Join us Thursday!

Join @datasociety.bsky.social's Climate, Technology, and Justice program+ Kapor Foundation for a webinar on CA data centers in context, connecting data center buildout + policy interventions to histories of environmental racism + resistance 10/9, 12-1:30 PM PT kaporcenter.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Good job Sora 2 has watermarks on its videos (people have already made tools that instantly remove the watermark) www.404media.co/sora-2-water...

Robin Williams' daughter has some quality thoughts on AI slop

How could a man who never set foot in a library until he was in college create what is considered the most extensive online collection of global Black history? Maybe it had something to do with the story Dr. Quintard Taylor's father told him when he was a young boy. m.kuow.org/stories/reme...

Meta is constructing its largest data center yet: a $10 billion facility in Louisiana, as big as 70 football fields, requiring more than twice as much electricity as the City of New Orleans. Louisiana has had to greenlight $3 billion in new energy infrastructure to service Meta's facility.

Gov. Newsom vetoed a bill that would have required regular purges of license plate databases and regularly audited how automated plate readers are used. https://cal.news/4qbr1kz 📝 @khari.bsky.social & Mohamed Al Elew 📸 Courtesy of Flock Safety

As if irony isn’t already dead, the Hatch Act violation on the DOJ website, which blames Democrats for the shutdown, appears on the page advising DOJ employees they are subject to the Hatch Act. joycevance.substack.com/p/a-note-abo...

“.. Some Republicans estimate they will eventually need to provide $35 billion to $50 billion in aid to farmers hit by Trump’s tariffs.” [.. That’s roughly half of all the revenue raised from new 2025 tariffs so far this year, notes @ernietedeschi.bsky.social] www.politico.com/news/2025/10...

Ads reveal that Flock, makers of automated license plate readers and other surveillance technology, are promising to introduce "Distress detection" into their gunshot detection devices which will alert police when it hears human voices in distress, including screaming. www.eff.org/deeplinks/20...

The crowd chants: “From New York to Palestine, Journalism is not a crime.”

Join us on Oct 9 @ 12pm PT for a webinar on the histories, impacts & policies of California’s data centers. This talk will feature @khari.bsky.social, Masheika Allgood & Nicole Merino Tsui, moderated by Cecilia Marrinan of Kapor Foundation & @tamigraph.bsky.social kaporcenter.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

This is like the only good news in my timeline RN

The Mississippi Museum of Art now owns the only two known portraits of enslaved Mississippians that were painted before the Civil War.

Regular reminder that behind damn near every large-scale "Automated" "AI" system is a team of underpaid and otherwise exploited humans. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Eric Adams is out days after the rat czar resignation and a day after release of this rat wars video that gives me so much joy? Wild.

George Hardy, last of the Tuskegee Airmen's World War II combat pilots, dies at 100

BREAKING: The FBI has fired agents photographed kneeling during a 2020 racial justice protest that followed the death of George Floyd, AP sources say.

Much thx to Brian for appreciating my coverage of tech policy in California 🤘🏾🙏🏾

"California lawmakers started the year signaling they were ready to get tough on data centers, aiming to protect the environment and electricity ratepayers. Nine months later, they have little to show for it." - @khari.bsky.social calmatters.org/environment/...

NEW: The latest story from the 18,000+ emails in Jeffrey Epstein’s Yahoo inbox: beyond his ties to the elite, a quieter circle proved crucial as state and federal investigations began. Insane reporting from @suryamattu.com, Max Abelson, and team. Free link:

Black journalist starter pack on bluesky! More Black folks who know what they're talking about! go.bsky.app/FVsDa69

"The fine appears to be the largest issued over AI fabrications by a California court and came with a blistering opinion stating that 21 of 23 quotes from cases cited in the attorney’s opening brief were made up." - @khari.bsky.social calmatters.org/economy/tech...

A California attorney must pay a $10,000 fine for filing a state court appeal full of fake quotations generated by the artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT. https://cal.news/3IzCysH 📸 Adriana Heldiz

"UnitedHealth Chief Executive Officer Stephen Hemsley recently met with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles to discuss Medicare and other issues, though the government investigations didn’t come up in their conversation, a White House official said."

