The Trump administration is rolling out the red carpet for once-besieged prediction apps like Polymarket and Kalshi, with millions pouring into bets on the midterms. The companies wave away concerns about foreign influence and partisan meddling www.npr.org/2025/12/23/n...

“The internal communications…show federal officials mocking immigrants in crass terms and discussing video edits that might help legitimize the administration’s aggressive stance.”

Just checked Nexis. May be some duplicates, but he's quoted in 917 stories in the past 12 calendar months. Pretty incredible.

“Government silence is a statement, not a VETO," Alfonsi wrote in the email. "If the administration's refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a 'kill switch'' for any reporting they find inconvenient."

jesus i accidentally called it

BREAKING: At least 16 files from the Epstein release disappeared from DOJ's webpage, including a photo of Trump, with no explanation.

One interesting aspect of the TikTok deal is: There will now be an American version of TikTok overseen by Larry Ellison's Oracle, PE firm Silver Lake and UAE-backed MGX, and then a second version of TikTok controlled by ByteDance for the rest of the world.

Trump's BBC lawsuit suggests residents of Florida, where suit was filed, are increasingly turning to VPNs to access things like the BBC program in question. The real reason for Florida's VPN spike? Avoiding age verification laws for porn www.npr.org/2025/12/17/n... by @davidfolkenflik.bsky.social

Candace Owens has said that Bill Gates uses laced mosquitoes to make people allergic to beef, that the earth may not be round and that the moon landing was “fake and gay.” Her MAGA fellows draw the line, however, at her comments on Charlie Kirk and Israel. wapo.st/3MKjPwg

Trump’s BBC lawsuit, lodged in federal court in Florida, has some pretty major jurisdictional issues to clear before you even get to the merits, as BBC’s lawyers wrote to Trump’s legal team before suit was filed today

“If Ader is confused about what Oracle is doing, he’s not the only one…Oracle is just one of the many companies constructing data centers for OpenAI and hoping it pays all its bills.” www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

The Trump administration's voter verification tool known as SAVE is flagging U.S. citizens and non-citizens, which can trigger voter registrations to be cancelled. The admin is ramping up the program nationwide www.npr.org/2025/12/10/n... by @jjoffeblock.bsky.social

Truly wild that states now hoping to tap the BEAD program, already plagued with bureaucratic hurdles and complex compliance rules, now have to prove to David Sacks that their AI laws aren't woke in order to expand rural broadband access.

society’s been waiting too long for an app that will let you make winnie-the-poo rob a bank

nothing quite like the warmth of two AIs bantering about Epstein on a synthetic podcast

Was interviewing Steve Bannon today & he claimed X has tried to restore his personal account after his 2020 ban, but he's refused because "the way Elon runs Twitter is to suppress what he doesn't want to hear. And he boosts what he wants to hear. So it's rigged game. Talk about a man-child"

NEW: ICEBlock sues the Trump administration for violating free speech over pressure on Apple, threats against the developer www.npr.org/2025/12/08/n...

had no idea MJ was the Tim Sweeney of the racing world

Real nice dystopia you got here. Be a shame if somethin’ happened to it…

i learned yesterday that there’s a beauty peptide guy that some of my actor/fashion friends in LA see. this person pushes anti-inflammatory jabs to women as a “glow stack” and to men as “a wolf stack,” and i’ve never felt so alone in los angeles

the clownish-ness/rogue-ness of Perplexity’s publicity stunts and public statements are really striking

"Trust and safety is a broad practice which includes critical and life-saving work to protect children and stop CSAM as well as preventing fraud, scams, and sextortion…not censoring just for the sake of it” www.npr.org/2025/12/04/n... by @shannonbond.bsky.social

Holy shit. Reuters reporting that new admin instructions on visas are if you worked at a platform in trust & safety or content moderation or on fact checking or online safety at an platform you *and your loved ones* are ineligible for H-1B visa. www.reuters.com/world/us/tru...

