Is Sam Darnold elite?

That Ring “search party” ad was unsubtle enough that even my 10yo watched it and was like “are they gonna use this for ICE?”

The Washington Post just laid off its entire award-winning photo team. They were our eyes in places we'll never see. It's a horrifying loss at a time when lying governments, propaganda and AI slop are on the rise.

The number of talented, resourceful and truly good people who worked their whole careers for a job like this only to have the rug pulled from them by feckless rich men is staggering. Naomi is one of the best — best tech reporters, best people — and I hope a wiser outlet than ours hires her soon.

This story published shortly after the Post laid off the author, ace cybersecurity reporter Joe Menn, along with the majority of our colleagues on the tech team and hundreds of others across the organization. Like so many others, this was Joe's dream job, and he was very, very good at it.

I suspect that the echo chamber of Truth Social and conservative media, along with X becoming a safe space for racism and extremism under Musk, has given our Republican leaders a deeply skewed idea of what ordinary Americans find acceptable www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

NEW: NewsGuard, a company that rates the credibility of online news sites and tracks misinformation, just filed a federal First Amendment lawsuit against Trump's FTC, alleging that the agency is strangling its business because it disagrees with the low ratings of right-wing outlets. wapo.st/4a28gdd

Laying off the tech reporter who was our smartest chronicler of internet culture and is brilliant on TikTok herself is one of the many, many decisions taken by Washington Post leadership this week that I will never understand. Follow Tatum on both TikTok and now Substack, she is the best!

No one writes more incisively, accessibly and credibly than Geoffrey about the ways tech companies are serving — or, far more often these days, disserving — everyday consumers than Geoffrey. He’s worth following wherever he goes.

imagine having one of the best tech reporters of all time on your staff and then choosing to lay them off

"If your yacht fails to endorse a candidate for president in an existential election, people will say, 'Good. A boat should not endorse candidates for president.'" Food for thought as zillionaires mull how to spend their pocket change www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/... ht @suellentrop.bsky.social

can vouch for heather’s editing, writing, and personality. getting to work with her was one of the best things about working at the post and soon it will be one of the best things about working wherever heather lands next.

Jeff Bezos’s wealth has increased an average of $70 million every day of 2026, meaning that he could have offset The Post’s losses with what he’s made since Monday.

Lost my job at the Washington Post today, along with many of the best in the business. I want to keep covering tech and the internet. If you have leads on jobs for me or my colleagues, please reach out. I’m so proud of our work.

again we do not really do a good job of explaining how wealthy people like Jeff Bezos are his net worth is $253.2 billion. so he could take one million dollars, and just light it on fire and then do it again tomorrow and again the day after that and then do it every day for 693 years and 8 months

Whatever you think of the Washington Post at this moment, here's a chance to support the dedicated, hard-working journalists who were just laid off. If you have the means, your donation is most welcome. If you don't, a kind thought and maybe spreading the word to others is support enough 💙

I've been through some shitty times in my 20 years as a journalist but today just might take the shit cake

On today's Vergecast, I talked w/ @davidpierce.xyz about Anthropic's wild plan to "destructively scan all the books in the world:" why they did it, why a judge found it legal, and why — nefarious as it might sound — what other tech giants did was arguably worse. www.theverge.com/the-vergecast

im usually pretty decent at pushing through distractions to focus on the work but this is a pretty tough one to tune out ngl

"He had decided that the America he believed in would not make it if people like him didn’t speak up, so on a cool, rainy morning in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Jon, 67 and recently retired, marched up to his study and began to type... " (cont.)

DOCTOR: I told him he needed to get out to a show, that was how he would cure his depression. CHOTINER: So you learned this technique in school? DR: No, not— listen it was good advice. Pagliacci was in town. C: Right. Is it standard to give advice before learning a patient’s name? DR: Now look

10 is in the shower singing to the tune of “hot to go” 🎵 H-O-T-D-O-G-S I love hot dogs they’re the best 🎵

On today's Post Reports podcast, I talked w/ @martinepowers.bsky.social about Anthropic's project to "destructively scan all the books in the world" and why that was actually seen as the *more* ethical/legal path than what all the other AI firms were doing. www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/pos...

