Author | Lightnews

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Secretary of Defense Rock @sodrock.bsky.social · 17h

Bluesky cooking up election takes for the next 24 hours:

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southpaw @nycsouthpaw.bsky.social · 21h

you can convincingly portray this whole financialized AI edifice as a mortgage crisis-style house of cards without even mentioning that the fundamental product is unreliable, based on outright theft, and people don’t like it.

Soraya Nadia McDonald @sorayanadiamcdonald.com · 21h

seems bad!

www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

Screenshot text from the Atlantic

Here is where the bubble dynamics get complicated. Tech firms don’t want to formally take on debt—that is, directly ask investors for loans—because debt looks bad on their balance sheets and could reduce shareholder returns. To get around this, some are partnering with private-equity titans to do some sophisticated financial engineering, Paul Kedrosky, an investor and a financial consultant, told us. These private-equity firms put up or raise the money to build a data center, which a tech company will repay through rent. Data-center leases from, say, Meta can then be repackaged into a financial instrument that people can buy and sell—a bond, in essence. Meta recently did just this: Blue Owl Capital raised money for a massive Meta data center in Louisiana by, in essence, issuing bonds backed by Meta’s rent. And multiple data-center leases can be combined into a security and sorted into what are called “tranches” based on their risk of default. Data centers represent an $800 billion market for private-equity firms through 2028 alone. (Meta has said of its arrangement with Blue Owl that the “innovative partnership was designed to support the speed and flexibility required for Meta’s data center projects.”)

In this way, the data-center financing ends up being a real-estate deal as much as an AI deal. If this sounds complicated, it’s supposed to: The complexity, investment structure, and repackaging make exactly what is going on hard to parse. And if the dynamics also sound familiar, it’s because not two decades ago, the Great Recession was precipitated by banks packaging risky mortgages into tranches of securities that were falsely marketed as high-quality. By 2008, the house of cards had collapsed.

Data-center build-outs aren’t the same as subprime mortgages. Still, there is plenty of precarity baked into these investments. Data centers deteriorate rapidly, unlike the more durable infrastructure of canals, railroads, or even fiber-…

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Lex McMenamin (they/them) @leximcmenamin.com · 21h

I was laid off from Teen Vogue today along with multiple other staffers, and today is my last day.

certainly more to come from me when the dust has settled more, but to my knowledge, after today, there will be no politics staffers at Teen Vogue.

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The Daily Show @thedailyshow.com · 1d

We've got you 👍

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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 1d

Forrest Smith, the only National Park Service engineer cleaning up abandoned oil and gas wells, lost his contract, leaving 93 orphaned wells on park lands unmanaged. These leaking wells release methane and toxins, threatening human health and the environment.

He Alone Tracked Leaky Oil Wells in National Parks. He Was Let Go.

www.nytimes.com

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Jason Koebler @jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 5d

Private equity destroys 200-year-old book distribution company that libraries around the country rely on and now libraries are having trouble getting new books:

www.404media.co/libraries-sc...

Libraries Scramble for Books After Giant Distributor Shuts Down

Why it might have been and may continue to be harder to get new releases from your local library.

www.404media.co

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 4d

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Jonathan Bernstein @jonathanbernstein.bsky.social · 5d

Political party policy positions are simply not chess pieces that experts in public opinion can shuffle around to maximize vote totals. Parties take positions because party actors care about those policies, and also (less relevant with death penalty) because voters want solutions to big problems.

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Justin Baragona @justinbaragona.bsky.social · 5d

This was just posted by a CBS News producer on their Instagram stories.

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Kevin Elliott @kjephd.bsky.social · 5d

I'm reminded of nothing so much as

TOO MANY COOKS

www.adultswim.com/videos/infom...

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Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social · 6d

conspiracy to make a cop go slow

It was further part of the conspiracy that the co-conspirators, including
RABBITT, ABUGHAZALEH, MARTIN, SHARP, STRAW and WALSH, physically hindered and impeded Agent A and the Government Vehicle such that Agent A was forced to drive at an extremely slow rate of speed to avoid injuring any of the conspirators and in doing so slowly progressed towards the BSSA to discharge the duties of his office.

