I gotta give them props, the opening to The Late Show with Stephen Colbert was pretty good. 👇

Kimmel. Colbert. Suits against the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and 60 Minutes. Extorting settlements from CBS, ABC, and others. Blocking the AP's access to the White House. 🧵

TikTok’s U.S. business would be controlled by an investor consortium including Oracle, Silver Lake and Andreessen Horowitz under a framework the U.S. and China are finalizing.

So it begins

Ik schreef over Mike Judge, een softwareprogrammeur die dacht dat AI hem stukken productiever maakte. Totdat 'ie het ging meten. decorrespondent.nl/16359/deze-p...

In de eerste weken van de verkiezingscampagne zien we weer te veel voorbeelden waarin peilingen verkeerd gebruikt worden door interviewers, duiders, en journalisten. Daarom hierbij tien vuistregels om de peilingen wijzer te duiden, en om elkaar op aan te spreken. stukroodvlees.nl/peilingen-du...

En dat kost je slechts 1 miljoen voor de inauguratie

EU laws are cute, as long as we don't try to enforce them against American corporations. Given US dominance in tech and this level of clarity, the silver lining here is that the EU and the member states can fire thousands of lawyers and close entire institutions. No point, is there?

In minder dan een week tijd; * vuurt Rusland raketten af op een pand in Kyiv waar de EU een kantoor heeft; * vliegt het drones over wapenroutes in Duitsland; * verstoort het de GPS in Bulgarije zodat Von der Leyen niet kan landen...

Will the Train Coming Out of This Movie Screen Kill Everyone in the Theater?

I'm one of the 37 targeted below by DNI Tulsi Gabbard. I haven't had a clearance nor worked in government since 2013. This is political theater & a dangerous example of government abusing its powers to punish private citizens for openly exercising their 1st Amendment rights. My full statement:

“President Donald Trump's administration is considering imposing sanctions on European Union or member state officials responsible for implementing the bloc's landmark Digital Services Act, two sources familiar with the matter said” www.reuters.com/world/us/tru...

Good thing no one uses Microsoft Excel for anything related to legal, regulatory or compliance business functions www.theverge.com/news/761338/...

👌

95% of generative AI pilots at companies are failing fortune.com/2025/08/18/m...

Showing the endangered leader of an invaded country my hats

The most depressing AI pieces are always going to be the thoughtful, nuanced, open-minded considerations by respected writers who are transparently responding to the publicity incentive created by editors whose owners want this kind of content

Reuters reports the US is embedding tracking devices in the packaging of AI chip shipments to China. As I wrote in a recent post (below), the ultimate goal is much more ambitious: embed tracking into the chips themselves. #polisky #econsky #lawsky www.reuters.com/world/china/...

😮

Wie in een stuk over AI schrijft 'dit is inmiddels geen science fiction meer' (oid) is af

In Crescent Park, Palo Alto, neighbors say peace vanished when Mark Zuckerberg moved in—buying 11 homes, building a secretive compound, running an unpermitted school & bringing 8 years of noise, parties & heavy security. He sent neighbors noise canceling headphones.

the scenario we all feared

Analysts show that capital expenditures on AI were so big over the last 6 months they added more to the GDP than *all consumer spending*. That growth is offsetting pain from the tariffs and slow job growth. So the AI bubble may be propping up the whole US economy. What happens if and when it pops?

“Ten million people within 98 miles of the epicentre could have been sent Google's highest level alert - giving up to 35 seconds of warning to find safety. Instead, only 469 "Take Action" warnings were sent out for the first 7.8 magnitude quake.” www.bbc.com/news/article...

The Technocrats' Magazine, Final Issue, 1933

By putting two very loosely connected things in the same paragraph, the NY Times appears to credit a few AI bots and fake accounts with the entire success of the AfD. Gotta stop doing this! It's so dumb.

Worth a watch: Head of Signal, Meredith Whittaker, on so-called "agentic AI" and the difference between how it's described in the marketing and what access and control it would actually require to work as advertised.

'As AI continues to dominate discussions in both corporate boardrooms and financial markets, the critical question remains: are the anticipated returns worth the escalating investments' #bubbel www.ft.com/content/eb1f...

'...following the news on social media increases current affairs knowledge, the ability to discern true from false news and trust in the news.' www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Eens met Menno. Een anecdote of technische mogelijkheid is nog geen gevaarlijk patroon. Zie ook de ontelbare waarschuwingen voor AI-misinformatie-tsunami's die alle verkiezingen van 2024 zouden overspoelen. Achteraf bleek het hoogstens hier en daar om een overstromend doucheputje te gaan.

Plus: prominente speler in de Amerikaanse wapenindustrie

The billionaire golf champion in chief wants to address the common American worker complaint about having too many days off. Child labor, prison slaves and the 7-day workweek: the feudal order has been restored.

De kwaliteit van 36 procent van alle processen-verbaal die politie en boa’s opmaken van overtredingen is zo slecht dat het OM er niets mee kan. Het gaat bijvoorbeeld om openbaar dronkenschap, baldadigheid, wildplassen en vuurwerkoverlast. buff.ly/eXuy3fw

Uit deze namenlijst concludeer ik dat de skybox in het Philips Stadion een cruciale rol heeft gespeeld in dit proces.

Breaking news: The State Department is requiring that all student visa applicants make their social media accounts public to be scrutinized for hostility toward the U.S., according to a cable obtained by The Post.

'Sam Altman says the AI utopia is already here — in a manifesto aimed at raising money from the Saudis' Lees @bcmerchant.bsky.social www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/this-is-th...

already a bluesky classic, only 15hrs old

Telco Trump www.trump.com/media/trump-...

HUGE MEDIA NEWS: POLITICO is launching a new spin-off publication, POLITICO Weimar! If you sign up now, each morning you can get its “Reich Chancellery Playbook” newsletter delivered to your inbox as a bonus!!

Fascinating contrast here: China shuts down many AI services during finals week to limit student use, U.S. tech co's make premium AI services free for students during finals week. One is the overly strict parent and the other is the drug dealer preying on the weak.

NYT: “How will Trump’s illegal military takeover of LA play for Democrats?” I’m just a political communication scholar standing in front of our paper of record asking for them to not strategy frame an authoritarian takeover. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/10/u...

Deze mensen....

ALWEER?

WSJ reports on decades-long Pentagon disinformation campaign to propagate UFO myths "based on interviews with two dozen current and former U.S. officials, scientists and military contractors involved in the inquiry, as well as thousands of pages of documents, recordings, emails and text messages."

A lot of people say generative AI shouldn't infringe on copyright. These researchers actually tried to do it. The result: an 8 terabyte dataset of text that's openly licensed or in the public domain & 7 B parameter model that performs as well as Meta's Llama 7B www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

London-based Builder[.]ai, once valued at $1.5 billion and backed by Microsoft and Qatar's sovereign wealth fund, has filed for bankruptcy after reports that its "AI-powered" app development platform was actually operated by Indian engineers pretending to be artificial intelligence.

"This is the most significant attack against a national nuclear enterprise in the history of nuclear weapons."

headline construction masterclass

Stop credulously quoting executives talking their book