The Fine Print*

I've already noted how the next twelve to twenty-four months will be filled with a bipartisan parade of U.S. lawmakers pushing shitty laws that ban Chinese tech (drones, vacuums, AI, electric cars) under the pretense of protecting U.S. consumer privacy and

Earlier this week I wrote about the tech press' hagiography of outgoing Apple CEO Tim Cook, and the media's uncanny ability to downplay or ignore his legacy of boring products and enthusiastic coddling of violent global autocrats.

15 years after being tasked to replace Steve Jobs, Apple CEO Tim Cook is stepping down this week, presumably to be replaced with younger white men similarly incapable of standing up to fascism despite no limit of "fuck you money" (Apple has a $4.665 trill…

Let's be clear about something.

Well would you look at that.

From 2019 to 2026 you might recall that U.S. policymakers were utterly obsessed with "Chinese influence" over TikTok.

Just a quick programming note: the newsletter will be on hiatus the next two weeks as I spend time with family in the wake of my father's recent passing.

Just a quick programming note: my 90-year-old father passed away over the weekend, so posts will be less frequent and more sporadic over the next month.

I've already explored how Substack executives are generally terrible people who coddle white-supremacists, transphobes, and nazis to goose clicks, engagement, and revenues.

I really "enjoyed" (read: didn't enjoy at all) this recent piece in The Atlantic (non-paywalled archive link) proclaiming that the backlash to AI data centers is "overblown."

We're living in split realities.

So I just got done writing about how Elon Musk's xAI data centers outside of Memphis feature 57 largely-unregulated gas turbines pumping pollutants and toxic chemicals into black neighborhoods that already see disproportionate levels of pollution-triggered

Last week New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and a bunch of his "democratic socialist" allies won several key primaries in the city.

This week my colleague Sean Gonsalves and I wrote a feature for The Verge about how billionaires have hijacked billions of taxpayer dollars intended for better internet access, and instead shoveled that money into the pockets of openly technofascist billi…

If you're one of these folks oddly surprised why the animosity against AI is so white hot, or why younger Americans have inextricably linked AI to the broader rotten body politic, I'd like to direct your attention to Memphis, Tennessee.