Amazing?

You would have to explain what a call, text, YouTube, website, and social media account were first. But then they'd probably be pretty upset!

My latest newsletter is a long reflection on an AI and journalism conference I attended in Baltimore last week, including a look at the process by which Tech Policy Press produced a timeline of links between MAGA, Silicon Valley, and the European far right: deans-list.ghost.io/ghost/#/site

Look I can’t help that one of my hobbies is “reading PDFs”

Maybe he ate at the one in DC's Chinatown and just really enjoyed it

Proud of this one: At @techpolicypress.bsky.social, we created an interactive timeline of linkages between the Trump administration, the US tech sector, and the transatlantic far-right. You can view it here: www.techpolicy.press/charting-the...

Joe: I am a 73 year-old retired mechanic in Forsberg, Nebraska. My 3 biggest problems are Iran's uranium enrichment capability, the casting of Helen in Christopher Nolan's "Odyssey," and the ability of Tennesseeans to check out "Roots" from a library 1000 media outlets: can we please talk at length

NEW: A class action lawsuit is accusing OpenAI of sharing ChatGPT chat queries (!) + other personal data with Meta and Google. Reminder: no matter how friendly your chatbot is, it's probably surveilling you. futurism.com/artificial-i...

It's hard to know what the Republican Party is going to look like when Trump is finally out of power, but if these kinds of stories are any glimpse into the future I think it's pretty clear that the GOP is on track to get far, far, far worse www.notus.org/congress/wil...

White people disgusted by this racist display are making pithy jokes in the replies. I want acknowledgment that it’s physically painful to think about our black elders, in particular, enduring the consequences of a Supreme Court decision that augurs a return to the Jim Crow era.

TBF you can do this with any movie concept

For shame. www.cleveland.com/news/2026/04...

This week's newsletter is about the unrelenting march of time, the pervasive sense of instability, and the long-term threats that catch up to you. Plus, if you scroll to the bottom there are dogs! deans-list.ghost.io/unreal-bird-...

Turns out "The DOJ changed hands and our buddies decided to settle" is not the same as "we won the case on the merits" www.lawfaremedia.org/article/what...

With American democracy in free fall and Silicon Valley's imperial ambitions unmasked, @nathaliemarechal.net argues in @techpolicypress.bsky.social that the old politics of tech policy advocacy no longer apply. Experts must pick a side: democracy or fascism. www.techpolicy.press/tech-policy-...

Maybe this sounds crazy, but if your Project 2029 or whatever isn't this ambitious, it's not meeting the moment

Markets and Liberty!

Shitplomat Darren Beattie got this memo signed a few weeks after we learned he was trying to Twitter Files the State Department www.thewayfinder.net/p/the-extrem... 1/

From WaPo a few days ago. Remember Amazon's HQ2? Cities across "middle America" lined up to genuflect to Amazon, which built its headquarters in DC—one of our wealthiest cities. Don't show up only when you want our power water and land. Show up with JOBS. s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/

Thanks i hate it

"The thesis of the book is, effectively, Palantir loves getting big contracts from the Department of Defense. And when you think about it, doesn’t that make Palantir kind of heroic?" www.techpolicy.press/palantirs-ma...

*Laughs in Ohio*

one of the ways the mid to late 20th century political world has distorted the historical memories of even sophisticated observers is in the idea that you can achieve major transformations of american political life through something like bipartisan consensus

This week in unreal birds: My new article with @joncong.bsky.social offers a retrospective on the pathologies of disinfo programming in the Global South. I tackle civic engagement and social media for the @kettering.org. And implications for Orban's defeat: deans-list.ghost.io/unreal-bird-...

Man is anyone taking notes

hawking a line of branded Mountain Goats smart glasses. no matter where you look things look a little bleaker and also the wearer cannot remove the glasses once worn. I’m disrupting this sector

John Eastman was not disbarred for making "allegedly questionable constitutional arguments," and characterizing the decision that way is risible.

Congratulations to those who won the campus speech wars—student protests are punishable by expulsion but we now have hate rallies so vile that even our Republican governor is appalled. signalohio.org/ohio-passed-...

Actions should have consequences exhibit one jillion

Lots of international lessons and resources here for US state and local educators, human rights offices, and civil society organizations worried about online rumors and propaganda: democracywithoutexception.substack.com/p/the-local-... By @theodolan.bsky.social !

Confirming Bloomberg's report from last night that Monarch Tractor is finally kaput, acquired by Caterpillar. All four companies Foxconn once promised to build vehicles for at the former GM plant in Lordstown are now dead. (Fisker, Lordstown Motors, and, lol, IndiEV) techcrunch.com/2026/04/15/m...

In which The Free Press steps on a rake, repeatedly, trying to prevent @noupside.bsky.social from setting the record straight about Jacob Siegel's book, demonstrably false claims, and a pulled review: agentsofinfluence.substack.com/p/i-was-fals... This isn't how responsible media behaves.

Péter Magyar, who unseated Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán Sunday in a landslide, shared a bombshell with reporters that the outgoing leader had diverted taxpayer funds to bankroll the American Conservative Political Action Conference. trib.al/ct7GGV3

Oh, yeah, that was the Obama Iran deal.

So Russian interference in Romania is OK But applying EU law in Europe is unacceptable Got it

New on our blog: Social media can both save democracy and destroy it. Both things can be true. @dwj.eurosky.social makes sense of new KF-Gallup survey data on social media & democracy. kettering.org/social-media...

Ten years ago today, in April 2016, the Boston Globe printed a satirical front page imagining a future Trump administration. The page was called "alarmist," "hyperbolic," "dystopian." But we’ve put up with so much since then it now looks like . . . a slow Thursday?

This week in Unreal Birds: An investigative agenda for tech journalists, @himself.bsky.social's excellent piece on "Gooning Toward the Fuhrer" as policy coordination (yes that's the title), The rise of international Project 2025 copycats, and more! deans-list.ghost.io/unreal-bird-...

Claude is down :/ so I’m just running my sink

They oversaw a very important social media influence operation for the Kremlin, got caught, fled. And now they're not just back, they're guests at Donald & Melania Trump's Easter Egg Roll at the White House.

this is true beyond journalism. the federalist society is exceptionally well-funded while the closest thing to a liberal counterpart has to engage in endless penny pinching

Read that again: the President's son is advising a gambling firm that takes bets on the lives of US service members. Now read it in your "hUnTeR BiDeN's LaPtOp" voice.

Today, we're launching our interactive North Star Data Center Policy Toolkit to stop, slow, and restrict the rapid expansion of US AI data centers. The toolkit and training series lay out affirmative local, state, and federal policies to protect communities: datacenters.ainowinstitute.org 🧵

Freedom!

Mayor Brandon Johnson debuts our new Chicago Snowplow “Abolish Ice” 🪏🧊 Video from ABC7’s livestream

Everything old is new again. Except this isn't that old, and we should really listen to the lessons of the past 25 years. Most of the solutions to these problems aren't going to be technical. They are going to be normative and cultural and political, just like the social media questions were.

Last issue I wrote about the institutions replacing learning and thinking with AI shortcuts. Almost immediately after, I saw a new Brookings study on AI in schools. Quality and cost are ever at war. What happens if we go full steam ahead with classroom AI? deans-list.ghost.io/unreal-bird-...

Thinking about making a movie that's a reverse Matrix: A millennial discovers a computer simulation where they can live in 1999 again

Pope Leo is the first Pope to have ever experienced the US healthcare system, so there's that