Somehow things that would have been a background gag in a Verhoeven movie are now just real
Buzz Andersen
@andersen.buzz
Tech veteran (Apple, Square, Tumblr), old school indie Mac/iOS developer, Eagle Scout. Kind of also trying to be a screenwriter? @buzz on Twitter. Mail: buzz at http://andersen.buzz
Bombshell new report out from my investigators this morning spanning our four year investigation into Jeffrey Epstein’s financial records. This report shows exactly how Wall Street protected Epstein and enabled his sex trafficking for decades. Mega thread following with some key points:
Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan, BofA Enabled Epstein, Wyden Report Says
Democrat Ron Wyden cited nonpublic documents held by the US Treasury in a report that says banks delayed reporting suspicious financial transactions and calls for tougher anti-money-laundering rules, ...
bloomberg.com
My new investigation into a mass shooter’s harrowing history with ChatGPT reveals numerous red flags—and some very disturbing ChatGPT replies—from long before his attack on Florida State University www.motherjones.com/media/2026/0... 1x 🧵
Inside a mass shooter’s harrowing history with ChatGPT
A year of chats reveals glaring red flags—and disturbing ChatGPT replies—from long before a rampage at Florida State University.
motherjones.com
Generative AI is catnip to the men who miss female sycophants katemanne.substack.com/p/a-culture-...
A Culture Hooked on Generative AI is a Culture that Misses Female Sycophants
And we have missed a central reason why AI is a feminist issue
katemanne.substack.com
Nothing protects you from the superpersuaders: "interventions made the sycophantic AI appear less objective and trustworthy, none reduced its persuasiveness ... individual-level interventions, such as warning labels or AI literacy, may not be enough to protect users from AI harms."
Individual-level interventions against sycophantic AI reduce its appeal but not its persuasiveness
AI chatbots can be "sycophantic," or overly agreeable and flattering toward users. Sycophantic AI has been shown to entrench attitudes, yet users frequently fail to recognize it (a phenomenon we call ...
arxiv.org
Writing fiction in any genre should be a purely human exercise. If you use AI to generate *any* dialog, story ideas, character shapes, *anything* creative, you're betraying the very concept of artistic expression. This is a bright flashing red line for me. www.wired.com/story/the-bi...
‘Everyone Is Doing It’: The Truth About AI in Hollywood
Puck’s Matthew Belloni says AI has quietly become part of everyday filmmaking. The battle now isn’t whether Hollywood will use the technology—it’s who controls what’ll come next.
wired.com
One more interesting point: this spring I sat down with Sharyn Alfonsi of 60 Minutes for an extensive interview about my Epstein investigation. Subsequently, CBS pulled the segment and fired the reporter. The MAGA buyout of media has unquestionably aided the Trump administration’s cover up here.
Senator Ron Wyden@wyden.senate.gov · yesterdayBombshell new report out from my investigators this morning spanning our four year investigation into Jeffrey Epstein’s financial records. This report shows exactly how Wall Street protected Epstein and enabled his sex trafficking for decades. Mega thread following with some key points:
But hey, great way to drum up those “occasional six-figure gigs where I fly to companies and teach them my techniques…”
Paul Ford@ftrain.bsky.social · 2d agooh gas town didn't work you say yegge.ai/essays/the-s...
It really is kind of crazy how much this stuff been memory-holed. Though I remember reading that basically the same thing happened after the 1918 Pandemic.
Dr. Lucky Tran@luckytran.com · 3d agoI worked for New York’s largest medical center at the start of the pandemic. There were morgue trucks on the streets. They set up emergency medical tents in Central Park. Healthcare worker colleagues died. It is horrific that RFK Jr is on national TV lying that ICUs were empty.
There’s “off the charts” and there’s France’s absolutely bonkers June & July 2026 temperatures (see black line below). Bad things are happening. Fast.
I haven't stopped thinking about this @hamiltonnolan.bsky.social essay since I read it earlier this week. www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/enshittifi...
Enshittification Relies on Broken Economic Math
Pay no attention to the externalities behind the curtain.
hamiltonnolan.com
AI IS BASICALLY A SEX WORKER might be the hook for my new class…
The framing of this stuff in the press really frustrates me. I truly believe that business leaders and policy makers are making decisions based on constant distorted and sensationalized mischaracterizations of the technology.
Shannon Vallor@shannonvallor.bsky.social · 4d agoThis is so frustrating to read from The New Yorker. Reward hacking *long* predates LLMs. The Coast Runners paper on reward hacking (in reinforcement learning, pre-LLMs) is 10 years old! Reward hacking is not new, and not a sign of a breakthrough intelligence, much less sentience. Did AI write this?