New: Unsealed court docs detail Big Tech’s yearslong, secret race to ingest the collective works of humanity, including Anthropic’s project to “destructively scan all the books in the world.” Gift link: wapo.st/4rjXAMQ

Lauren Sánchez and Jeff Bezos turn heads in the front row at Paris Haute Couture Week pagesix.com/2026/01/26/s...

This was a good essay www.megangreenwell.com/the-adults-i...

"Many officials here see a lesson for the European Union: Pushing back works." www.washingtonpost.com/world/2026/0...

Image-forensic expert Hany Farid confirmed it's a fake. @donmoyn.bsky.social told me this moves us "closer to the Stalinesque manipulation of images that we think about with authoritarian propaganda, where you really cannot trust materials the state is putting out" Gift link: wapo.st/4sUEnmr

not surprising and yet still jarring to read ex-FBI agents describing how Kash Patel and Bongino reacted to Charlie Kirk's murder while running the agency. truly the content creator administration/podcast govt www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

"When billionaire Elon Musk hurled insults at the CEO of Europe’s largest airline, he may not have been expecting the company to lean into the feud by launching a 'big idiot seat sale' with Musk’s face all over it." www.washingtonpost.com/world/2026/0...

“The outrageous seizure of our reporter’s confidential newsgathering materials chills speech, cripples reporting, and inflicts irreparable harm every day the government keeps its hands on these materials,” The Post said in a statement. www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

Yeah I think that's a good counterpoint and agree that dynamic is present here. I think "rules out force" is probably too strong. I'd just note that we also have several examples of Trump explicitly refusing to rule out force, so he's taking a different tack here than in, say, Iran.

oh i would fly five thousand miles and I would fly five thousand more just to be the man who flew ten thousand miles to say 'he's not my mayor'

New: The plight of Dan Bongino, the "anti-deep-state guy" who became "the deep state." Now back to podcasting, the former FBI second-in-command faces a revolt from viewers whose fury he helped propel. "People feel conned here ... Literally NOTHING has changed" wapo.st/4jIoICF @willoremus.com

We wrote about the plight of Dan Bongino, the dog who caught the "deep state" car. Gift link: wapo.st/4jIoICF (w/ @drewharwell.com)

A 55-year-old Cuban immigrant was choked to death by guards at a Texas detention camp, a fellow detainee told the Washington Post. www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/...

"Such teachings should be viewed as treason and those who do it imprisoned," said the First Amendment Absolutist.

This is the kind of thing an authoritarian regime does. www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

@ajbauer.bsky.social hey, hoping to reach you for a possible story sometime soon. DM me when you have a sec, thx!

elon musk has succeeded in transforming twitter from a place where you used to get ratioed for being racist to a place where the racists do the ratioing

The backlash against ICE continued Saturday with protests around the country. In Minneapolis, lawmakers’ bid to tour an ICE detention center was denied by DHS officers. Our story: www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2026/...

If you’re protesting in Minneapolis today and see something newsworthy, my DMs are open. I’m helping with the @washingtonpost.com’s coverage of the ICE protests today. You can also reach me privately and securely via @signal.org at willoremus.24

decided to take a cab home from the airport instead of a lyft and… it’s autoplaying newsmax?

once again the novel i brought along has proved aspirational

I'm already seeing people on here use AI face tools to try to identify the masked ICE agent in Minneapolis. It's a truly terrible idea and here's why

dry january is the cruelest month

your mileage may vary but my experience on here improved pretty noticeably when I stopped offering explanations to people whose questions sought conflict rather than answers

this play being called a *defensive* foul is everything that’s broken with basketball refereeing

it simply had to end this way

the kicker who missed the extra point has set up the kicker who put a kickoff out of bounds for a chance to lose the division on a missed field goal