and that's... bad. right? we're allowed to say that's bad?

EFF’s @doctorow.pluralistic.net joined @cwarzel.bsky.social on @theatlantic.com’s “Galaxy Brain” podcast to expand upon his “enshittification” thesis: a critique of AI based around power and whether we are using AI tools or being used by them. www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/20...

Dave is great and funny and entertaining and his original reporting and independent journalism is well worth your support!

one of my dream podcast guests www.vulture.com/article/john...

The AI bubble needs to pop—and there is a choice between two paths that can be taken to recover from the potential financial fallout, the author Cory Doctorow tells @cwarzel.bsky.social. Watch Galaxy Brain: www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPQN...

pausa de hidratación

Great pod with @cwarzel.bsky.social and @doctorow.pluralistic.net. The conversation at the end about the material conditions that enable AI is exactly how people need to think and talk about this stuff

Bill Ackman here accidentally channeling John Kenneth Galbraith in THE GREAT CRASH, 1929: “It is another feature of the speculative mood that, as time passes, the tendency to look beyond the simple fact of increasing values to the reasons on which it depends greatly diminishes."

I wrote about SpaceX. SpaceX the rocket company, SpaceX the suspicious financial instrument for Musk to create value out of thin air. SpaceX the meme. SpaceX as the 7-headed hydra at the end of capitalism. (gift link) www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

hi from seattle where it’s hard not to be romantic about this day

mama mia!

well i for one am pretty jacked up

After spending all day on Twitter: People are essentially evil. After spending all day in the real world: People are essentially decent. After spending all day on Bluesky: People are essentially 38 years old.

GOOD MORNING. IT'S @doctorow.pluralistic.net DAY ON THE PODCAST. The case for the AI Bubble, accountability sinks, why bosses love bots, his new book about the difference between centaurs & reverse centaur (using & being used by AI), & what resistance to AI looks like www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPQN...

some days you are on a walk listening to a lengthy discussion on a golf podcast about US Open green speeds and “leaf blade hydration” and having a great time and it hits you like a truck that you are middle aged

i would like smart people who understand the economy to explain the SpaceX portion of this graph to me like i am a small child

i'm not sure any tech criticism i could put forward rn would be more effective than the totality of this screenshot

Late pass, obviously, but this to me is a fantastic blog in the classic sense. High-quality language and real insight directed at an otherwise shitty news story, by one of the all-time greats at doing all that. www.nytimes.com/athletic/735...

Don't miss this banger episode of Taplines—one of the very last!—with the great @cwarzel.bsky.social on how right-wing operatives rolled Anheuser-Busch using a decade-old playbook:

The ABS pitch-tracking system (also known as “robot umpires”) in Major League Baseball has become an entertainment spectacle, Jimmy O’ Brien, the founder of Jomboy Media, tells @cwarzel.bsky.social: “There’s just so many elements of drama that it’s given us.” www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbIy...

Monster finally went full Brawndo: www.fingers.email/p/how-to-fin...

the white house UFC stuff evokes such a strange flurry of emotions in me. like, clearly a disgrace on so many levels but also so incredibly stupid that it makes me laugh. also when i saw the thing light up the other day i was like...'thats kinda sick' but also like obviously an outrageous disgrace

An extremely fun (joyful, even) podcast for you today. It's JOMBOY day on the pod talking about BASEBALL. ABS, and the quite relatable tension of trying to evolve with the times without losing a piece of yourself. (ALSO: How Jimmy O'Brien got so good at lip reading) www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbIy...

very nice, very good

should mention their first target is…elder care. not ominous at all!

So the two DOGE staffers who used ChatGPT to cut all those grants and programs and who struggled to define DEI in that viral deposition footage have a new startup: DOGE for the public sector. I wrote about them and the myth of the “builder” as a disguise for something more insidious

“if you died nothing in my life would change”: a twitter exchange about a pizza “face god and walk backwards into hell”: a dril tweet about hollering at zoo animals “you cannot kill me in a way that matters”: a tumblr shitpost about mushrooms

VERY EXCITED FOR FRIDAY'S PODCAST EP

I put together some *very detailed* notes about six years of running a successful newsletter — including thoughts on churn, paywall placement, how to avoid getting sick of your own voice, cadence, and so much more www.patreon.com/posts/very-d...

Summer friday question for the hivemind: who should i be booking on Galaxy Brain for future summer pod eps? who is doing smart/cool things? who is writing the best stuff? who deserves more airtime? experts/reporters/fun weirdos? Ideas are very much welcome. Want to keep this thing fresh!

Today’s pod is with @robflaherty.bsky.social about Democrats, elections, the attention wars and what went right/wrong last time. How political campaigns are often built for a world that no longer exists and what to do to set them up for the one that does! youtu.be/iTYVBNQbEkU?...

Looking at some of the data center backlash and wondering if some of what we're seeing is simply the beginnings of a politics that is moving beyond Trump. that some of the salience of this issue is that it is very political but in a tangible way that has nothing to do with a guy everyone's tired of

"Recently, politicians have been invited to choose correspondents for interviews on the broadcast" whew.

i just keep cracking up thinking about updating 'The Insider' for this moment and it's just over in like 15 min bc everyone got fired for wanting to go after Phillip Morris

LLM trained off Mike Wallace would be too 'hostile' and would be promptly fired too

they're making way for matt taibbi and an LLM agent trained off of Mike Wallace clips

I don't like reading sentences anymore

wild @kait.bsky.social dispatch about how some of the anti-data center stuff online is, itself, weird AI slop www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

If you bring one of these to the UFC White House fight they make you chairman of the joint chiefs on the spot

you can just say things, TAM edition

one thing these exchanges capture perfectly is that the people in charge have absolutely no idea the type of people that top-tier investigative journalists are

good to know and thank you for this information

my column published over the weekend and my hope is that many of you were living rich lives off the internet and that is why I am reposting it here. i think its p good and hope you read it.

This by @cwarzel.bsky.social really captures it. "a black-box machine of obscure corporate motivation that simply tells us, Here is the answer." I really have trouble imagining a happy ending to all this.

The very slightly different way I would put this, building on work with Hahrie Han is that AI is hitting our capacities for _collective agency_ by replacing our tools for collaborating with other humans to figure stuff out with mediated relations to frozen monuments of accumulated cultural knowledge

basically: it’s very weird and idk prob not amazing for a society if, in just a couple of years, a small group of people foist a social/ political/ economic experiment on the world with the animating question: what is a human for?

This is all quite good.

Got a theory that we are all living through a crisis of agency, at least online. Bots, algorithms, clip armies, & the flood of AI stuff have scrambled notions of popularity, turned everything into a ‘psyop’. AI tools/ agents are reversing the fundamental human, collaborative promise of the internet

"this isn't me being gay, it's science" is, unfortunately, an all-timer

We've now made 30 episodes of this podcast. I hope you enjoy them. Would be really fun to do a mailbag/AMA episode this summer. If you have q's/episode ideas/thoughts/gripes/but ESPECIALLY questions that would be fun... email me charlie AT theatlantic DOT com