White House Correspondents Dinner #TheyLive

Whoever called the faction of the press who still want to attend the White House Correspondents Dinner the ‘Access of Evil’ I salute you

If the people of a city care so deeply for their sports teams, then all the people of the city & its suburbs should own those teams, not some mega-rich families & investors

Really dislike that my whole state is being extorted by a sports team worth billions. If they wanna go, let them.

My pet lizard also had his first poop post-brumation, and it was very substantial Not related to my needing an extra coffee, but I think the coffee helped

I had to make an extra cup of coffee today

It's not hyperbole in the least to say Musk purchased a six-month shadow presidency for $280 million and used the power of that shadow presidency to 1. Steal the government’s data, 2. Permanently damage the state’s ability to regulate his businesses, and 3, kill non-white people.

Every 10 to 15 years, I want Jesse Eisenberg & Aaron Sorkin to make a new Zuckerberg movie that ages him along with Eisenberg, depicting Zuck as increasingly self-absorbed & deranged. 7-Up + The Aviator

Read this whole thread. Not only does Dan lay out the many reasons why the UK's asylum deportation plan is a moral crime, but it's also completely wasteful & ineffective as a means of managing immigration flows, pushing people into the dangerous mafia-dependent routes they're trying to close

Long thread: I've done interviews on Labour's latest anti-asylum policy today, but, unfortunately, had to turn down some for this evening. So, in addition to the clip from earlier, let me just set out why and how this latest Labour piece of cruelty won't work, but will cause far more harm. 1/38

Dan Reed was a documentary filmmaker who specialized in terrorism and war when he detoured into very different terrain, explosive in other ways entirely: the accusations of child sexual abuse that have followed Michael Jackson since 1993.

Yep. Another great example. And he has one of the worst people in the world working on his (and others') behalves to get people to do that. Her- yes HER- company specialises in attacking women on behalf of abusive celebrity men. www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/justin...

If you take Birthright Israel courses, one of their lessons is that Arab journalists are propaganda-based combatants & so legitimate targets. Extremists consider any journalist critical of Israel a legitimate target

So much outwardly directed hate flows from feelings or self-hatred. I’ve seen it from people I know in my personal life too

I’m normally okay with contemporary slang changing, but I think the suffix “maxxing” is about to become too cringe to be real. I just read an article about startup CEOs bragging about tokenmaxxing to impress investors with how much they spend on LLM services & it makes me want the planet to explode

This piece has so many reflections of the core problem haunting the most powerful industry in our economy today: self-absorption, confirmation bias, feeding the egos of the powerful

from the annals of getting high on your own supply (gift link) www.theverge.com/tldr/915176/...

I am surrounded by scams and cons all over my society

Honestly, I don’t know that we’ll ever get a biopic depiction of Michael Jackson that honestly confronts the darkest possibilities of his life because it would have to get permission from his estate & family

I'm not sure my French is good enough to understand the full subtleties of Libé's review of the Michael Jackson biopic

An exceptionally good survey of the Protestant theological currents feeding this holy war.

The myths in our popular culture about the bravery of police officers aren’t only false, they’re self-serving & gaslighting because it gives them permission to abandon people to violence. “If even the officers wouldn’t go in, it must have been too dangerous for anyone”

From the upcoming "Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed," which is now going to be the next book I need on the shelf & for all the neighbourhood bookstores in North America to give away on promotional days.

The CEO of Palantir posted a fascist manifesto on X. I pointed out that it was fascist—which resulted in a permanent suspension from X (my second time!). So, when you hear the tweeters complaining that BlueSky is intolerant, remember why many of us came here in the first place.

Coachella is trying to wipe all of the footage of The Strokes protest set so I’m gonna post it here. The last images on the screen made me cry.

If there is not already a ska-punk version of "Land of Confusion" by Genesis, there should be. Those "whoa-ohs" in the chorus are crying for it

Unhappy 31st anniversary to the OKC bombing. Two big postscripts: - Timothy McVeigh was held on a gun charge while they figured out whether he was the bomber; that crime no longer exists - The prosecutor, Merrick Garland, focused on McVeigh and largely ignored the movement he was connected to

I have wondered if as time goes on, the Marvel movies will be one of the most "2010s" coded things ever, the equivalent of like 70s variety shows or 50s cars as a decade signifier

Oh no

What the old libertarian gold standard nut jobs never understood was that all currency is fiat currency. It's just that for centuries, the fiat was that gold was currency. These days, the fiat is simply more transparent

Let's all use this occasion to take a look at the many ways Tennessee Republicans have shown how much they value and respect the Traditional Nuclear Family™

This isn't a career move. This is a side hustle pulling some extra cash while you still earn most of your money from having a regularly employed job.

“We in the indoor toilet sector have to work hard selling the benefits of no longer having to leave your house in the middle of the night to take a dump in a shack behind your house on top of a big pile of four months of accumulated dumps”

This is a valid point: whenever you see this sort of high-pressure sales tactic turned on a technology, you can be CERTAIN that it's a fake—actually useful new tech sells itself! And don't underestimate the effectiveness of FOMO as a tool in the hands of a con artist.

The things I do for my family on Record Store Day. Still, it’s better than when people used to do the same lineups just to get an iPhone

We used to be ruled by much more competant alcoholics

Not only is this ad misogynist as all hell, it’s also not true: I know so many people whose AI & LLM corporate service rates have gone through the roof since the start of last year. An AI company won’t ask for a raise, they’ll just raise your rates & tell you how it’s going to be

I've been saying this for awhile but putting these ads in public places, where regular people, not companies, can see them is not meant as an ad, but as a threat.

The only pop song that ends with a key change chorus, which doesn’t make me want to throw my speakers out a window, is “Invisible Touch” by Genesis

My own daughter told me to get off my phone this morning. So I’ll see you later then

OpenAI: We’re burning money like the Joker. A miracle needs to happen for us to turn a profit Microsoft: Please please use our AI systems, we’re teetering on the edge here Anthropic: I wonder what’ll kill us first: lawsuits, regulations or model collapse Media and universities: AI is here to stay

The investors may be spooked but it sounds more like retirement age to me

What I find equally intriguing & horrifying is the prospect of studying such deep, large-scale corruption in the government of the country at the financial heart of the global economy

America's right-wing in a single exchange. It's perfect.

The only really confusing thing about new music for me today is that there's a rock band called Horsegirl & a DJ called Horsegiirl, so I sometimes confuse them in verbal conversation

Meanwhile, oil industry partisans are so stupid that I actually heard an Albertan commentator on Canadian TV a couple of weeks ago saying that solar & wind power yoked you to politically unstable dependencies. Unlike oil, which I presume he imagined flowing out of Fort McMurray like a river

When it comes to the energy transition I'm a glass half full person. I know: plenty of people would say that's terribly naive. They point to the scale of the challenge. They point to vested interests. They point to hard-to-abate sectors. And they're not wrong. But here's what they miss. 🧵

We can be happy the energy transition is moving at full speed while simultaneously being frustrated that we took so long & let our greed slow us down so much