Palantir and its CEO are increasingly trying to spin the idea it would engage in civil liberties-violating state surveillance as absurd. Unfortunately for this PR push, we previously caught them helping run a flagship NSA dragnet surveillance program. theintercept.com/2025/09/12/p...

EXCLUSIVE: U.S. Attacked Boat Near Venezuela Multiple Times to Kill Survivors American officials said the repeat drone strikes were carried out by Special Operations Command, and more attacks could come soon. theintercept.com/2025/09/10/u...

Two striking things about this report (which confirms allegations former 3rd SFG officer Aguilar has made about this gang’s role in GHF): —The photo where they’ve put a “FOB Mar-a-Lago” sign up at their Gaza base —The incompetence of ccing the BBC on the all-hands “do not comment to the BBC” email

This is arguably the biggest (maybe only) reason to upgrade

it's stunning what a rare and radical statement this is defector.com/five-years-o...

With students heading back to the classroom, a group of cognitive scientists and AI researchers has published one of the most forceful and evidence-backed calls yet to reject the "uncritical adoption of AI" in academia:

The story gets funnier, I swear. “We believe that in the near future half the people on the planet will be AI, and we are the company that’s bringing those people to life." www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/dig...

Apple's official name for the camera bump being "The Plateau" is so good.

im always thinking there should be more places where building legos intersects with gambling and child predators

New York magazine asked me to explore Roblox and report back on what the hell is going on in there. I found kids are bombarded with covert ads, casino-style manipulation, and nonstop enticements to spend their parents' money. nymag.com/intelligence...

At long last. This is great

The targeting of civilian boats in VZ is in some ways the maritime version of the CIA's illegal program in the 1990s targeting civilian planes in the region detailed by @tim-weiner.bsky.social in his new book.

It's interesting how "building stuff" has been reduced to an axiomatic virtue for many people, esp in tech and the Abundance Democrat sphere. There's a lot of different stuff you can build. In the case of Marc Andreessen, who's being referenced below, the "stuff" he wants to build includes weapons.

I am constantly saying this but one thing to know is that Vance’s comms team is run by very young, very online and very far right guys. They were a big part of having him push the Haitians cats and dogs thing.

For context that's a third the price the RIAA expected a single human to pay for just downloading 24 songs a decade ago (after cutting the ruling down from $1.5m, or $62,000 per song), and that's not adjusting for inflation:

I use this at least once a week. Priceless tool.

Putting aside the fact that this is just completely historically incorrect, I find it baffling that people invoke the Manhattan Project as something aspirational. The advent of nuclear weapons has been one of the most destabilizing forces in human history.

insane that so much of today's political climate springs directly from anime creep guys getting permabanned from Something Awful and forming 4chan

Today’s excellent @maxread.info newsletter has me thinking of how much the X/Bluesky dynamic reminds me of my teen years, when message board hostilities would eventually drive a subset of users to create a splinter message board, resulting in deep poster-on-poster blood feuds across both forums.

This gets at why the name change would ultimately be a good thing even if it's being done for the absolutely silliest, most self-aggrandizing reasons.

The reason why the FP sold for so much — relative to its small output — is because it has a world view that is embraced by a readership of very wealthy people. Weiss isn't anti-establishment. She comforts the comfortable.

mfw I'm kicking the shit out of the establishment!

1/ I worked at DoD. I literally cannot imagine lawyers coming up with a legal basis for lethal strike of suspected Venezuelan drug boat. Hard to see how this would not be "murder" or war crime under international law that DoD considers applicable. Read expert analysis by @bcfinucane.bsky.social⤵️

All I can think about while watching the Chinese military parade is how angry Trump must be about how crummy his looked (even in a vacuum, let alone by comparison to this).

“We just … shot out a drug-carrying boat, lot of drugs in that boat,” Trump said in his typical barely coherent fashion. “These came out of Venezuela.” theintercept.com/2025/09/02/t...

"Hicks - who voted for Donald Trump - said he has sent dozens of letters to the president, Tennessee's senators and lawmakers in other states with major weapons facilities. "I've contacted politicians and the White House and haven't heard anything back." www.reuters.com/business/hea...

NEW: Mercenary spyware is coming to the US. ICE just quietly unsuspended their contract with spyware maker #Paragon. Remember them? Caught earlier this year being used to hack Italian journalists. This is bad, let's talk about how we got here 1/ jackpoulson.substack.com/p/exclusive-...

what the hell is the point of a tron movie that takes place in the real world

Of course this is just pure macho posturing but I do think it’s a more honest name for the department.

I’m always fascinated by people who just sit in their seats while everyone else gets off the plane, what’s that about

Oh wow this just activated a completely dormant chunk of my brain.

Thank you for putting this on bluesky where Donald Trump will see it

Lawyers for Gerald Pizzuto say Idaho officials defied court orders to hand over information on lethal injection drugs.

You are not persuading the text pipeline! You are stumbling on to a mathematical vector in which you are causing the word delivery mechanism to replicate sequences other people typed up in which they are persuaded and that OpenAI likely stole without permission!

Last week I got two documents from the NNSA, via a FOIA request that I filed 2 years ago, involving early (1947 and 1949) estimates by scientists at Los Alamos (incl. Stevens alum Frederick Reines) trying to estimate how many nuclear bombs it would take to radioactively contaminate the planet.

This is exactly how outlets should respond to corporate PR stonewalling (from this story: www.theverge.com/microsoft/76...)

is the "a.i." "bubble" "bursting"? or, four ways to consider a vibe shift maxread.substack.com/p/is-the-ai-...

The idea of anyone with decision-making power at DoD believing in astrology is genuinely terrifying

A college newspaper is challenging the arcane laws used against Mahmoud Khalil and other noncitizens targeted over their criticism of Israel on campuses. theintercept.com/2025/08/26/s...

Also, we have data now showing that being in a data breach really does increase your chance of being a victim of identity theft, even if you never slip up and leak or accidentally authorize something you shouldn't.

It remains staggering to me that, in the absence of meaningful penalties for the people at fault, this has simply become a part of ordinary modern life.

The idea that the exercise of political power is downstream of people looking at either the right posts or wrong posts seems deeply silly to me.

UPDATE: In response to our letter, D. Maryland clerk says PACER restrictions will be lifted in Abrego Garcia's case this afternoon!

LAPD choppers are a malignant nuisance. They're harbingers of surveillance, operated *continuously*—yet the city's own data show they raise stress, impair cognition and burn 100,000s of gallons of gas. The best part? there's no evidence they deter or reduce crime at all. It's time to ground them.

This is what happens when you order delivery in DC right now.

As the US considers acquiring agentic AI systems to produce AI-generated propaganda campaigns, @heidykhlaaf.bsky.social warned @sambiddle.com of @theintercept.com that these systems are easily compromised, threatening national security rather than protecting it: theintercept.com/2025/08/25/p...

The 🇺🇸 Pentagon is getting into agentic AI for propaganda purposes, to "suppress dissenting arguments" This will normalize state-based AI influence operations, pollute the public sphere, and encourage an already opaque & corrupt disinfo industry @sambiddle.com theintercept.com/2025/08/25/p...