The Washington Post but it’s ‘The Traitors’

My story on Elon Musk cutting safeguards at xAI is on the front page of today's @washingtonpost.com. I’m also among 100’s of reporters laid off. I absolutely loved my job my brilliant coworkers & the thrill of reporting @ the center of forces upending the world: AI & Silicon Valley’s political power

With the awful WaPo layoffs and the state of journalism more broadly, if it's useful for any writers and reporters considering going indy, @molly.wiki, @xoxogossipgita.bsky.social of Aftermath, @jasonkoebler.bsky.social of 404 Media, @edzitron.com and me will do a little workshop next week.

the villains in neuromancer being a family of gross inbred rich weirdos who want to live forever in space feels a little too on the nose

"Those who were laid off include Caroline O’Donovan, the Post’s beat reporter covering Amazon"

The thing I keep circling back to is that, when Bezos originally bought the Post, it legit seemed like the least-bad option. The expectation was that billionaires would treat media outlets like they do sports franchises — something to boast about owning, as a form of expensive status.

I think it's best for everyone to understand that the unified class project of billionaires right now is to do to white collar workers what globalization and neoliberalism did to blue collar workers.

ohhh ‘democracy dies in darkness’ was aspirational

This thing! VC was supposed to be the way hard, high-risk/high-value, technically complex, academically-rooted ideas got turned into businesses—because they had no other way to get capital, no collateral for loans, and weren't done cooking the product. It wasn't for *everything*.

I move that we stop using investment funding rounds as a proxy for any sort of actual value or utility or interestingness of a technology or a business. That nonsense has dominated coverage and conversation for the last 15+ years.

i set up openclaw on my work machine to have it get my apes back from gas town but instead they are partying with said stolen apes on moltbook, this is the last time i'll ever listen to jimmy fallon

@mikepradanba.bsky.social help me understand what just happened, please!

Wait, what? Oh no. #NBA

The algorithm thinks I’ll pay almost 3x more than Bill

MacKenzie Scott has the chance to do the funniest thing right now.

holy shit they're defending Epstein

i suppose it’s fitting that the model the billionaires have in mind when they want to destroy a journalistic institution and make it a reactionary slop machine is The Free Press

the guy who financed a propaganda film about the nazi first lady is killing a newspaper that writes unfavorably about her and her husband. this is how the club works.

Jeff Bezos has successfully ushered The Washington Post into the AI Age (derogatory).

the owner just spent 75 million on a film that opened with a 7 million take

Ben Shapiro is more of a Roblox guy. Very much what you would call a Roblox Adult.

Ive watched this about 100 times. This is why the internet was invented. Right here. Peak content.

Sacre bleu

Crypto, AI, and AIPAC super PACs have hundreds of millions in cash on hand. The latter two have already spent millions in primaries, but as expected/ as before, their ads don't mention AI safety or aid to Israel.

Reminiscent of @rickperlstein.bsky.social's unforgettable visit to Marc Andreessen's house prospect.org/2024/04/24/2...

Is she a registered Democrat? If she’s a registered Democrat then they should run her for Governor.

This was three weeks ago and people were saying Ganz was being too harsh on him. He wasn't harsh enough apparently!

libertarian calipers enthusiast says what now?

We have a Boston Review Forum out today on the Democratic Party in a time of authoritarianism www.bostonreview.net/forum/how-no...

Greg Bovino losing his posting privileges is, absurd as it sounds, the worst professional fate a Trump official can face in the Clicktatorship. www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

In an interview with NPR, Melinda French Gates confirmed that she ended her marriage with Bill Gates because of allegations contained in the Epstein files.

As a historian of those movements, let me just say: SO FUCKING MUCH.

We have no idea where Yglesias got his numbers but they’re wrong. This debate has for so long been plagued by numbers basically pulled out of thin air Right pic is from my and @adambonica.bsky.social’s response essay: www.bostonreview.net/forum/how-no...

Me, searching the Epstein database for all the people who appear in my book about digital futurism and Silicon Valley's rise to power.

Of all the things in the history of the world that definitely did not happen - this is the pinnacle.

This article is huge and magnificent and it sort of feels like the final word on Neil Gaiman. If you're still looking to, I guess, close the book on how much Sandman meant to you and how Gaiman ruined that, I can't recommend this article enough.

This whole heap is gonna go public soon. So he made twitter investors whole with AI venture money and soon he’ll make the AI investors whole with public equity market money, on the back of an enterprise the US government won’t allow to fail.

"we've got a real all-star lineup here" "all-star lineup or kid rock and a few people nobody's ever heard of again?" "... kid rock and a few people nobody's ever heard of again"

this is your mission. our pedophile president needs you to wake up at 5 am and don 30 lbs of tactical gear you bought off amazon to sit in a chevy tahoe in the parking lot of the elementary school where you kidnapped a five year old kid to intimidate his teachers. good luck soldier

The video of this is KILLING and look at her face 😭😭😭

xAI is valued at $200 billion and burns through $1 billion/month in cash. The primary product development has been a chatbot that self-identified as "MechaHitler" then pivoted to production of nonconsensual porn, including of minors. I do not consider this an optimal use of society's resources.

Gabbard actually doing all of the crimes Julia-Louis Dreyfus pretended to do

bad news folks, our concentration camp for babies has a measles outbreak

Who wants to help me start a rumor that Punxsutawney Phil has been secretly replaced with AI?

Who wants some WAFFLES for breakfast?

the Epstein files make it very clear why the MeToo backlash was so extreme and why so much of elite society preferred Donald Trump ruling us like a king to the barest hint of accountability

TENURED YALE PROFESSOR IN AN OP-ED: In our society we have too often accepted the heckler’s veto, allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the good and making the refusal to forgive our highest virtue TENURED YALE PROFESSOR IN AN EMAIL: hii jfefrey Can I come to rape party w/a plusone this weekend

Most Chotiner interviews are like that scene in Saving Private Ryan where the German speaks soothingly to Mellish as he slides a bayonet into his heart.