Jason Koebler
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jasonkoebler.bsky.social
Jason Koebler
@jasonkoebler.bsky.social
55K followers 1.3K following 2.8K posts
Journalist @404Media.co

Signal: jason.404 // email: [email protected]
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jasonkoebler.bsky.social
this $9 bagel place is still open but this is the general vibe of places that don’t survive and then blame the community
December 5, 2025 at 7:56 PM
jasonkoebler.bsky.social
We very rarely do sales at @404media.co but today is an exception so pls consider and get all this stuff:

www.404media.co/cyber-monday...
December 1, 2025 at 6:25 PM
jasonkoebler.bsky.social
great mixtape
December 1, 2025 at 1:45 AM
jasonkoebler.bsky.social
This broader issue could be and would be drastically diminished if social media companies drastically cut back on these programs, stopped incentivizing keeping people on their own platforms, actually moderated content/deleted this type of content. But they have zero interest in doing this
A huge and growing amount of the content that we see on the internet is created explicitly because these monetization programs exist. People are making content specifically for Americans. They are not always, or even usually, creating it because they are trying to inflame tensions. They are making it because they can make money from it, and because content viewed by Americans pays the most and performs the best. The guides to making this sort of thing focus entirely on how to make content quickly, easily, and using automated tools. They focus on how to steal content from news outlets, source things from other websites, and generate scripts using AI tools. They do not focus on spreading disinformation or fucking up America, they focus on “making money.” This is a problem that AI has drastically exacerbated, but it is a problem that has wholly been created by social media platforms themselves, and which they seem to have little or no interest in solving.
November 24, 2025 at 6:40 PM
jasonkoebler.bsky.social
How to make "monetized USA Accounts" and how to populate them with content is an incredibly popular global YouTube side hustle type of content. Look at this:
November 24, 2025 at 6:38 PM
jasonkoebler.bsky.social
The government has apparently retained an essentially unknown IT firm registered to a house in Illinois with virtually no online presence to assist it in trying to recover the footage
“We tried to engage with the government through our IT specialist, and we hired a video forensic specialist,” Solotorovsky said. He added that the government specialist they spoke to “didn’t really know anything beyond the basic specifications of the system. He wasn’t able to answer any questions about preservation or attempts to recover the data.” He said that the government eventually put him in touch with “a person who ostensibly was involved in those events [attempting to recover the data], and it was kind of a no-name LLC called Five by Five Management that appears to be based out of a house in Carol Stream. We were told they were on site and involved with the system when the October 20 to 30 data was lost, but nobody has told us that Five By Five Management or anyone else has been trying to recover the data, and also very importantly things like system logs, administrator logs, event logs, data in the system that may show changes to settings or configurations or deletion events or people accessing the system at important times.”
November 20, 2025 at 7:46 PM
jasonkoebler.bsky.social
what could a banana cost michael
November 18, 2025 at 4:19 PM
jasonkoebler.bsky.social
I see we’re having an unnecessarily flowery writing competition in public
November 18, 2025 at 1:21 AM
jasonkoebler.bsky.social
last night at a bar I learned that they improved pinball by making machines that are entirely computers and they’re much better than what we had before
A video pinball machine with a blue screen of death
November 16, 2025 at 6:43 PM
jasonkoebler.bsky.social
at long last we’re in business baby
November 15, 2025 at 5:18 AM
jasonkoebler.bsky.social
oookay so I need to remove an extremely tight and extremely stripped screw from an old electronic from 1995 that probably hasn’t been touched in 20+ years. no normal stripped screw tricks are working. I need to get the screw out without destroying the threads it screws into
November 15, 2025 at 12:55 AM
jasonkoebler.bsky.social
i want to buy this paper cup factory more than anything. 404 media is diversifying into paper cup manufacturing. if you want to invest in the paper cup factory and help me run it pls inquire

www.facebook.com/marketplace/...
November 12, 2025 at 10:49 PM
jasonkoebler.bsky.social
And here's what it looks like now. Obviously can tell it's AI generated still but the quality has drastically changed
November 12, 2025 at 6:05 PM
jasonkoebler.bsky.social
Here's the level of quality they were making ~6 months ago:
November 12, 2025 at 6:05 PM
jasonkoebler.bsky.social
My point is this person is obsessively shuffling through AI slop genres, spamming tons of stuff til they find something that works and that they can monetize. The thing "that works" are horrifying videos of an AI-generated mother screaming for her baby as ICE hauls her away
November 12, 2025 at 5:56 PM
jasonkoebler.bsky.social
saving for posterity: my first successful print on this machine…a copy of an urgent care bill I have not paid yet. beautiful, amazing
November 11, 2025 at 5:34 PM
jasonkoebler.bsky.social
here is how far I have gotten which is actually great progress
November 8, 2025 at 9:04 PM
jasonkoebler.bsky.social
sir a second nano banana email has hit your inbox
November 6, 2025 at 9:16 PM
jasonkoebler.bsky.social
yes sir, i made the illustrations for this investor dek in nano banana
Bring your vision to life with advanced image editing Instantly edit images with Nano Banana, the viral new image editor in the Gemini app. Generate high-quality visuals for presentations, social posts, or mock-ups faster than ever.
November 6, 2025 at 8:59 PM
jasonkoebler.bsky.social
these actually are all-time numbers tho. first ballot hall of famer:

