selling you weren't ready yet. A court agreed and now there may be money owed to you. Let me tell you something that doesn't happen very often. A trillion-dollar company got caught. Admitted it. And now has to pay. Apple has agreed to a $250 million settlement over a class action lawsuit that accused the company of advertising AI-powered Siri features that, and this is the important part, didn
Michael Routhier
May 74 min read
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