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Fortune's disclosure that they used gen AI to draft this story
Reporting from Fortune.com describing Sam Altman's consistent pattern of lying and OpenAi's CFO seeking a federal bailout which reads: Galloway and Elson also commented on OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar going viral for the wrong reasons: telling the Wall Street Journal the company is seeking federal government support—a “backstop”—to help finance future data centers. Galloway sees this potential taxpayer bailout as yet another tell the company lacks a viable financing plan and will likely have to seek financing in the form of debt, which he believes could be the beginning of the end for the AI bubble. Further undermining confidence are leadership concerns, including the recently released deposition of former OpenAI cofounder Ilya Sutskever, who referenced a memo alleging Altman was fired due to a “loss of confidence” and a “consistent pattern of lying.”
excerpt from a 60 minutes interview with elon musk in which he reveals that a $1.6 billion contract with NASA saved spacex from bankruptcy. It reads: "We were running on fumes at that point," Musk says. "We had virtually no money... a fourth failure would have been absolutely game over. Done." On Dec. 23, 2008, NASA awarded SpaceX a $1.6 billion contract to haul at least 20 metric tons of cargo to the international space station over 12 planned flights. "NASA called and told us we won a $1.5 billion contract," Musk says in the interview. "I couldn't even hold the phone. I just blurted out, 'I love you guys!'" "They saved you," Pelley suggests. "Yeah, they did."
sam altman looking like a middle-aged little weasel on his first day of second grade
screenshot of the byline of the linked post, written by the esteemed Dr. Gator
a screenshot of a profile photo belonging to a very shiny man on X, the everything app, who would like Elizabeth Holmes to be freed from prison.
screenshot of the October 27 cover of The New Yorker which depicts a selfish billionaire sharing a bed with an average person and stealing away all the blanket as a metaphor their rapacious greed. the billionaire in the cartoon probably bears no resemblance to the multi-billionaire owner of The New Yorker’s parent company, condé nast.
a gif of a large tree being felled
reporting from the guardian quoting court documents from the smartmatic defamation suit quoting fox employees trashing their own network which reads , The comments come from an anonymous internal survey – the “Fox News 2020 Great Place to Work Trust Index Survey” – of 1,040 employees conducted between 24 August 2020 and 8 September 2020. Several employees expressed concerns that the network was intentionally aiding Donald Trump and the Republican party. One anonymous employee said that Fox should “change the misogynist, racist, rightwing content,” adding, “Fox News is a propaganda machine for the Republican party NOT a news organization and should be acknowledged as such. It is embarrassing to tell people that I work here as even conservatives know [Fox News Channel] and [Fox Business Network] are biased information sources – not news.” While the employee called the work environment “great,” they said “the content is hateful and has made the world a more divided and angry place”. “I sometimes go home fighting back tears,” an employee said. “This network made me question my morals. Have I sold my soul to the devil?”
reporting from engadget about the insatiable, out-of-control demand for resources for AI data centers, which reads, “There's a data center east of Atlanta that has damaged local wells and caused municipal water prices to soar, which could lead to a shortage and rationing by 2030. The price of water in the region is set to increase by 33 percent in the next two years. Typical data centers guzzle around 500,000 gallons of water each day, but these forthcoming AI-centric complexes will likely be even thirstier. The new centers could require millions of gallons per day, according to water permit applications reviewed by The New York Times. Mike Hopkins, the executive director of the Newton County Water and Sewerage Authority, says that applications are coming in with requests for up to six millions of water per day, which is more than the county's entire daily usage. “What the data centers don’t understand is that they’re taking up the community wealth,” he said. “We just don’t have the water.””
reporting from the guardian about the exodus of DOJ lawyers tasked with defending the trump administration’s policies, which reads, “The seven lawyers who spoke with Reuters cited a punishing workload and the need to defend policies that some felt were not legally justifiable among the key reasons for the wave of departures. Three of them said some career lawyers feared they would be pressured to misrepresent facts or legal issues in court, a violation of ethics rules that could lead to professional sanctions.”
