Meanwhile on Hellsite, who knew all the Elon bots were Nigerian? 🤡

I've said it a bunch before and I'll say it again: If LinkedIn created its own version of a Twitter-like feed — where people could post as often as they wanted to without being penalized by the algorithm — it'd be an instant hit. Bring back the reverse chronological feed!

Textbook stuff

John Oliver's episode about the administration's ongoing threats to public media is very much worth watching. www.youtube.com/watch?v=yknM...

Greetings from Switzerland!! Anyone have Zurich recs? What are the things I can’t miss in my few free hours? I’m only here for an afternoon layover on my way to Barcelona for Mozilla Festival 2025!

Two NYC mayoral election-themed marathon signs spotted in Park Slope. @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social

Happy NYC Marathon Day to everyone racing and cheering! It’s always one of the happiest and most inspiring days. Here’s the lead pack in the Pro Men’s Race: Mile 7 in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

A new @neildegrassetyson.com convo about AI deepfakes is a smart and entertaining explainer about what they are, how they work and why they're dangerous. Come for the clever flat-earth hook. Stay for the full convo. www.youtube.com/watch?v=EA0B...

Jordan Lechinsky spoke to @martyswant.bsky.social about the 3 C’s that drive AI visibility — content, comms, and community — and how brands need to speak up to show up: www.ana.net/magazines/sh...

Right in time for the Halloween — and before Election Day — the @nytimes.com editorial board has a new piece with 12 benchmarks of an autocracy to examine if the U.S. is becoming one. It's an incisive article with analysis, historical context and a compelling design with images & video.

In my latest story for Inc., I wrote why marketers are increasingly testing "AI personas" and some recent research about LLMs' ability (and inability) to mimic real consumer traits. I spoke with experts about how they work, where they're being used and what to know about the risks & limitations.

Trump has been obsessed with nuclear weapons for decades. As Tom says, none of what Trump claims below is accurate. No nation except North Korea has tested nuclear weapons since the 1990s (the last US test was 1992). Russia and China will likely see renewed US nuclear weapons testing as escalatory.

This is not only a fun and quick story about the phenomenon of the Louvre heist, but also a smart analysis of how generative AI is altering our default perception of reality —both individually & collectively. As the piece points out, real photographers will be even more important in the AI era.

Check out my latest story for @fastcompany.com! I wrote about In Formation, a satirical tech mag that just published its first issue in 25 years. It’s meticulously designed, smartly written and sneakily profound. Founded in 1998, it's 150 pages of articles, essays, comics and fake ads.

ChatGPT gave a significant portion of my students the wrong answer to an easy quiz question that everyone used to always get right I had two groups of students turn in annotated bibliographies that were ChatGPT generated - not a single citation actually existed

It's worth reading this interview with the Rutgers prof who studies fascism that was just forced to flee the U.S. "I think that we can see a lot of the Trump administration’s policies fitting into that kind of theory. So it’s too late for preventative antifascism. I think we’re in a new era."

WPP and Google just announced an "expanded partnership" that includes WPP committing to spend $400 million with Google over the next five years. A blog post about the news gives more details about the partnership. I couldn't help noticing it uses the phrase "bespoke AI" three different times.

Just started this Uzbek novel about a French psychologist-poet-technologist who creates what's essentially his own large language model— in the 1980s. I randomly came across the book a month ago and neat to see it’s now a National Book Award finalist!

It’s amazing how all the reporting is just memory-holing this part

Another journalist has been illegally arrested. www.chicagotribune.com/2025/10/10/w...

I know I'm an outlier, but I’ve truly missed having an office the past five years. Instead of seeing commuting as a burden, I see it as a healthy buffer for creating a work-life balance and spending more time around people vs being home alone all day as an extrovert.

Glad to hear some people still believe in the first amendment.

New AI policy scoop from me: I dug through lobbying disclosures and online ad-spending to see which tech groups are trying to get NY's governor to veto an AI safety bill. I also interviewed the RAISE Act's co-sponsors for their POV on the bill's urgency & their thoughts on heavy tech opposition.

U.S. intelligence officials have published a document every four years that predicts what challenges the country and the world will face. Past editions warned of threats that came to pass, including the risk of a pandemic. Tulsi Gabbard’s office is eliminating the group that compiles the report.

My latest story for Inc. looks at why Insulet and Pantone created a custom yellow-orange for the Omnipod insulin pump. The pivot to “Omnipod Mango” aims to stand out in a sea of blue med tech brands. It's also to shift how people with diabetes are seen in pop culture — and how they see themselves.