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valoy.bsky.social @valoy.bsky.social · 5d

Is he deregistering as a Republican or is he replacing Holyoak?

valoy.bsky.social @valoy.bsky.social · 6d

9/16 and the explanations made me want to beat the shit out of half of them.

Kelsey Atherton @atherton.bsky.social · 6d

www.americansurveycenter.org/results/K8Cn...

Democracy is so important and I may never understand the median voter

My Quiz Result

I got 7 / 0 on this quiz from the Survey Center on American Life. Can you beat my score?

www.americansurveycenter.org

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TrumpsTaxes @trumpstaxes.com · 6d

This is precisely why the Virginia Attorney General’s race will be consequential.

If Republican Jason Miyares is re-elected, he will fight AGAINST new Democratic maps…and fight FOR Donald Trump.

I hope all Virginia Democrats think long and hard about this when they cast their ballots.

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NPR @npr.org · 7d

Three times in the past two weeks, editorials at the 'Washington Post' failed to disclose that they focused on matters in which owner Jeff Bezos had a material interest.

'Washington Post' editorials omit a key disclosure: Bezos' financial ties

Three times in the past two weeks, editorials at the 'Washington Post' failed to disclose that they focused on matters in which owner Jeff Bezos had a material interest.

n.pr

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Mrs. Detective Pikajew, Esq. @clapifyoulikeme.favrd.social · 7d

Isaac Chotiner how are you with a baseball bat

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Batogato @batogato.bsky.social · 7d

holy shit. killer interviewing. the lexis corporate comms team was quietly sending their resumes out while this was going on. that, or committing seppuku for letting that happen.

nilay patel @reckless.bsky.social · 7d

Just me getting the CEO of LexisNexis to ask his new AI research tool about birthright citizenship. Decoder! www.theverge.com/podcast/8071...

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onion person @junlper.beer · 8d

might be one of the funniest videos i’ve ever seen

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Mike Levin @mikelevin.org · 8d

Don’t forget this Yale & Penn study finding Republicans would cause 51,000 preventable DEATHS every year by gutting healthcare and food aid.

Democrats have been fighting to stop this from the beginning, and we won’t back down.

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Central NJ Yimby 🏗️🚲🚇🇺🇸 @princetonyimby.bsky.social · 9d

Our local "Spirit Halloween" store has gone in for a transit theme this year. Massive respect...

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Decoding Fox News @decodingfoxnews.bsky.social · 9d

This is a DC area food bank that has helped laid off and unpaid government workers. They need help. If you have a few bucks to spare consider this charity. www.capitalareafoodbank.org?utm_referrer...

Food Bank for the Washington, DC, Region | Capital Area Food Bank

The Capital Area Food serves the entire Washington, DC, metropolitan region, providing meals to thousands of people a day while also addressing the root causes of hunger.

www.capitalareafoodbank.org

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David Gura @davidgura.bsky.social · 10d

“Nobody has heard of” Lesotho, President Trump joked, to the laughter of lawmakers. He’d just cut aid to the country.

Weeks later, he announced a 50% tariff on exports from “the denim capital of Africa.”

Today, Lesotho is under a state of disaster.

I recently traveled there for @bloomberg.com:

How Trump’s Tariffs Upended a Hub of Denim Manufacturing

YouTube video by Bloomberg Television

youtu.be

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valoy.bsky.social @valoy.bsky.social · 10d

AIPAC and centrism, both famously unpopular for white and rural voters. Also there’s seven other candidates and the election isn’t until next June, no need to be so horny for the Blackwater mercenary Nazi nepo farmer on Maine.

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mtsw @mtsw.bsky.social · 11d

People keep saying this but I strongly disagree that most people can successfully perform an emotion on camera or speaking in front of a crowd if you merely authentically experience that emotion. It's much harder than you think it is. bsky.app/profile/inep...

ineptitudinous.bsky.social @ineptitudinous.bsky.social · 11d

It's still galling that a Democratic politician would need speech training and acting classes to learn how to convey anger at the demolition of the East Wing of the White House. So many Dem politicians are Turing Test failures, trapped somewhere in the uncanny valley between human and robot.

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