Palantir and its CEO are increasingly trying to spin the idea it would engage in civil liberties-violating state surveillance as absurd. Unfortunately for this PR push, we previously caught them helping run a flagship NSA dragnet surveillance program. theintercept.com/2025/09/12/p...

EXCLUSIVE: U.S. Attacked Boat Near Venezuela Multiple Times to Kill Survivors

American officials said the repeat drone strikes were carried out by Special Operations Command, and more attacks could come soon.

theintercept.com/2025/09/10/u...

Two striking things about this report (which confirms allegations former 3rd SFG officer Aguilar has made about this gang’s role in GHF):

—The photo where they’ve put a “FOB Mar-a-Lago” sign up at their Gaza base

—The incompetence of ccing the BBC on the all-hands “do not comment to the BBC” email

This is arguably the biggest (maybe only) reason to upgrade

it's stunning what a rare and radical statement this is defector.com/five-years-o...

With students heading back to the classroom, a group of cognitive scientists and AI researchers has published one of the most forceful and evidence-backed calls yet to reject the "uncritical adoption of AI" in academia:

I really thought they were going to stop after the iPhone 16, but lo and behold they're making another one. Egg on my face.

The story gets funnier, I swear.

“We believe that in the near future half the people on the planet will be AI, and we are the company that’s bringing those people to life." www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/dig...

Apple's official name for the camera bump being "The Plateau" is so good.

I bet you could convince a lot of people to pay $20 for a vinegar-y iced coffee

im always thinking there should be more places where building legos intersects with gambling and child predators

Definitely. I talk about how there's a major generational desensitization at work here.

I'll add the caveat that if I were 12, I would be extremely into all of this. And repeating a 90s Violent Games-style moral panic would be a giant mistake. But I think it's worth interrogating what it means for kids when this is the version of Sonic they grow up with.

New York magazine asked me to explore Roblox and report back on what the hell is going on in there. I found kids are bombarded with covert ads, casino-style manipulation, and nonstop enticements to spend their parents' money.

nymag.com/intelligence...

At long last. This is great

Just started, but excellent so far.

The targeting of civilian boats in VZ is in some ways the maritime version of the CIA's illegal program in the 1990s targeting civilian planes in the region detailed by @tim-weiner.bsky.social in his new book.

My entire point is that whether "building things is good" depends entirely on what you're building and why. As an act, "building" isn't like "volunteering at a soup kitchen." The details matter!

You can build things that help people or build things that hurt people. You can build things that solve problems or build things that terrorize entire populations. But this idea that building per se is a public good is fascinating and more than a little odd to me.

It's interesting how "building stuff" has been reduced to an axiomatic virtue for many people, esp in tech and the Abundance Democrat sphere. There's a lot of different stuff you can build. In the case of Marc Andreessen, who's being referenced below, the "stuff" he wants to build includes weapons.

I am constantly saying this but one thing to know is that Vance’s comms team is run by very young, very online and very far right guys. They were a big part of having him push the Haitians cats and dogs thing.

For context that's a third the price the RIAA expected a single human to pay for just downloading 24 songs a decade ago (after cutting the ruling down from $1.5m, or $62,000 per song), and that's not adjusting for inflation:

I use this at least once a week. Priceless tool.

If you want a nerd-friendly metaphor to get Cold War fanboys amped up, the Apollo Program is always right there!