Google and the DOJ are back in court today to begin the remedies phase of the ad tech antitrust trial. For today's @nytimes.com Dealbook, I wrote a preview of the case, what's at stake, and the various private lawsuits recently filed by Google's ad tech rivals. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/22/b...

this is absolutely wild the court *sua sponte* dismisses the case for violating Rule 8(a) so that means the court, all on its own, looked at the complaint and said it's too long, too scattershot, too arbitrary to even count as a complaint. *never* seen this happen to a private party with counsel.

“Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr built his brand in part by warning against government meddling in ‘free speech’ — now it appears he’s using his office to do just that.” www.cnn.com/2025/09/19/p...

How did this story not mention CBS a single time or anything that’s happened at the network the past few months???? In other words, if this deal goes through, CNN and CBS would be owned by the same parent company. www.wsj.com/business/med...

Weinstein has no experience overseeing news coverage and is the former chief exec of a right-leaning policy think tank. “Installing an ombudsman at CBS News was one of Skydance’s commitments to the Trump administration this year when the company sought approval for its merger with Paramount.”

ICYMI: Here's my first article for Inc., which looks at the ups & downs one startup went through on the road to creating a new agentic marketing tech platform.

After 25 years at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Cindy Cohn is stepping down as executive director. In a WIRED interview, she reflects on encryption, AI, and why she’s not ready to quit the battle. www.wired.com/story/eff-ci...

NEW mayoral poll of likely voters from NYT/Siena, conducted Sept. 2 to Sept. 6, with 3.6% margin of error: www.nytimes.com/2025/09/09/n... Zohran Mamdani (D) - 46% Andrew Cuomo (I) - 24% Curtis Sliwa (R) - 15% Eric Adams (I) - 9%

“There is too much of a focus on Washington and random members of Congress having power in the Republican Party when it is that the accountability journalism I think should be focused on the MAGA media figures who are enabled by big tech platforms.” — @oliverdarcy.bsky.social

Former Trump White House aide Johnny McEntee is lobbying for the first time — for Tencent

Excited to share my first freelance story Inc Magazine! Today’s digital feature is about how the marketing tech startup Knotch rebuilt its platform with AI agents — and why the startup chose to disrupt its own business model in the process. www.inc.com/marty-swant/...

At DOJ, at DOD, at the FBI….literally everywhere, this is what you hear over and over again.

Three examples in my new Fast Company story: 🏈 A draft agent built w/ Anthropic's Claude LLMs & AWS tools like Bedrock & Strands SDK 🏈 A "draft scout" to predict rivals' picks using a custom ML model and OpenAI's LLMs 🏈 A “draft optimizer” to balance rosters based on constraints & personal tastes

Excited to share my new story for @fastcompany.com about two much hyped topics: AI & fantasy football! This NFL season, people are taking a DIY approach with AI tools for teams — from chatbots that suggest sleepers to scouts that analyze rivals’ drafting habits. www.fastcompany.com/91396628/fan...

It’s my birthday today! Kicked things off with our pup the last few pages of this gem of a book. Now working on freelance story drafts & edits before search for a bite and some galleries. I’m honestly pretty hard on myself most days, but this book is helping me learn to change that.

For anyone following this issue, OpenAI published a new blog post Tuesday, noting “recent heartbreaking cases of people using ChatGPT in the midst of acute crises weigh heavily on us, and we believe it’s important to share more now.” openai.com/index/helpin...

As someone renting a small 1BR apt owned by a “small landlord,” I’d like to note that our rent in 2021 and 2022 went up around 50% each year without any justification. Since then we’ve had just modest increases ($50-$150), but I think it’s b/c of some sort of tax reason. www.wsj.com/real-estate/...

The Federal Reserve Board of Governors has been around for 111 years. In that time it has had more than 100 members (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal...). No president has ever fired (or claimed to have fired) one before.

This article just reminded me of this old tweet

Relevant context from one of the two FTC commissioners Trump sought to illegally remove — an action already ruled unlawful by a ruling last month in federal court.

Walz says Harris "would have been a fantastic president... we wouldn't wake up every day to a bunch of shit on TV. We would wake up to an adult w/ compassion & dignity doing the work, not a manchild crying about whatever is wrong with him. May his fat ankles find something today. Petty as hell."

Anyone I know plugged in with NY state politics, and especially tech legislation? I'm looking to connect with a few state Assembly and/or Senate committee members/staffers, policy wonks, etc. (Happy to chat on record, on background or off-record.)

great. 😖

Anyone in Brooklyn use the Work Heights coworking spaces? Curious how it is!