"Google organized business owners against California legislation to force its Chrome web browser to safeguard personal data." @khari.bsky.social on @calmatters.org:

So amazing to see our work recognized for the @journalists.org Knight Award for Public Service! Feeling really grateful to have worked with @jas-aguilera.bsky.social @hiramaduran.bsky.social and @heathergilligan.bsky.social to make it happen!!🎉 #OJA25

It’s hard to trace Google’s full influence when it does not publicly share its position on some bills, instead paying groups like the California Chamber of Commerce to influence legislators on its behalf. Good story by @khari.bsky.social and @bystellayu.bsky.social.

Remember when Google's CEO argued last year that people would actually click through AI links more, despite that not making any sense or being supported by any data? Turns out he was wrong 2024: www.searchenginejournal.com/google-ceo-a.... Today: www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...

“Under one of the Labor Department’s proposals, an estimated 3.7 million workers employed by home care agencies could be paid below the federal minimum wage — currently $7.25 per hour — and made ineligible for overtime pay if they aren’t covered by corresponding state laws.”

If there are no high-risk automated systems in California government, how can it cost millions or billions of dollars to assess them? “There’s no way those two things can be true. They’re talking out of both sides of their mouth here.” calmatters.org/economy/tech... via @khari.bsky.social

I asked @greenwell.bsky.social a bunch of questions for @columjournreview.bsky.social about private equity in local news and what to do about it. Her book Bad Company is excellent -- go read it! www.cjr.org/the-intervie...

today in Grokology, the chatbot is doing antisemitism

"Gabbard didn't provide specifics about the intelligence she was citing or explain what she meant by destroyed..."

In case you need to catch up calmatters.bluelena.io/index.php?ac...

Law enforcement agencies are violating California law and sharing license plate reader data with federal authorities calmatters.org/economy/tech...

I spent some time at the site where protestors incinerated five Waymos—all lined up neatly in a row in downtown LA—and spoke to journalists, eyewitnesses and activists who were there. This is how protestors weaponized Waymos and Lime scooters, and turned them into icons of the anti-ICE uprising

"It was the most amount of less-lethals I’ve seen used in a single day protest," said @calmatters.org reporter @sergioolmos.bsky.social, struck in the chest with what he believes to be a 40mm sponge grenade. He's covered hundreds of days of protests in his career.

If anyone is having trouble following my (increasingly long) thread tracking incidents where police assaulted journalists at protests in Los Angeles this weekend, it's also in spreadsheet form here. This is the more organized version I've been sending to lawyers, agency chiefs, electeds, etc.

A plane with no call sign is currently circling the area where the LA anti-ICE protests are taking place. It took off from March Air Reserve Base

If you work at a hospital or medical practice and catch wind of an investigation, tell a reporter. Text me at 305-810-3006 or DM me.

Last month, Operation: Return to Sender screened in San Francisco, Bakersfield, and Los Angeles to incredible audiences — including a standing-room-only crowd in Bakersfield. Huge thanks to @calmatters.org for partnering with us to bring this story to life. Photo credit: Larry Valenzuela

If you put two NYT stories together you do get “man allegedly completely strung out on drugs uses the US government to kill 300,000 people”

Suddenly, years of work following Palantir’s parnership with police becomes relevant again. Beware the power of social network analysis. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/t...

Happening now

“I think if you asked an everyday Californian if losing their unemployment benefits at Christmas time when they have no job caused a real risk to their livelihood, I bet they’d say yes.” - Samantha Gordon calmatters.org/economy/tech...

NEW: A GLP-1 marketplace is using deepfake tech to slap new faces onto images of real people — who the marketplace claims are its "patients" — in a ploy to sell sketchy semaglutide drugs. futurism.com/medvi-ai-oze...

When people ask me which AI reporters I read, I always say @karenhao.bsky.social. Now I hear your book is already a NY Times bestseller and I AM NOT SURPRISED. Congratulations, Karen, and thank you for your continued work to dispel AI hype and champion human rights 🙌🏾 💐

The DOJ says it’s to solve future crimes. But experts say the policy treats every migrant child—even ones as young as four—as a potential future criminal.

AI will take your job as soon as it figures out what year it is