Amid “Breakup” With Trump, Some Democrats Say Party Should Start Courting Musk | Truthout:

Musk has also not repudiated fascistic points of view. Earlier this year, Musk gave his support to Alternative for Germany (AfD), a neo-Nazi political party, in that country’s elections. The billionaire also notably raised his hand during an inauguration celebration for Trump in what appeared to be a Nazi salute.

Democrats already figuring out how to lose the midterms.

From Kurgan to EU A Former Russian Call for Digital Sovereignty:

That’s why I’m raising the alarm: we must stop treating our digital lives as a mere convenience and start treating them as the frontline in a battle for our very freedoms. It’s time for us to ask—why are we so bound to Silicon Valley’s giants, and how do we break free before it’s too late?

AngryBlackBitch: Oops…didn’t know we couldn’t talk about race…(2005)

Now, some may say America has moved on. Many would say that wee little black girls growing up in St. Louis no longer face a world where they are encouraged to play the tolerance game…that young people who are overweight are not stigmatized…that gay and lesbian youth are embraced with love and understanding. And those people would be wrong.

Found my new favorite blog from 2005 :)

Jony Ive’s OpenAI device gets the Powell Jobs nod of approval | The Verge:

“Many of us would say we have an uneasy relationship with technology at the moment,” Ive said, adding that working on the incoming AI device alongside OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is motivated by a sense that “humanity deserves better.”

Oh, fuck off, Jony.

Are A.I. Data Centers a Sure Thing or the Next Real Estate Bubble? - NYT:

“It’s not like building condos in Miami,” the company’s president, Jonathan Gray, said in a Bloomberg interview in January, noting that Blackstone starts building only once it has a locked-in tenant.

And if that tenant goes belly up because it’s ChatGPT wrapper fails to corner the kitty litter market (or whatever the fuck)? When the VC money well dries?

Guestbook · Eva Decker

I love this guestbook and I’m inspired to maybe make my own? Am I starting another project? In this economy?

Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta Is Pivoting to Defense Contracting:

Meta isn’t quietly accumulating cloud contracts through defense subcontractors or merely relaxing its policies to allow the military to build on its open-source AI models. It’s unapologetic about working with the U.S. military and wants everyone — but especially the still-skeptical leadership of the current administration — to know it.

They’re pivoting to the cloud. It’s the cloud. Meta is pivoting to. The. Cloud.

Controversial ‘lost’ Jerry Lewis film discovered in Sweden after 53 years | The National:

The actor also revealed that his initial copy was missing the opening six-minute sequence of the film shot in Paris, which was mailed to him anonymously in 1990, along with a note saying that the sender knew he possessed a copy of the rest of the film.

Cool as hell.

Kanopy - Stream Classic Cinema, Indie Film and Top Documentaries

Just signed up. The library is cool, man.

28 slightly rude notes on writing - by Adam Mastroianni:

Somehow, whenever I finish a draft, my first few paragraphs almost always contain ideas that were necessary for writing the rest of the piece, but that aren’t necessary for understanding it. It’s like I’m giving someone a tour of my hometown and I start by showing them all the dead ends.

Creativity is made, not generated — Procreate®:

We’re here for the humans. We’re not chasing a technology that is a moral threat to our greatest jewel: human creativity.

The Fifth Estate - daverupert.com:

I don’t have the capital to start my own Fourth Estate university or newspaper. But I do have this blog. A minor stake in the Fifth Estate. But my blog plus your blog, mix in some RSS and the power of sharing interesting blogs and podcasts… we might make a dent.

Google is Using AI to Censor Independent Websites:

Google will just source information from a handful of sources and partner websites that it controls and selects – effectively creating an information cartel. 

About Good Internet:

Good Internet is a volunteer-run, not-for-profit print and digital quarterly magazine for personal website owners and those interested in using the internet as a means of self-expression, art, and recreation.

This is fun. I love it.

Last month, The Whitest Kids You Know re-uploaded their It’s Illegal to Say video.

Webbed Sites.

ICE Taps into Nationwide AI-Enabled Camera Network, Data Shows:

Data from a license plate-scanning tool that is primarily marketed as a surveillance solution for small towns to combat crimes like car jackings or finding missing people is being used by ICE

It’s not our responsibility to make crime fighting easier for cops if it means giving up our privacy and rights. This tool is fascist now and it was fascist back then.

Coffee Pros Share Tips for Making the Perfect Moka Pot Coffee:

Invented in the 1930s by Alfonso Bialetti in Crusinallo, Italy, this modest coffee maker has become an archetypal symbol of efficient design around the world.

I have a moka pot tattooed on my forearm. Just a little nod to well designed things. And a reminder that the only reason there are hundreds of coffee makers is because of capitalism.

It’s very funny to me that, in my mind, writers with blogs are dorks and writers with newsletters are the cool kids.

Hi, it’s me dorks.

stuck stuck stuck | combatdavey:

Nothing flows. Nothing works. Every sentence is stupid. Every lede is a cliché.

Hey how’d you figure out my writing mantra?

Carl Pei Thinks the Phone of the Future Will Only Have One App | WIRED:

I believe that in the future, the entire phone will only have one app—and that will be the OS. The OS will know its user well and will be optimized for that person.

Gee, I sure hope not.

Letter to Arc members 2025:

If the goal was to build a small, profitable company with a great team and loyal customers, we wouldn’t have chosen to try and build the successor to the web browser – the most ubiquitous piece of software there is.

Heaven forbid.

The Era Of The Business Idiot:

Society respects an MBA more than a plumber, even though the latter benefits society more — though I concede that both roles involve, on some level, shit, with the plumber unblocking it and the MBA spewing it. 

Lol.

Google’s AI Is Burying the Web Alive:

In any case, the signals from Google — despite its unconvincing suggestions to the contrary — are clear: It’ll do anything to win the AI race. If that means burying the web, then so be it.

The CIA Secretly Ran a Star Wars Fan Site:

One of the CIA’s mistakes was that the IP addresses pointing to the sites were sequential, meaning that after discovering one, it was straightforward for a researcher to find others very likely in the same network. 

Lot of people died because of this. A good reminder that most that make up the shadowy parts of our power structures are mostly idiots.