“Her real betrayal was always of her audience, and of the work she was trusted to do. It’s a cowardly failure made worse by her refusal to name it, or name almost anyone.” slate.com/culture/2025...

reading American Canto has me thinking her NY Mag editor is truly a hero

Oh just a chill Tuesday in 2025 when the Pentagon press corps is replaced with a disgraced Congressman, a Pizzagate proponent and a 9/11 Truther. Totally normal stuff here.

The Twitter investors suing Musk for securities fraud tried to get Alex Spiro kicked off the case, since he's set to both be Musk's attorney and a key witness at trial, which is usually a no-no. But today the judge sided with Musk and will let him keep Spiro. www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...

the David Sacks hagiography on X shows just how touchy the VC crowd is about discussing self-dealing and sweetheart deals

the playbook used to be that the billionaire tech elite quietly hired law firms to send letters & make legal threats to prying reporters. now they boast about it publicly. they know exactly what they’re doing: trying to chill future scrutiny & intimidate journalists from digging into their dealings

We just published a deep look into David Sacks, the White House's AI and Crypto czar. The story examines how he has been able keep hundreds of stakes in AI-related and crypto companies as he influences gov policy in those very industries. Here's what we found: www.nytimes.com/2025/11/30/t...

The Harper’s Index about the AI bubble include these stats: Oracle’s debt has doubled since 2021 and it’s supposed to double again by 2030. Oracle’s cash flow is expected to be negative for the next five years. www.ft.com/content/064b...

this is a good story but to quote Witkoff on the record then grafs later say “a person familiar with Witkoff’s thinking” is hilarious www.wsj.com/world/russia...

it’s giving pistachio milk

NEW: AI “recipe slop” is overrunning search and social. Food creators say Google’s AI Overviews and glossy fake food pics are drowning out real, tested recipes — collapsing traffic and setting home cooks up for disaster, especially this Thanksgiving. Gift link: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

AI financiers are swatting away bubble talk, just as the industry is on track to spend $400B on the hope of fantastical revenue. Companies are investing in each other to prop up demand. Spending is being kept off balance sheets. A look at these bubbly times www.npr.org/2025/11/23/n...

nothing says “i’m definitely over it” like publishing a serialized exposition about the breakup

NEW: Elon Musk's Grokipedia cites a neo-Nazi website 42 times, researchers say www.nbcnews.com/tech/elon-mu...

You can oversee the bloody dismemberment of a Washington Post journalist with a bone saw, and the president of the United States will smile, shake your hand and threaten to pull the license of a news outlet whose reporter asks you a question about it. www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/1...

so for things Congress is supposed to authorize, Congress can be circumvented, but for something the president can do without Congress, the WH will lean on Congress? my brain is breaking

one unintended consequence of the short-lived tiktok blackout: it provided a mini case study that helped Meta defeat the FTC's anti-trust case

Part 5: Revenge of the bamboo

quick someone get Giuliani on the horn

is it really that surprising that the newspaper that made its hit podcast by poaching NPR staffers is now attempting to clone Tiny Desk? truly shameless.

America’s first to-be trillionaire might wanna put those “PC handcuffs” back on his Grok toy

Scoop: The Trump admin's videos boasting triumphs on immigration have used misleading footage from months ago or thousands of miles away When we showed them the errors, DHS said they make a lot of videos and the White House said it'll keep making "banger memes" wapo.st/4nuDGwf

“This post and other similar videos depict incidents that did not occur, though some commenters appeared to think they were real. “Accurate and sad. They milk the system on our back,” one user wrote.

"Belden got into AI slop after sinking into Instagram Reels, the holy land of shortform stupidity" www.gq.com/story/truean...

New A.I. grift just dropped: Spoofing real musicians to steal their follows and listens off Spotify. (By @bobbyallyn.bsky.social) www.npr.org/2025/10/27/n...

AI companies desperate for data centers descend on rural America with big checks and NDAs to keep farmers and other land owners muzzled. “One of the men said he represented a “Fortune 100 company” that wanted the property for an industrial development” www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-ne...

With AI music generators widely available, scammers are uploading songs to the pages of inactive artists and dead musicians. Spotify says it is cracking down, but the practice persists. n.pr/4hzHZ8a