This week I started at Columbia University as a Knight-Bagehot fellow. I doubt I'll be checking Bluesky much over the next year. In the meantime, you should read my just-published final story for Business Insider. it's a fun one: www.businessinsider.com/ai-apocalyps...

drive-by shooting on Puck in this NYMag piece about the ongoing digital media apocalypse nymag.com/intelligence...

no better way to celebrate your first period of unemployment in a decade than getting all your wisdom teeth extracted

👀 👀 👀

you guys are being very cynical about this but the real explanation is that bears and Bigfoot are buddies. They like to hang out and do stuff together

Now playing: open.spotify.com/track/0IcjWu...

Baby earthquake in the Oakland / East Bay area. Just felt it. earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/...

New revelations on Musk's alleged drug use, via @kirstengrind.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/u...

I've finally taken part in an essential digital media rite of passage: I've been laid off. www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

Now playing: open.spotify.com/track/7867B4...

NEW from me: Venture capitalist Justin Caldbeck, LA investor Jessica Mah, 2 ex-employees file dueling lawsuits. — Caldbeck faces fresh sexual harassment claim after #MeToo past — Mah accused of using company funds for Burning Man, landscaping, jet — Allegations of secret affair with Eric Schmidt

NEW from me: Venture capitalist Justin Caldbeck, LA investor Jessica Mah, 2 ex-employees file dueling lawsuits. — Caldbeck faces fresh sexual harassment claim after #MeToo past — Mah accused of using company funds for Burning Man, landscaping, jet — Allegations of secret affair with Eric Schmidt

This is not a glowing endorsement from the AP of Nick Ut as the photographer behind the "Napalm Girl" image www.nytimes.com/2025/05/16/b...

A lawyer representing Anthropic admitted to using an erroneous citation created by the company’s Claude AI chatbot in its ongoing legal battle with music publishers, according to a filing made in a Northern California court on Thursday. techcrunch.com/2025/05/15/a...

"Somewhere along the line the MCU stopped being about making cool movies (that made billions of dollars) and started being, like so much else in our modern hellscape, about user retention." aftermath.site/marvel-thund...

oh my god www.politico.eu/article/card...

Seems bad

Analysis of nearly 500 bird species across North America has found that three-quarters are declining across their ranges, with two-thirds of the total shrinking significantly. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Awful media news: Vox Media just sold gaming site Polygon to "click-farm powerhouse" Valnet, and it has been hit with mass layoffs kotaku.com/polygon-sold...

Some personal news: I'll be moving to New York this summer to become a Knight-Bagehot Fellow at Columbia! It's an incredible opportunity to spend a year deepening my skills alongside a cohort of amazing journalists, and I'm excited to get stuck in.

brb going to Maui for a week 🏝️

"X is not just Y — it's Z" is becoming such a tell for AI-generated copy

Just got access to Google's new "AI Mode." Traditional search results are relegated to just three links in the right rail

xAI has acquired X, Elon Musk says x.com/elonmusk/sta...

M 4.0 - 5 km WNW of Dublin, CA 2025-03-18 02:46:33 (UTC)37.709°N 121.988°W11.7 km depth earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/...

Crazy that I've lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for eight years and this is the first earthquake I've ever actually felt.

Oakland earthquake anyone?

In light of the Rippling-Deel "honeypot" lawsuit, revisiting my 2023 feature on Deel that detailed the HR-tech startup's extensive use of contractors (including the CEO), close family ties, regulatory/legal issues, and breakneck "Deel speed" culture www.businessinsider.com/inside-hr-st...

randomly thinking about that time at the start of pandemic when a stranger dumped a bag full of fetish gear and an Elmo doll on our apartment roof

"Concept videos are bullshit, and a sign of a company in disarray, if not crisis." daringfireball.net/2025/03/some...

A better world is possible www.theverge.com/news/626311/...

Merry isn't happy about being locked out the office while I take calls

Facing defeat in chess, the latest generation of AI reasoning models sometimes cheat without being instructed to do so. www.technologyreview.com/2025/03/05/1...

haven't seen this before: Google is now running a banner ad at the top of documents in Google Docs to promote its AI products

lovely, wholesome interview with Vishvaa Rajakumar, the 20-year-old Indian college student who won the Memory League World Championship earlier this month www.nytimes.com/2025/02/14/s...

Clever new phishing email. It's a real order on Best Buy, so it passes email spam filters, and you can click the link to see the order on Best Buy's site. But payment info is incorrect, and it entices you to call the scammer's phone number in the address field for "help."

Shopify support staff were told to give “no comment” and to end online chats if merchant clients asked about the company’s technology being used by the musician Kanye West to sell a T-shirt bearing a Nazi swastika. thelogic.co/news/exclusi...

"Altman told the president-elect that the tech industry would achieve artificial general intelligence — the hypothetical moment when technology matches human intelligence — during the Trump administration, according to three people familiar with the call." www.nytimes.com/2025/02/08/t...

Trump says the US will "take over" the Gaza Strip and "level" it. www.theguardian.com/world/live/2...

probably fine www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Oh boy. Can tell stories of companies using these kinds of cooked up claims to threaten workers into silence. Trade secrets, defamation, extortion claims, etc. Glad to see @robaeprice.bsky.social @businessinsider.com covering these scare tactics

NEW: Companies have a new tool for tackling workers who speak out about wrongdoing — accusing them of misappropriating trade secrets. 🧵 www.businessinsider.com/defend-trade...

going to test the power of Bluesky: If you live in LA, I have two tickets to a Jamie XX wildfire relief show at the Shrine that I can't attend anymore. It's starting **now**. If you can make it, I'd like to see the tickets go to good use. DM me! www.axs.com/events/82654...

In a "fiery" and "confrontational" call with Denmark's Prime Minister, Trump said he really does want to take over Greenland. Denmark is now freaking out. www.ft.com/content/ace0...

A Florida man on a carnivore diet ate so much fat that cholesterol started seeping out his pores. gizmodo.com/a-florida-ma...

Elon Musk is helping fund the mounting legal bills of British far-right activist Tommy Robinson, Robinson's supporters say. "We are grateful to Elon Musk and his team at X for agreeing to provide support to Tommy Robinson for two specific legal cases." inews.co.uk/news/elon-mu...

“The $TRUMP memecoin — a financial asset that didn't exist on Friday afternoon — now accounts for about 89% of Donald Trump's net worth.” www.axios.com/2025/01/19/d...

Borderlands is a great example of how franchises stagnate. 1 is a visually striking, corporation-dominated universe where you solve mysteries & battle arms dealer-paramilitaries. By 3, everyone is a zany mallgoth and you work with friendly arms dealers to defeat rebels trying to upend the system.

probably worth noting that the NYT story on Stephen Miller quietly dialed back its language on what Mark Zuckerberg "blamed" Sheryl Sandberg for after publishing (no update/correction note) Archived version: web.archive.org/web/20250116... Current version: www.nytimes.com/2025/01/16/u...