onfocus

One week after 5 million Americans flooded the streets for a massive “No Kings” protest, with his approval rating heading underwater faster than the next climate-fueled flash flood, with his masked-secret-police deportation drive starting to alienate his own voters, with gas prices and 20-something unemployment starting to soar, and almost zero legislation despite GOP control of Congress, Trump showed that even a POTUS who hates canines can still wag the dog.

Only Will Bunch is allowed to tell the truth? And the Philadelphia Inquirer is the only independent newspaper left?

But for now, the data clearly show that Americans — across party lines — are very wary of another war in the Middle East and disapprove of the U.S. bombing Iran. These recent polls reveal a broad reluctance for military action, even among Trump voters.

It’s worth looking at a snapshot of public opinion before the consent manufacturing machine starts rolling. (Link to archive version because Substack continues to be the worst.)

At every stage, Trump and Miller have pursued things that an aspiring dictator in a declining state might do to stave off further decline. But those very same acts from a country with what had been the best economy in the world, currency hegemony, and unsurpassed scientific know-how have the opposite effect. They make the aspiring dictator weaker, first externally and then, as a result, internally.

This is a great point. Following the failing-country dictator playbook in a strong world power on-the-rise is having the opposite effect: weakening rather than strengthening their positions.

This video is a good introduction to the fediverse. I've been on Mastodon since 2018 or so and it's now the only social network I use. It doesn't have ads, has better privacy controls, and gives much better filtering and muting options. Mastodon lacks some polish in the signup and discovery features, but makes up for that in lots of other daily life ways.

After federal health officials made abrupt changes to US Covid-19 vaccine recommendations for pregnant women last month, there’s new confusion and uncertainty about who can get the shots — and some reports that patients were turned away when they tried to get vaccinated.

In the future, please vote for people who want other people to suffer less. Republicans are trying to make sure we are sicker through anti-science policies.

The world according to Stephen Miller is a cruel and callous one, in which America is strictly for unhyphenated Americans and those here “illegally” must be forcibly returned to the “failed states” where they were born. To Miller, the crumbling American heartland is being preyed on not by rapacious capital but by an invading army of gangsters, thugs, and terrorists waved in by coastal liberal elites—in other words, by exactly the kind of people he has always lived among.

Meet your shadow President.

The DeepMind CEO is dead-set that advanced AI models will bring about a renaissance in human existence. The “golden era” is only five short years away. “AGI can solve what I call root-node problems in the world—curing terrible diseases, much healthier and longer lifespans, finding new energy sources,” Hassabis said.

Someone needs to check in on the standard tech CEO ketamine dosage. I feel like it's dialed too high at the moment.

While publishers contend with how AI is changing search, they are also seeking ways to protect their copyright material. The large language models that underpin the new generation of chatbots are trained on data hoovered up from the open web, including news articles.

This was always the central transaction of Google. It can display portions of your site (or maybe even a fully cached version) and in return site owners get traffic. The deal is off. Now it's all crawling/scraping but keeping most of the traffic for themselves.

The media has provided OpenAI with an aura of vast authority, with its executives publicly proclaiming that its tech is poised to profoundly change the world, restructuring the economy and perhaps one day achieving a superhuman "artificial general intelligence" — outsize claims that sound, on a certain level, not unlike many of the delusions we heard about while reporting this story.

Hadn't made this connection before. Yeah, if you claim your new technology is going to reorder society—and media outlets credulously parrot it—you're going to trick people into thinking they're tapped into genius. Some healthy skepticism about new technology is important.

This inital use of federal troops in a blue city should be understood as an effort to build pressure to help pass the bill. It should also be used as an example of the danger of passing the bill — the kind of authoritarianism that Miller intends to wield if the bill does pass.

When your bill is losing traction in congress, it's time to invade a US city to rile up your base.

GOP leaders to the rank-and-file down to the libertarian-leaning Rand Paul offered no criticism Monday of Trump’s tactics over the weekend. And some said they wouldn’t put a timeline on the National Guard’s presence in the state given the uncertainty of future demonstrations.

Ah yes, the libertarian wing of the Republican party that famously wants to increase the scope and power of the federal government through invading states with military forces against the wishes of local leaders. Their supposed libertarian principles don’t hold up very well in the face of fascism.

Bessent continued: “I am certain most California businesses know that failing to pay taxes owed to the Treasury constitutes tax evasion and have no intention of following the dangerous path Governor Gavin Newsom is threatening.”

Now they’re concerned about collecting taxes? Maybe wasn’t such a good idea to fire thousands at the IRS?