excerpt from reporting by truthout.org about kristi noem’s elimination of hundreds of emergency response call center contractors during flood recovery efforts in texas which reads, “On July 5, as floodwaters were starting to recede, FEMA received 3,027 calls from disaster survivors and answered 3,018, or roughly 99.7 percent, the documents show. Contractors with four call center companies answered the vast majority of the calls. That evening, however, Noem did not renew the contracts with the four companies, and hundreds of contractors were fired, according to the documents and the person briefed on the matter. The next day, July 6, FEMA received 2,363 calls and answered 846, or roughly 35.8 percent, according to the documents. And on Monday, July 7, the agency fielded 16,419 calls and answered 2,613, or around 15.9 percent, the documents show. Calling is one of the primary ways that flood victims apply for aid from the disaster relief agency. But Noem would wait until July 10 — five days later — to renew the contracts of the people who took those phone calls. “Responding to less than half of the inquiries is pretty horrific,” Jeffrey Schlegelmilch, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, told The Times.”
reporting from the guardian about the total lack of effort by republican lawmakers to do anything about the climate crisis killing their constituents, which reads, “Such an absence of forethought would be less serious were it not for Texas being, literally and metaphorically, in the eye of the storm. The state’s long Gulf coastline renders it vulnerable to hurricanes and sea level rise, its southern location makes it hot and growing hotter, the west of the state is in the desert south-west region which is liable to droughts, and the Hill Country, as has been seen with such heart-wrenching results, is home to “flash flood alley”, one of the most dangerous flood-prone areas of the US. “We have everything other than maybe avalanches,” Dessler said. “Every other climate disaster you can think of, like wildfires – you name it, we have it.” The state’s vulnerable topography is reflected in the statistics. Texas is the most disaster-prone state in the country, recording 190 extreme weather events between 1980 and 2024, each inflicting more than $1bn in damage.”
an excerpt from a letter written by R. Crumb to Harper’s Magazine responding to a book review of a biography about Crumb. The reviewer had casually referred to one of Crumb’s partners as one of his “victims.” the excerpt reads, “I have read Dan Piepenbring’s review of Dan Nadel’s biography of me [“New Books,” April], and just to set the record straight, the “victim” who said, “You don’t cop a feel. You cop a ride,” was a big strong woman who INVITED me to hop on her back and then danced around humming a tune just to show how easy it was for her. I was thrilled, of course, “pervert” that I am. She worked for the parks department in San Francisco and boasted of how part of her job involved carrying ninety-pound sacks of manure, which she said was no big deal for her! Wow! Oh, I love big strong ladies.”
a screenshot of a reddit post describing the movie Idiocracy, which features a prison called the House of Particular Individuals
reporting from the Guardian by Lauren Almeida which reads, “The wealth of the world’s 3,000 billionaires has surged by $6.5tn (£4.8tn) in real terms over the past decade, according to Oxfam, equivalent to 14.6% of global output. In total the richest 1% of the global population has gained at least $33.9tn in real terms, which the charity said was “enough to end annual global poverty 22 times over”. The figures come as various governments face growing calls to introduce a wealth tax on the international elite.”
an excerpt from rolling stone which reads: “In recent days, the voices speaking to a presidential audience of one, via the mass broadcast of Fox News, include Sen. Lindsey Graham. The South Carolina Republican has appeared on the network repeatedly to advocate for direct U.S. involvement in the conflict between Israel and Iran. “We’ve got a chance to end a threat to the state of Israel forever by replacing this regime with something better. I do believe the biggest winner of them leaving will be the Iranian people,” Graham told host Sean Hannity on Monday.”
excerpt from a cnbc report which reads, “California is the most expensive U.S. state based on monthly costs California dethroned Hawaii as the most expensive state based on the cost of monthly household bills. Residents spend $2,854 — 39% above the national average.”
an excerpt from Jason Linkins in The New Republic about the human toll of the Trump administration so far which reads: “The worst-case scenario is, naturally, millions of needless deaths. Back in March, The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof attempted to quantify the harms done by the Trump administration’s decimation of foreign aid agencies in terms of lives lost. Here are his calculations: 1.65 million deaths from AIDS, 500,000 from lack of vaccines, 550,000 from lack of food aid, and approximately 300,000 each from lack of malaria and tuberculosis prevention, respectively. This all raises an interesting question: How many people have to die before the word holocaust is in play? I’m not gunning for shock value here, at least not solely. I want to suggest that there is a certain necessary logic to what has to follow corrupt misrule of this kind: tribunals, trials, punishment, prison, and the running to ground and defunding of the entire Trump syndicate.”
