I’m shook……. get it

Nice post you got there, it'd be a shame if I deliberately missed your point so I could be tedious about it

Macrohard trademark application filed by xAI on Aug. 1

My understanding of this viewpoint is basically: engineers who build AI are really motivated by its world-changing potential, and want to work on AGI. From this worldview, a bad output like mechahitler is a problem to be solved, but making an LLM for a hornybot is time wasted not changing the world.

This didn't make the story (since piece was focused on AI), but there was a part of the meeting where an X leader said the platform had its most daily U.S. downloads ever on Thursday, leading to great applause from workers. (That was the day of the Charlie Kirk murder. Below is the transcript.)

Elon Musk had a 1.5 hour meeting at xAI yesterday where he talked about building a competitor to Microsoft called "Macrohard," creating "Baby Grok" for kids 2-12, and using AI to quintuple X's revenue to $10B. We listened in. After leaving Trump, he's all in on AI. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/18/t...

Inside a tumultuous summer at xAI, in which Elon Musk's demands to make Grok less "woke" and more viral led to chaos: www.nytimes.com/2025/09/18/t...

Character Limit came out a year ago today! A uhhhh lot has happened in that time, but @kateconger.com and I feel like the book is now more relevant than ever in understanding a certain man's wealth and power. Thanks for coming with us on this fun, dumb ride.

Our small rectangular son, Character Limit, is one year old today! Thank you for making @rmac.bsky.social & my first year as authors so incredible! We are continually grateful to share this story with readers. 💙

also Utah law enforcement, which I would venture to guess is not particularly “woke,” has gone out of their way to emphasize this person’s cooperation

Tyler Robinson indictment has now been filed, including texts in which he confirms the bullet etchings were all just a "big meme": www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...

This week, X let users post videos of Charlie Kirk’s death without content warnings, in violation of their stated policy on gore. And then the app received record downloads.

I try not to do media criticism because we all make mistakes and there but for the grace of god go I. But it was really irresponsible for mainstream outlets to run with the "trans slogans engraved on the bullet" narrative, which seemed implausible from the jump.

Musk, who has funded lawsuits against companies for terminating employees based on what they've said on social media, is tagging the CEO of Microsoft on X to complain about what some of his employees are saying on social media.

I've never seen a board member campaign for an executive's pay package like this www.nytimes.com/2025/09/12/b...

it really feels like social media companies have given up when it comes to preventing or limiting the spread of graphic violent videos www.nytimes.com/2025/09/10/t...

Grok says that videos of Charlie Kirk being shot are memes and that he's actually fine

Exclusive: Cindy Cohn, longtime director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is leaving the group after 25 years. The decision was announced at a meeting this afternoon. I sat down w/ Cohn to discuss her victories, unfinished battles, and the future of privacy, encryption, and corporate power.

we don’t know her precise birthdate, but sweet peach Penny girl is turning 16 this month!! can you even believe her wisdom and grace

PACER having an outage the moment the Google antitrust ruling drops is really peak comedy

Elon Musk and his company have tweaked Grok, the A.I. powered chatbot, to make its answers more conservative on many issues, according to a New York Times analysis of thousands of its responses. nyti.ms/462hBye

Great story by my colleagues on the constant political realignment of Grok, the generative AI chatbot over on the other site. This change to Grok’s answer about the greatest threat to Western civilization is particularly ironic/meta. Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2025/09/02/t...

One problem with being on Twitter is that Elon Musk constantly rejigs the site to push his views. He cannot be sidelined when he owns the underlying system. His manipulation of the Twitter AI to match his views illustrates this point. Via @kateconger.com www.nytimes.com/2025/09/02/t...

"...Mr. Musk and his artificial intelligence company, xAI, have tweaked the chatbot to make its answers more conservative on many issues, according to an analysis of thousands of its responses by The New York Times. The shifts appear, in some cases, to reflect Mr. Musk’s political priorities."

We studied how Elon Musk shifts Grok’s politics to mirror his own. Sometimes it works, like when Grok changed overnight from saying disinformation was the worst threat to humanity to claiming it was birth rate decline instead. Other times, Grok is harder to influence: www.nytimes.com/2025/09/02/t...

I recently finished “Character Limit” on audiobook and found it so noteworthy that I had to go get a hardcover copy.

we have finally lured @nicknehamas.bsky.social, who did a ton of incredible DOGE reporting, to bluesky. follow him and BE NICE

NEW: Social Security’s chief data officer, Charles Borges, has resigned, three days after submitting a whistle-blower complaint that alleged members of DOGE had uploaded the confidential personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans to an insecure cloud server.

why are sites increasingly defaulting to "magic links" instead of passwords? I do not want to go into my email and wait, I just want to login please

on dog day, behold dog

Here’s what the Taylor swift and Travis kelce engagement taught me about B2B sales:

I rewatched the original Fast & Furious and I have questions about the heists, specifically what happened after hijacking the trucks. Did they pull over and drop off the driver? How did they fit all the TVs in the souped up Hondas? Why didn’t they just hotwire & steal trucks from the truck stop?

The entire Social Security database, dumped on a random cloud server: www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/u...

A fun thing that xAI's lawsuit claims is that it is being disadvantaged in the AI race because it doesn't have access to queries from iPhone users www.nytimes.com/2025/08/25/t...

Elon Musk, May 2022: "We will never surrender/settle an unjust case against us, even if we will probably lose." www.nytimes.com/2025/08/22/t...

Almost three years after mass layoffs began at Twitter: www.nytimes.com/2025/08/22/t...

They say phones only make us miserable but I just got this news alert and laughed for a solid minute so who is to say

currently getting cancelled4truth in work Slack for my passionate defense of labubus

I am actually shrieking www.nytimes.com/2025/08/19/r...

The FTC is appealing a ruling that blocked its investigation into Media Matters:

one of the unfortunate things about being a journalist on the west coast is that you wake up after the joke cycle has already started so it takes almost a full day for you to catch up to the fact that My Source News Opinion World is a real thing and not a bit

did you know you can log off and just print cyanotypes of your dog?? big if true

getting my microplastics removed

NEW: A federal judge on Friday blocked the FTC’s investigation of Media Matters, writing “it should alarm all Americans when the government retaliates against individuals or organizations for engaging in constitutionally protected public debate.” @kateconger.com reports:

NEW: A federal court has granted a preliminary injunction to Media Matters in its case against the Federal Trade Commission, agreeing that the FTC investigation violated the group's free speech rights www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...

is this... good?

I posted this about a month ago and the number one suggestion I got was to turn off replies for people who don’t follow me. just updating to say it worked! I am having a much more peaceful and productive experience on this app now.

I don't have a good answer for what the alternative looks like, but asking 18 years to bet their future on highly specified training for jobs based on which they think will be in high demand 5-10 years from now turned out to be a very bad way to structure higher education

I wrote last week about how the tech dream is ending for mid-career workers. This is a really good companion piece about how entry level tech jobs are vanishing, too, and the Silicon Valley gold rush is coming to a close: www.nytimes.com/2025/08/10/t...

Just another relatable National Trust sign