What I so ❤️‍🔥 about this series of 1-1s with the gubernatorial candidates ahead of the primary (June 2nd, y'all) is how @scottshafer.bsky.social + Marisa Lagos attempt to humanize these 🤖 candidates & GET THEM OFF THEIR TALKING POINTS. If you're a voter in California, please listen today! Then vote...

#ICYMI A jury found Meta and YouTube negligent in a social media addiction case. 🎙️MON at 10 on KQED's Forum: I 💬 with @jeffhorwitz.bsky.social of Reuters + @jazzmyth.bsky.social of The19th about how American parents are supposed to hold Silicon Valley power accountable. If not this way, then how?

Before Silicon Valley, there was the Gold Rush. The New Almaden Quicksilver Mine, just south of San José, made that possible. It fueled fortunes, and left behind a toxic legacy 🎣☠️ that still drifts in the San Francisco Bay today. I went "down the mine" for @kqednews.kqed.org / Bay Curious. ⬇️

“I am holding so much pain in my chest, in my mind, in my heart,” said Luz Gallegos, whose childhood accompanying her parents to @ufw.bsky.social pickets and marches inspired her to become a farmworker advocate. “At the same time... we cannot stay silent, we cannot let our movement end.”

From Apple’s App Store to Amazon's Buy Box, @scottwiener.bsky.social and his consigliere(?) Garry Tan are taking aim Big Tech’s self-dealing. Which, God bless, but is this state bill primarily a campaign strategy? And how does it play with San Francisco voters who are not techies or tech adjacent?

Let's do the numbers, shall we?

“If I’m talking to a man, I’m supposed to act like a woman. If I’m talking to a woman, I need to act like a man. If I’m talking to a gay person...” After doing this for months, the Nairobi man developed insomnia, PTSD, and had trouble having sex. www.404media.co/ai-is-africa... via @404media.co

Their “presence at illegal gatherings” had been noted and they were under “intelligence monitoring,” the Iranian authorities texted them. “It is advised that you refrain from attending such illegal gatherings, which are desired by the enemy.” www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/t... via @nytimes.com

The DHS is expanding its efforts to identify Americans who oppose ICE by sending tech companies legal requests for identifying data behind social media accounts that track or criticize the agency. Does that make this a dangerous post for me? 👀 www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/t... via @nytimes.com

The Press Is Broken. Billionaires Broke It. 🎙️MON at 10 on @kqedforum.bsky.social: I 💬 w @mattgertz.bsky.social + Jeremy Barr about once-proud newsrooms becoming pale shadows of their former selves w a speed/ferocity meant to stun. How are independent journalists supposed to hold power accountable?

His future's so bright, he's gotta wear shades. The rest of us, too? 📡 🎙️FRI at 10 am on @kqedforum.bsky.social: I 💬 with @rmac.bsky.social + @nitasha.bsky.social about a man who is arguably the most powerful private citizen on 🌎. We dig into the scale of his power and what it means for (d)emocracy.

Before her firing, Beiermeister told colleagues that she opposed adult mode, and worried it would have harmful effects for users, people familiar with her remarks said. www.wsj.com/tech/ai/open... via @wsj.com

Yeah, they're loud, but maybe...respect? 🙌🏼 "We should celebrate them for being successful... Like, they think about how to live with us, we need to think about how to live with them." www.kqed.org/news/1207243... via @kqednews.kqed.org @danbrekke.bsky.social

I don't see how there's another story today more important than this one. 🙆🏻‍♀️ “He said if you had been seen earlier, we could have preserved your vision... That was the first time it really clicked that the life that I had before was over.” www.kqed.org/science/2000... via @kqednews.kqed.org

“I now had to meticulously fact-check every single thing in the articles. And at least 60% of it would be completely made up. ...So something that would take me two hours when I was writing it by myself now took me four hours, making half the money.” www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Given the volatility of platform-dependent revenue, many YouTubers are no longer just creators. They’re vertically integrated media companies with parallel businesses, including product lines that can outlast algorithm changes and policy shifts. techcrunch.com/2026/02/10/y... via @techcrunch.com

#ICYMI The #NLRB dropped Biden Era unfair labor charges against #SpaceX after concluding that it ... lacks jurisdiction. (The complaint alleged the space transport co unlawfully fired 8 engineers who helped circulate an open letter criticizing CEO Elon Musk.) onlabor.org/february-10-...

📝 Child safety groups are raising red flags about the proposed ballot measure from #OpenAI and #CommonSenseMedia. “Though seemingly well-intended, the measure would exempt #AI companies from the robust framework of laws already established in California to give consumers meaningful protections.”

🧟‍♀️ www.kqed.org/forum/201010... via @kqedforum.bsky.social

Letting a robot structure your argument, or flatten your style by removing the quirky elements, is dangerous. It’s a way to flatten the human mind, to homogenize human thought. We know who we are, at least in part, by finding the words. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/24/o... via @nytopinion.nytimes.com

The human voices "are by far the most convincing part of On This Day, especially when deployed in voiceover, because then you aren’t distracted by the way the movement of their mouths doesn’t quite match up with the noises coming out of them." www.theguardian.com/film/2026/fe...