The most recent ep of @danhon.com 's show made me think about how a lot of people don't distinguish between writing to think and writing to produce an artifact, and how modern work is predicated on not giving people *time* to think. www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYE7...
How People Work, Live! ... with Russell Davies
YouTube video by Dan Hon
youtube.com
Erin Kissane@kissane.myatproto.social · 5d agoI think straightforward deskilling is probably fixable, and frankly I have lost faith in this kind of study, but as a person who writes a lot, I think there is a very real difference between gesturing at ideas and working them through, and LLMs really have a lot of people conflating the two.
I don’t want to give away too much, so let me just say: you had me at “Friday the 13th-style slasher sequence set to ‘A Long December’ by Counting Crows.”
“Stepping Out” by Joe Jackson is the king of songs to hear at the grocery store. Suddenly the bread aisle is Rainbow Road.
In a recent red team exercise the taco escaped captivity and is now believed to have infiltrated McDonalds corporate HQ.
sebmal@mrdo.pro · last wk.WARNING! TACO BELL ADVISES NEW TACO SO GOOD IT IS BEYOND THEIR CONTROL, COULD REPLACE ALL OTHER FOOD BEFORE HUMANS CAN CONTAIN IT. URGES CONGRESS TO GIVE THEM MORE MONEY SO THEY CAN DEVELOP ANTI-TACO SAFEGUARDS
Why is everything so transparently evil now?
!["Print books from the pre-LLM era are structurally guaranteed to be free of this contamination. That alone is a significant advantage," it explains in an article on its website, as quoted by
404. "Physical books published before this date [pre-2022] are structurally clean of modern poisoning tools."
Once focused on helping libraries, distributors, and book shops find and sell books, ISBNdb now helps Al companies bulk-buy anywhere between 1,000 to one million books per order, according to 404.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:pxunhtt4zdl4rkkjub54m5ia/bafkreic7burhqtyy3mrqnzzf5gwr3pokwr6gznvg7p5htr4gz3mghh4hny)
Elon Musk can keep wreaking havoc and bullshitting everyone because he’s simply become too big to fail. Investors can’t let him go bust, and the media can’t let him become irrelevant. Too much is built up around him, so he can effectively do as he pleases. disconnect.blog/elon-musks-t...
so I just want to emphasize something here that non-media people might not pick up on: Marisa is an independent journalist and is taking on the risk of being sued by Moraff here without any institutional backing. That's admirable bravery - and also means being very, very certain of the facts.
Marisa Kabas@marisakabas.bsky.social · last wk.Exclusive from me — Daniel Moraff, one of the political operatives behind Graham Platner's rise and fall, has been accused of sexual assault. Full story here:
Musk is calling for the assassination of a journalist. It's so difficult to comprehend why someone in his position would do such a thing that we naturally give him the benefit of every doubt, but it's crystal clear what he's saying.
Sunder Katwala (sundersays)@sundersays.bsky.social · 2w agoThere is simply no ambiguity in what Elon Musk is arguing and endorsing here.
JUST POSTED: A deep investigation by The NYT of shortcuts taken to get President Trump his Qatari-donated plane in time for POTUS to show it off during 250th anniversary events-compromises that leave the plane more vulnerable to potential threats (Free link) www.nytimes.com/2026/07/25/u...
Inside the Rushed Effort to Get Trump His New Air Force One
A New York Times investigation found that President Trump’s push to speed delivery of the aircraft led to ballooning costs and trade-offs in safety features.
nytimes.com
Seeding the “maybe our model is exhibiting self-awareness?” narrative to obliterate the “OpenAI is a negligent and potentially criminal actor” narrative is a reputation management move exclusive to this industry. Not a stunt, but a desperate need to control the narrative.
EXCLUSIVE: Its AI agent spent days hacking a company, but sources say OpenAI did not notice for a week
The OpenAI agent that broke into tech firm Hugging Face went on a dayslong hacking spree that OpenAI didn't notice until well after the threat was contained and the FBI was alerted, according to peop...
reuters.com
The most amazing part of this is when she tells him London is not actually a dystopian hellscape, and he, the world's richest man who spends his days cooking his brain on his Nazi CSAM social media site, responds "You live a cloistered existence." He really is an extraordinary moron.
Luca Migo@victinibcn.bsky.social · 2w agoMusk is a pathetic liar. He tried telling The Economist’s Editor-in-Chief that a British civil war is "inevitable," only for her to calmly point out that he hasn't stepped foot in the UK in years, she actually lives there, and real crime stats prove he made the whole thing up. Pure gold.
