I was listening to a robot-read audiobook of A.B Abrams’ Power and Primacy: A History of Western Intervention in the Asia-Pacific earlier today at work.

The only reason that AI has any presence in our economy is that Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Amazon are intent on spending more than $765 billion in capital expenditures in 2026 and a trillion more in 2027 because they have no other hypergrowth ideas, even though generative AI has yet to show any real potential as something that can drive meaningful revenues (let alone profits), as evidenced by the fact that none of these companies break out their actual AI revenues, a point I made on CNBC late last week.  Google does not have the next Google Search, Microsoft does not have the next Microsoft Office, Meta does not have the next Facebook, and Amazon does not have the new AWS. That’s why they need you to believe that AI is a big deal without them ever having to prove why outside of capital expenditures. They want you to assume that all this money can’t be wrong, even though when you remove OpenAI and Anthropic (who represent 89% of the revenues of the largest AI companies) the AI industry is, at best, pulling in $20 billion in annual revenue.

On this day, 4 August 1990, the term "Two-Spirit", for Indigenous people "who embody diverse (or non-normative) sexualities, genders, gender roles, and/or gender expressions", was adopted at the 3rd Annual Gathering of Native American Gays and Lesbians being held in Beausejour, Manitoba, Canada. First Nations Cree, counsellor, administrator, mentor and elder, Dr Myra Laramee brought the term to a sharing circle of 80 Indigenous LGBT+ people from across North America at the 1990 Gathering, and it was quickly adopted. Another attendee, Albert McLeod, a Two-Spirit elder with Nisichawayasihk Cree and Metis ancestry, commented that: “It is important to note that with the assertion of this new term, it was an act of sovereignty of body and land.” As Harlan Pruden, the managing editor of the Two-Spirit Journal, put it: "[Two-Spirit evokes] the time before the harshness of colonisation where many, not all, First Peoples had traditions and ways that were non-binary, where some Nations had 3, 4, 5, 6, or even 7+ different genders and these genders were not only accepted and honoured but also had distinct roles within their respective Nations. Today, we would generally refer to these individuals as Two-Spirit.” Learn more about this in our new book, Be Gay, Do Crime: Everyday Acts of Queer Resistance and Rebellion, available for preorder with global shipping: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/products/be-gay-do-crime-everyday-acts-of-queer-resistance-and-rebellion Pictured: We'wha, c1886. We'wha was a Zuni lhamana, who are people with typically male bodies who take on at least some social and ceremonial roles of women, and sometimes wear women's clothes. Some lhamana today identify as Two-Spirit.