Martin Baron, the Post’s first editor under its current owner, billionaire Jeff Bezos, condemned his former boss and called what has happened at the newspaper “a case study in near-instant, self-inflicted brand destruction.” apnews.com/article/wash... via @apnews.com

“There’s no oversight ahead of time, and there’s no ramifications for having abused it after the fact...We are increasingly in a world where unmasking critics is important to the administration.” www.washingtonpost.com/investigatio... via @johnwoodrowcox.bsky.social

“Social media has become a failed state, a place where laws are ignored, and crime is endured, where disinformation is worth more than truth, and half of users suffer hate speech,” Sanchez said. www.cnbc.com/2026/02/03/s... via @cnbc.com

As part of this push for relevance, xAI embraced making sexualized material, rolling back guardrails on sexual material and ignoring internal warnings about the potentially serious legal and ethical risks of producing such content. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2... via @washingtonpost.com

📡 🎙️MON at 10 am on @kqedforum.bsky.social: I 🗣️ with Jarvis R. Givens about his new book, "I'll Make Me A World." Givens says Black history has always been political, about power, and a tool for liberation. History has never been neutral, so I'm guessing neither will this conversation.

Oh the heartbreak, but praise, too, for the strength and self-awareness as my So Cal community processes so much grief. ❤️‍🩹 www.kqed.org/news/1207123... via @kqednews.kqed.org

#ICYMI Today’s AIs are shallow readers of the internet, and their responses can be manipulated. www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-w... via @wsj.com

A new state bill would raise taxes on companies that contract with the federal government to run immigration detention facilities, which hold thousands of men and women in California. www.kqed.org/news/1207138... via @kqednews.kqed.org @faridajhabvala.bsky.social

When one contractor asked if there will be restrictions to their covert surveillance activities, ICE replied, “It is incumbent upon the vendor to determine how best to meet the Government’s needs and requirements.” www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2... via @washingtonpost.com

Tesla will build its mass-production Optimus robot, for factories, homes, and caregiving, in Fremont. Musk promises an era of "sustainable abundance" where robots do all the work and "everyone can have whatever they want." Whatever. Fremont dreams of the assembly lines. Do robots dream of overtime?

The last year has seen a notable chill in political speech among more progressive tech workers, especially as they've watched many executives cozy up to the White House. But after the killings in Minnesota, that wary discretion is evaporating...replaced by open anger.

In the late 19th century, the Bay Area was home to a Ukrainian Russia wanted to silence: a devout Orthodox priest and a relentless dissident and outlaw. The life of Agapius Honcharenko reads like an epic thriller, albeit one that ends improbably on a quiet hilltop farm high in the Hayward Hills.

Coolcool. But who really needs a habitable planet? Probably worth it to churn out some sick memes, fake photos, and plagiarized papers. Right?

Is BART Too Broke to Pursue Funding for ‘Shovel-Ready’ #Irvington? “Leaving state 💵 on the table ... is unacceptable,” ✍🏼 Sen. Aisha Wahab (D-Fremont). But even if Fremont managed to raise the final funds to start 👷🏻 itself, BART says: “We don’t have the money to staff a 51st station.”

Once Gemini brings a piece of personal context into your chat history, it's moved across products. “It is harder and harder to keep track of what’s even happening, let alone draw lines around when something shouldn’t happen.” www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2... @geoffreyfowler.bsky.social

“Chat, I’m about to buss it down Roman Empire style,” said Alison Luchs, 77, using Gen Z slang she recently learned. “Haters will say this urn is mid, but they don’t know we’ve clocked its tea.” wapo.st/4bofqJL via @washingtonpost.com

Internal documents revealed early on in that complaint revealed that 100,000 child users were harassed daily on Meta's services. www.engadget.com/social-media... via @annawashenko.bsky.social

Lowell administrators violated state law when they reassigned the high school’s journalism teacher and newspaper adviser, according to the court order, which said the transfer was solely based on his efforts to protect his students’ First Amendment rights. 🙌🏼

Newsom’s review comes amid wider accusations #TikTok is flagging for review or throttling criticism of the Trump administration and ICE, just days after the platform closed a deal to avoid a U.S. ban. www.politico.com/news/2026/01... via @tylerkatzenberger.bsky.social

One year into President Donald Trump’s second term, Californians who voted for him are mostly happy with how his policies have played out so far. www.kqed.org/news/1207048... via @kqednews.kqed.org

The new documents, along with earlier filings in other copyright cases against AI companies, show the lengths to which tech firms such as Anthropic, Google and OpenAI went to obtain colossal troves of data to “train” their software. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2... via @washingtonpost.com

Can #AI really predict the weather ⛈️🍃🪨🔥 better than decades of physics-based forecasting? #Nvidia says yes. Climate scientists say ... errrrm. Especially if optimism about AI models could be used by the Trump administration officials to justify ceding the space entirely to the private sector.

“Kaiser management wants to give itself as much flexibility and avoid making concrete, enforceable commitments to the union in terms of staffing levels and working conditions that might be a huge liability.” www.kqed.org/news/1207101... via @kqednews.kqed.org @faridajhabvala.bsky.social

Reports on abysmally low rates of recycling for milk cartons and polystyrene have been widely shared and known. But the newest numbers were still a grim confirmation that there are few options for dealing with these materials. www.latimes.com/0000019b-b95... via @susrust.bsky.social

Researchers at SE Ranking, a search engine optimisation platform, found YouTube made up 4.43% of all AI Overview citations. No hospital network, government health portal, medical association or academic institution came close to that number. www.theguardian.com/technology/2... via @theguardian.com

It gave me an F. I freaked out and went for a run. Then I sent ChatGPT’s report to my actual doctor. Am I an F? “No,” my doctor said. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2... via @geoffreyfowler.bsky.social

Now as heard on the California Report Magazine! “I’ve read that invasive wild boars present big problems for endemic wildlife, and for farmers, and for homeowners in the Bay Area. Do mountain lions or perhaps coyotes hunt these wild boars? Could they be convinced to try?”

I for one welcome our bovine overlords. 🙌🏼 www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAk4...

A Love Supreme. The magic is in the music. ❤️‍🔥 www.kqed.org/news/1207041... via @kqednews.kqed.org