Nancy Pelosi portfolio gains over last decade: 816 percent
S&P 500: 229 percent

goes crazy
The numbers put up by Pelosi in her Hall of Fame career are undeniable. Over the last decade, Pelosi’s portfolio returned an incredible 816 percent, according to public disclosure records. The S&P 500, meanwhile, has returned roughly 229 percent. Awe-inspired fans and analysts theorized that her almost omniscient ability to make correct, seemingly high-risk stock decisions may have stemmed from decades spent analyzing and perhaps even predicting decisions that would be made by the federal government that could impact companies’ stock prices. For example, Paul Pelosi sold $500,000 worth of Visa stock in July, weeks before the U.S. government announced a civil lawsuit against the company, causing its stock price to decrease.
November 6, 2025 at 8:24 PM
jasonkoebler.bsky.social
Am obviously not anywhere near the first person to point this out, but I think it's a pretty useful framework. AI is also a nuts-and-bolts logistical nightmare for a workforce that is constantly being harassed, threatened, and forced to defend their work. They are fixing/fending off AI bullshit
“The last five years of library work, of public service work has been a nightmare, with ongoing harassment and censorship efforts that you’re either experiencing directly or that you’re hearing from your other colleagues,” Alison Macrina, executive director of Library Freedom Project, told me in a phone interview. “And then in the last year-and-a-half or so, you add to it this enormous push for the AIfication of your library, and the enormous demands on your time. Now you have these already overworked public servants who are being expected to do even more because there’s an expectation to use AI, or that AI will do it for you. But they’re dealing with things like the influx of AI-generated books and other materials that are being pushed by vendors.”
November 6, 2025 at 4:51 PM
jasonkoebler.bsky.social
Once you start thinking of AI as a war on humanity, on human thought, on human inquiry, on human labor, on nuance and critical thinking, it slots in pretty seamlessly with the right wing ideological project, oligarchical political projects, big tech's political projects, etc
The future being pushed by both AI boosters and educational censors is one where access to information is tightly controlled. Children will not be allowed to read certain books or learn certain narratives. “Research” will be performed only through one of a select few artificial intelligence tools owned by AI giants which are uniformly aligned behind the Trump administration and which have gone to the ends of the earth to prevent their black box machines from spitting out “woke” answers lest they catch the ire of the administration. School boards and library boards, forced to comply with increasingly restrictive laws, funding cuts, and the threat of being defunded entirely, leap at the chance to be considered forward looking by embracing AI tools, or apply for grants from government groups like the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), which is increasingly giving out grants specifically to AI projects.
November 6, 2025 at 4:48 PM
jasonkoebler.bsky.social
I talked to librarians, authors who have had their books banned, and groups that support them for this article. The glee with which schools, libraries, governments, and companies are replacing human workers and nuance with AI would not be possible w/o the successful war on schools and libraries
“One thing that I try to make clear any time I talk about book bans is that it’s not about the books, it’s about deputizing bigots to do the ugly work of defunding all of our public institutions of learning,” Maggie Tokuda-Hall, a cofounder of Authors Against Book Bans, told me. “The current proliferation of AI that we see particularly in the library and education spaces would be possible at the speed and scale that is happening without the precedent of book bans leading into it. They are very comfortable bedfellows because once you have created a culture in which all expertise is denigrated and removed from the equation and considered nonessential, you create the circumstances in which AI can flourish.” Justin, a cohost of the podcast librarypunk, told me that the project of offloading cognitive capacity to AI continues apace: “Part of a fascist project to offload the work of thinking, especially the reflective kind of thinking that reading, study, and community engagement provide,” Justin said. “That kind of thinking cultivates empathy and challenges your assumptions. It's also something you have to practice. If we can offload that cognitive work, it's far too easy to become reflexive and hateful, while having a robot cheerleader telling you that you were right about everything all along.”
November 6, 2025 at 4:45 PM
jasonkoebler.bsky.social
Going to go ship a bunch of merch orders right now. Orders placed in the next ~hour will go out today. We have a bunch of new designs! And old favs!

404media.myshopify.com?srsltid=AfmB...
November 5, 2025 at 5:32 PM
jasonkoebler.bsky.social
www.thebanner.com/sports/oriol...
November 5, 2025 at 5:01 PM