excerpt from truthdig reporting on the Trump administration looking for potential collaborators in their plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza, which reads: “Skeptical that there’s a serious ‘plan’ here (rather than just spitballing). But the underlying premise is correct: the Trump administration has spent months approaching various countries to see if it could bribe them into helping out with the ethnic cleansing of Gaza,” Carlstrom wrote in a post on X on Saturday.
excerpt from WSJ reporting on Facebook being mostly spam which reads, “Current and former employees say Meta is reluctant to add impediments for ad-buying clients who drove a 22% increase in its advertising business last year to over $160 billion. Even after users demonstrate a history of scamming, Meta balks at removing them. One late 2024 document reviewed by the Journal shows that the company will allow advertisers to accrue between eight and 32 automated “strikes” for financial fraud before it bans their accounts. In instances where Meta employees personally escalate the problem, the limit can drop to between four and 16 strikes.”
excerpt from WSJ story regarding the high levels of scams on Facebook which reads, “The company accounted for nearly half of all reported scams on Zelle for JPMorgan Chase between the summers of 2023 and 2024, according to a person familiar with the service. The peer-to-peer payment platform is owned by several banking giants, including JPMorgan, the country’s biggest bank, and Wells Fargo. Other banks that offer Zelle have experienced similarly high fraud claims originating on Meta, according to people familiar with the matter. British and Australian regulators have found similar levels of fraud originating on Meta’s platforms. An internal analysis from 2022 described in company documents likewise found that 70% of newly active advertisers on the platform are promoting scams, illicit goods or “low quality” products.”
cover of R.L. Stine's book, night of the living dummy III
An excerpt from the washington post which reads: Loudermilk had publicly floated the idea of issuing a subpoena to Hutchinson, who was elevated to national prominence in an explosive 2022 hearing, where she testified that President Trump had wanted an armed mob to march to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — and that he wanted to join them. Before that meeting, a Johnson aide told Loudermilk’s staff that multiple colleagues had raised concerns with the speaker’s office about the potential for public disclosure of “sexual texts from members who were trying to engage in sexual favors” with Hutchinson, according to correspondence produced at the time that detailed the conversation. Separately, a member of Johnson’s staff told Loudermilk aides that Hutchinson could “potentially reveal embarrassing information,” according to an email reviewed by The Post.
Excerpt from the linked cnn article which reads: "In a monumental victory today, News UK have admitted that The Sun, the flagship title for Rupert Murdoch's UK media empire, has indeed engaged in illegal practices," Prince Harry and fellow claimant Tom Watson said in a statement read aloud by their lawyer outside court. It's something of a capstone to the decades-old phone hacking scandal that cost the Murdoch empire in excess of $1 billion. This settlement will cost the company some more. Although the exact amount is not known, some media reports have pointed to an eight-figure sum, which would likely include legal costs as well as damages. A source involved in the case did not refute the figure when asked by CNN.
Excerpt from a Washington Post story which reads: “In his new role, Musk appears to have vast access to the inner workings of government that far exceeds the plan as initially conceived. The DOGE leader, also the chief executive of one company that has won billions of dollars in federal contracts and others that have faced significant federal scrutiny, will be able to deploy a team of handpicked software engineers to every government agency, where under Trump’s executive order they will be granted “full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems.” (Musk already has a White House email address, according to Bloomberg News.) Armed with sensitive data, Musk could draw on expertise gathered from his business empire — including deploying artificial intelligence — to achieve his aims, people familiar with the matter said.”
A picture from the guardian of mark zuckerberg looking like an absolute douchebag
A screenshot of the headline to an opinion piece by Rebecca Shaw in the Guardian titled “I knew one day I’d have to watch powerful men burn the world down - I just didn’t expect them to be such losers.”
Excerpt from the Washington post article titled “In the shadows of Arizona’s data center boom, thousands live without power”, which reads: “We’ve been without [power] for quite a long time,” said Nez, who lives separately from her teenage children so they have electricity to complete their schoolwork. Tech companies “already have it,” she said, “and for them to get more power, it’s kind of not right.” Nicole Garcia, a spokeswoman for Arizona’s utility board the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC), said it did not approve the Navajo aid provision because of “concerns about how the funds would be used,” adding that customers are not “responsible for extending electricity to all tribal areas of the state.” Ann Porter, a spokesperson for the power company Arizona Public Service (APS), said that its process for raising rates is “backward-looking.” The organization aims to “recover money we’ve already spent and better align with the cost to maintain a reliable energy grid for Arizona.” After a years-long courtship of Big Tech by local politicians, power companies and utility regulators eager for the promise of tax revenue and jobs, the strain on Arizona’s power grid is already apparent. Often, vulnerable communities are paying the price. While Nez and her neighbors lost a shot at getting power, the historically Black town of Randolph, almost 60 miles south of Phoenix, faces the expansion of a massive natural gas plant that emits particulate matter linked to asthma and lung cancer.
