onfocus

According to ethics disclosure reports released by the White House, Miller owns between $100,000 and $250,000 worth of stock in Palantir, Peter Thiel’s data and intelligence software company that has a several lucrative contracts with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to track data and conduct surveillance on undocumented immigrants. It’s a pretty clear conflict of interest from the man behind much of Donald Trump’s immigration policy, in an administration that is already rife with corruption.

Hateful sure, and also corrupt!

“We are witnessing something without precedent,” Bonica wrote. “[A] Supreme Court that appears to be at war with the federal judiciary’s core constitutional function.”

The coup is coming from inside the house.

Thomas’s world is one where reality barely exists. Mountains of research can be dismissed in favor of a handful of op-eds. Dozens of prominent organizations can be disregarded as in thrall to liberal ideologies, while fringe right-wing groups are treated as unbiased purveyors of truth.

Excellent description of how conspiracy world-view operates.

The pretense of making America safer has been discarded. America won’t get any safer, just as surely as it won’t get any greater under this president. For years, it’s been known that migrants commit fewer crimes than natural-born citizens. But with arrest numbers flagging after an initial, more-targeted surge, the administration made it clear it was time to hit the streets and round up any foreigners ICE might come across.

Mass deporting people was never about stopping crime.

“If you have somebody who’s expressing a high degree of hostility to the court, on whatever basis … the danger, of course, is somebody might pick up on that. And we have had, of course, serious threats of violence and murder of judges just simply for doing their work,” Roberts said during an appearance at a judicial conference.

Ah yes, the simple work of dismantling our constitutional democracy, enabling authoritarianism, and taking away the rights of Americans while taking lavish gifts from billionaires. Let's all calm down about all of this before someone gets hurt.

One week after 5 million Americans flooded the streets for a massive “No Kings” protest, with his approval rating heading underwater faster than the next climate-fueled flash flood, with his masked-secret-police deportation drive starting to alienate his own voters, with gas prices and 20-something unemployment starting to soar, and almost zero legislation despite GOP control of Congress, Trump showed that even a POTUS who hates canines can still wag the dog.

Only Will Bunch is allowed to tell the truth? And the Philadelphia Inquirer is the only independent newspaper left?

But for now, the data clearly show that Americans — across party lines — are very wary of another war in the Middle East and disapprove of the U.S. bombing Iran. These recent polls reveal a broad reluctance for military action, even among Trump voters.

It’s worth looking at a snapshot of public opinion before the consent manufacturing machine starts rolling. (Link to archive version because Substack continues to be the worst.)

At every stage, Trump and Miller have pursued things that an aspiring dictator in a declining state might do to stave off further decline. But those very same acts from a country with what had been the best economy in the world, currency hegemony, and unsurpassed scientific know-how have the opposite effect. They make the aspiring dictator weaker, first externally and then, as a result, internally.

This is a great point. Following the failing-country dictator playbook in a strong world power on-the-rise is having the opposite effect: weakening rather than strengthening their positions.

This video is a good introduction to the fediverse. I've been on Mastodon since 2018 or so and it's now the only social network I use. It doesn't have ads, has better privacy controls, and gives much better filtering and muting options. Mastodon lacks some polish in the signup and discovery features, but makes up for that in lots of other daily life ways.

After federal health officials made abrupt changes to US Covid-19 vaccine recommendations for pregnant women last month, there’s new confusion and uncertainty about who can get the shots — and some reports that patients were turned away when they tried to get vaccinated.

In the future, please vote for people who want other people to suffer less. Republicans are trying to make sure we are sicker through anti-science policies.

The world according to Stephen Miller is a cruel and callous one, in which America is strictly for unhyphenated Americans and those here “illegally” must be forcibly returned to the “failed states” where they were born. To Miller, the crumbling American heartland is being preyed on not by rapacious capital but by an invading army of gangsters, thugs, and terrorists waved in by coastal liberal elites—in other words, by exactly the kind of people he has always lived among.

Meet your shadow President.

