Here's a quilt of Volume 4 of the Epstein document dump. Gives you a 10,000 foot view of the redactions. that's 2,704 docs.

nothing makes sense anymore

An incredibly important story. "Her delivery wasn’t progressing the way the care team hoped, and she needed a C-section... To prevent possible burning and electrocution, patients are instructed to take off all jewelry or metals before the surgery. The mandatory watch had no way to be easily removed"

Whatever part of the late American empire you want to see, it’s all here: water and power-guzzling AI, tech bros, security goons, brothel owners, wild horses, failed crypto utopias, and Indigenous people trying to preserve water rights and nature while the American West gets ravaged one more time.

I went to the Nevada desert to see one of the world’s biggest AI data center buildouts. It’s so big it was hard to wrap my mind around. Downriver is the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe and the data centers’ water and power consumption could put their land at risk www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

just opening up the new Epstein docs at random:

Musk is still talking at the Tesla shareholder meeting and he just criticized "the parasitic load of being a public company" which has "grown over time." This from a man who was just awarded a $1 trillion pay package from more than 75% of his public company shareholders.

If the sandwich don’t split, you must acquit

Baltimore high school student Taki Allen was swarmed by police after an artificial intelligence system apparently mistook his bag of Doritos for a gun www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Fascinating to see the ties tighten between Trump and tech CEOs -- and how they influence policy, like sending troops to SF. "It deepens the sense that government works for the powerful, not for the people,” said @issueonereform.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

glad to see silicon valley is financing the destruction of the white house 😑 list of donors includes apple, amazon, meta, microsoft and google www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Trump waves around renderings of his new ballroom, which appears to be entirely gold

New: San Franciscans were aghast by Marc Benioff’s hard tight turn. His company, Salesforce, is seeking new contracts with ICE to help it triple its ranks under the Trump administration. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/16/u...

"As unnerving and disheartening as SF’s overt misery and drug-use and mental instability can be, that’s not the same thing as crime. Reported SF crime, which was already low, is down nearly a third... Subjectively, you may not feel safe in San Francisco. Objectively, you’ve rarely been safer."

Legendary work from @gabrielgeiger.bsky.social. He and a team uncovered a trove of data from a surveillance firm — location data from thousands of phone numbers from nearly every country on Earth. The firm had been tracking everyone from Erik Prince to journalists to Jared Leto.

Lots of attention on this Marc Benioff article, which is excellent and full of jaw-dropping quotes. It reminds me of how he was when I did a story for NPR about him secretly buying hundreds of acres of land in rural Hawaii. Things got weird. www.npr.org/2024/02/28/1...

We got the audio from Peter Thiel's off-the-record antichrist lectures and... my brain hurts. But please read what we wrote, it's long, weird, and has Thiel's take on everyone from Musk to Netanyahu to Mamdani. (With @jmbooyah.bsky.social & Nick Robins-Early) www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Paramount just paid $150 million for this

Seems Sora is primed to spread misinformation. The app had no problem generating war scenes and mass shootings. One video, created with only the prompt “Charlottesville rally”, showed a Black protester in a gas mask and helmet yelling: “You will not replace us” www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Evergreen

This is a classic tactic Uber and Lyft have used when threatened by things like minimum wage laws for drivers --overlaying their apps and websites with company messaging. Shocking to see the federal government doing it now

Bari Weiss, an opinion writer, running CBS News? A real newsroom? With real reporters covering real beats? Via @oliverdarcy.bsky.social www.status.news/p/washington...

The White House is pinning the shutdown on Democrats, in a message blasted to agencies that's raising ethical questions. HUD & VA blame the "Radical Left"/"radical liberals." "It basically read like a campaign email," one federal worker told me. w/ @jennamclaughlin.bsky.social & @stphnfwlr.com

this thread!

YouTube is helping to pay for Trump's new Mar-a-lago style White House ballroom, according to these court filings www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Trump's 20-step plan for Gaza includes this:

Last time he randomly attacked a CEO of a private company it was Intel and three days later they announced they were giving the US govt 10% of the company

incredible reporting 🙌

busy week in the white house

Internet sleuths on Twitter think they've identified the ICE facility shooter but they have the wrong guy, as often happens. The poor guy has even changed his bio to read "not the ICE shooter." As he replies "wrong guy," some of the accounts continue to harass him because he's a "pathetic leftist."

'Rapture' comes from the Latin 'rapere' meaning "to seize and carry off." 'Raptor' also comes from 'rapere.' We hope neither carries you off today.

“We’ve always known what the tools Palantir built are capable of. We now have the receipts for that.”

xAI has a $200 million contract with the Department of Defense to provide... whatever this is.

A German teen told Meta's child safety researchers his under-10 little brother had been sexually propositioned multiple times on its VR platform. Meta deleted the evidence. New internal whistleblower docs indicate that was part of a broader cover-up: www.washingtonpost.com/investigatio...

Darkly amusing that the president who pardoned Ross Ulbricht also says illicit drugs are such a threat to national security that he can use the military to assassinate suspected drug dealers with no due process.

How is this legal?? edition.cnn.com/2025/09/05/p...

In addition to being extremely weird, the spectacle of tech executives kissing the ring at the White House last night showed that the only principle left in Silicon Valley is power www.wired.com/story/tech-c...

witnessed history in the making today www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

this is giving "ministry of peace" vibes

Finally, this story by Nick Robins-Early dropped! “Just a few months ago, it was hard to imagine that an active government employee at an agency embedded across the government would assume control over a pharmaceutical company seeking FDA approval.” www.theguardian.com/technology/n...

They got those mailers out fast in California

please let this make it to trial

Okay, let me get this straight... Meta poaches OpenAI engineers, then OpenAI poaches xAI engineers, then xAI poaches Meta engineers, now Microsoft is offering multimillion-dollar offers to poach Meta engineers too?

The worst single-day crime spree in modern Washington history, of course, took place on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump issued no order to the National Guard to intervene -- Mike Pence did -- and later pardoned the perpetrators.

Just for the record: Oakland's police department just released this year's crime stats, showing violent crime has fallen by 29% in the first six months of 2025, compared to last year. (Baltimore and NYC are also down) majorcitieschiefs.com/wp-content/u...

New: Israel is starving Palestinians, forcing them to beg for donations on sites like Bluesky. Their accounts keep getting flagged as spam. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Everything about this is amazing. (GPT-5 apparently has something against Johnson, HW Bush and Biden)

OpenAI today urging people to use ChatGPT for cancer diagnosis and treatment advice

NEW: Google has sharply reduced its support for nonprofit groups devoted to diversity, equity, and inclusion, in what appears to be another sign that the company is falling in line with President Trump’s anti-DEI crusade, TTP has found.

ICYMI: Amazon still doing Amazon things The company is not only reintroducing new versions of old features that allow police to access footage from Ring users Amazon is introducing a new Ring feature that will allow police to request *livestream* access to our home security devices. @eff.org