Excerpt from the article “I wasn’t ready for MAGA prom” in The Atlantic which reads: “Seeing MAGA in person also betrays other hints of the direction the party will take in Trump’s second term. Members of several far-right European parties were in the crowd. “We have many friends in the New York Young Republican Club,” Martin Kohler, the chairman of the Berlin youth wing of Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) told me, explaining that his party had hosted Wax in Berlin. “They invited us to come over for the gala.” The politically ascendant AfD is among Germany’s furthest-right parties. Although it disputes allegations that it is a neo-Nazi party, many of its members have been outed as having ties to neo-Nazis. They have reportedly discussed “remigration,” the process of deporting nonwhite residents, including naturalized citizens and their descendants. (Trump used this term in a Truth Social post in September). Sam Venis, another journalist in attendance, told me that he met several people at the gala who said that they were members of the Forum for Democracy, a far-right party in the Netherlands whose leader has also advocated for “mass remigration” so that Europe does not “Africanize” and instead remains predominately white. The gala closed with a speech from Miklós Szánthó, the director-general of the Center for Fundamental Rights, an organization in Hungary that supports Viktor Orbán, the country’s authoritarian prime minister. The presence of these European far-right parties was fitting. They have rallied around punishing their enemies by “reclaiming” their country from immigrants and the cosmopolitans they think have taken it over: They want revenge. Once Trump takes office, the MAGA right will begin to exact it. “Tonight, for me, is a night of hope,” Kohler said. “Here in the U.S., something is about to change.”
Screenshot from a Vox article which reads, “Whatever your philosophical leanings, it’s a useful thought experiment. And there are some versions of that conversation I can imagine having. I think it’s okay to tell someone at risk of malaria that they’re not getting pills or bednets to prevent it because the money is going instead to develop a vaccine against tuberculosis so that even more people’s lives could be saved. That’s a reasonable principle to act on.”
A screenshot from the New Yorker article, “Shaking the foundations,” which reads “The “Gospel” also prompted the ur-critiques of philanthropy. In 1890, the Reverend Hugh Price Hughes, a Methodist minister, wrote that, while he was sure Carnegie was “a most estimable and generous man,” his “Gospel” represented a “social monstrosity” and a “grave political peril.” William Jewett Tucker, a professor of religion who would later become the president of Dartmouth, was no less horrified. What the “Gospel” advocated, Tucker wrote, was “a vast system of patronage,” and nothing could “in the final issue create a more hopeless social condition.” To assume that “wealth is the inevitable possession of the few” was to evade the essential issue: “The ethical question of today centres, I am sure, in the distribution rather than in the redistribution of wealth.”
Subtitle from the linked article in Forbes, “A Bitcoin Miner Promised To Help A Texas Town. It Went Bankrupt Instead. Now, It’s Pivoting To AI”
NBC news asked online sleuth, Savannah Sparks, if anyone in the sleuth community was helping to find the suspect in the killing of United healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Her response: “Absolutely the fuck not.”
Text from Jane Mayer’s reporting on Defense Sec nominee Pete Hegseth stating, “A few hours before dawn, the alleged victim returned to the hotel room that she was sharing with her husband and kids. She told police later that she couldn’t recall much of what had happened. But two days later she started to have frightening flashbacks and nightmares. She told police that she hazily recalled Hegseth taking her phone and blocking the door as she tried to leave. She recalled him on top of her, with his dog tags in her face. She recalled saying no a lot. Four days after the alleged assault, she went to a hospital and asked for a rape exam. She said that she thought someone might have slipped a drug into her drink and sexually assaulted her. She brought in the clothes she’d worn that night. According to the police report, she had developed an infection that could have resulted from a new sexual partner. She declined to name her alleged assailant. The nurse was legally required to report the incident to the police, who opened a criminal investigation. At that point, the alleged victim identified her assaulter as Hegseth.”
Screenshot of a vanity fair article titled “the metaverse is about to change everything”