The DeepMind CEO is dead-set that advanced AI models will bring about a renaissance in human existence. The “golden era” is only five short years away. “AGI can solve what I call root-node problems in the world—curing terrible diseases, much healthier and longer lifespans, finding new energy sources,” Hassabis said.

Someone needs to check in on the standard tech CEO ketamine dosage. I feel like it's dialed too high at the moment.

While publishers contend with how AI is changing search, they are also seeking ways to protect their copyright material. The large language models that underpin the new generation of chatbots are trained on data hoovered up from the open web, including news articles.

This was always the central transaction of Google. It can display portions of your site (or maybe even a fully cached version) and in return site owners get traffic. The deal is off. Now it's all crawling/scraping but keeping most of the traffic for themselves.

The media has provided OpenAI with an aura of vast authority, with its executives publicly proclaiming that its tech is poised to profoundly change the world, restructuring the economy and perhaps one day achieving a superhuman "artificial general intelligence" — outsize claims that sound, on a certain level, not unlike many of the delusions we heard about while reporting this story.

Hadn't made this connection before. Yeah, if you claim your new technology is going to reorder society—and media outlets credulously parrot it—you're going to trick people into thinking they're tapped into genius. Some healthy skepticism about new technology is important.

This inital use of federal troops in a blue city should be understood as an effort to build pressure to help pass the bill. It should also be used as an example of the danger of passing the bill — the kind of authoritarianism that Miller intends to wield if the bill does pass.

When your bill is losing traction in congress, it's time to invade a US city to rile up your base.

GOP leaders to the rank-and-file down to the libertarian-leaning Rand Paul offered no criticism Monday of Trump’s tactics over the weekend. And some said they wouldn’t put a timeline on the National Guard’s presence in the state given the uncertainty of future demonstrations.

Ah yes, the libertarian wing of the Republican party that famously wants to increase the scope and power of the federal government through invading states with military forces against the wishes of local leaders. Their supposed libertarian principles don’t hold up very well in the face of fascism.

Bessent continued: “I am certain most California businesses know that failing to pay taxes owed to the Treasury constitutes tax evasion and have no intention of following the dangerous path Governor Gavin Newsom is threatening.”

Now they’re concerned about collecting taxes? Maybe wasn’t such a good idea to fire thousands at the IRS?

“It’s important we respect the executive authority of our country’s governors to manage their National Guards — and we stand with Governor Newsom who has made it clear that violence is unacceptable and that local authorities should be able to do their jobs without the chaos of this federal interference and intimidation.”

State's rights, amirite? I know it's tiring to point out Republican hypocrisy but I'm tired.

“It’s the Constitution. James Madison wrote it that way, and it was very explicit,” Bacon said of Congress’ power over trade. “And I get the emergency powers, but I think it’s being abused. When you’re trying to do tariff policy for 80 countries, that’s policy, not emergency action.”

If everything is an unusual and extraordinary threat from abroad then that phrase isn't meaningful.

That being said, there's no excuse for how everybody covered this Jony Ive fiasco. Even if you think this device ships, it took very little time and energy to establish how little Jony Ive has done since leaving Apple, and only a little more time to work out exactly how ridiculous everything about it.

Righteous rant from Edward Zitron about fawning, credulous OpenAi coverage.

The reality is that there is no rational basis for this spate of actions. These guys just can’t help themselves. The urge to dominate people and institutions and make them conform to Trump’s will is just too strong for them to resist. Even when the result is that they will lose, and lose again, and lose again.

Yeah, even with the Project 2025 blueprint, authoritarian compulsion seems to explain some of their more inexplicable actions better than a comprehensive strategy.

Proving the superiority of some humans over others has repeatedly failed; what better way to continue the effort than the deployment of technology that makes proof of anything impossible, such that making something true requires only the right person to declare it so.

I think this article article helps bring many background assumptions of the AI mindset into the foreground. I've found thinking about AI as an ideology rather than a technology helps me process our current moment. Highly recommended.

"With today's decision, it seems as if the court has truly lost its moorings," she said. In the process, she added, the court is creating "grave privacy risks for millions of Americans."

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson raising the alarm about the Supreme Court enabling executive overreach.