So Much for the MAGA Divorce
Steve Bannon seems resigned to sharing power with the “tech bros,” as he calls them. Last week, when I spoke with President Donald Trump’s former chief strategist and continued ally, he was clear about...
View ArticleA New Kart-Racing Appliance
If your virtual kart-racing life was missing something, you’re in luck. Nintendo, the Japanese electronics manufacturer, announced its new Mario Kart appliance today. The Switch 2, which can be used...
View ArticleElon Musk Lost His Big Bet
Last night, X’s “For You” algorithm offered me up what felt like a dispatch from an alternate universe. It was a post from Elon Musk, originally published hours earlier. “This is the first time humans...
View ArticleThe Man Out to Prove How Dumb AI Still Is
Deep down, Sam Altman and François Chollet share the same dream. They want to build AI models that achieve “artificial general intelligence,” or AGI—matching or exceeding the capabilities of the human...
View ArticleThe Unending Trouble With TikTok
Déjà vu: TikTok’s time was nearly up, and then President Donald Trump stepped in to save it. This happened in January, and also earlier today, when Trump said that he will sign another executive order...
View ArticleLaura Loomer Is a Warning
White House staffers, it seems, had better hope that they stay in Laura Loomer’s good graces. This week, Loomer—a far-right provocateur who has described herself as “pro–white nationalism” and Islam as...
View ArticleBuy That New Phone Now
The tariff apocalypse is upon us. Should you buy an iPad?Some people, it seems, have answered with a resounding yes. Bloombergreported yesterday that at some Apple stores, “the atmosphere was like the...
View ArticleThere Was Never a Master Plan
Sign up for Trump’s Return, a newsletter featuring coverage of the second Trump presidency.To plainly state what is going on right now would make you sound delusional.The president of the United States...
View ArticleThe Great Torpedo-Bat Panic
The madness started, as baseball madness tends to start, with the New York Yankees: At the end of March, during the opening weekend of the new season, the team’s first three batters hit home runs on...
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A Disaster for American Innovation
Nearly three months into President Donald Trump’s term, the future of American AI leadership is in jeopardy. Basically any generative-AI product you have used or heard of—ChatGPT, Claude, AlphaFold,...
View ArticleTrump’s Empty Response to the Josh Shapiro Attack
Josh Shapiro is very lucky to be alive. The Pennsylvania governor and his family escaped an arson attack in the early hours of this morning. Parts of the governor’s mansion were badly charred,...
View ArticleOne Simple Hack to Ruin Your Easter
Like countless others who have left their hometown to live a sinful, secular life in a fantastic American city, I no longer actively practice Christianity. But a few times a year, my upbringing...
View ArticleThe Gen Z Lifestyle Subsidy
Finals season looks different this year. Across college campuses, students are slogging their way through exams with all-nighters and lots of caffeine, just as they always have. But they’re also...
View ArticleThe Great AI Lock-In Has Begun
There are really two OpenAIs. One is the creator of world-bending machines—the start-up that unleashed ChatGPT and in turn the generative-AI boom, surging toward an unrecognizable future with the rest...
View ArticleWho Reads Entire Lawsuits for Fun?
Updated at 10:26 a.m. ET on April 23, 2025Everywhere I look on social media, disembodied heads float in front of legal documents, narrating them line by line. Sometimes they linger on a specific...
View ArticleTesla’s Remarkably Bad Quarter Is Even Worse Than It Looks
It’s a rare thing to shoot yourself in the foot and win a marathon. For years, Elon Musk has managed to do something like that with Tesla, achieving monumental success in spite of a series of...
View ArticleAI Executives Promise Cancer Cures. Here’s the Reality
To hear Silicon Valley tell it, the end of disease is well on its way. Not because of oncology research or some solution to America’s ongoing doctor shortage, but because of (what else?) advances in...
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American Panopticon
If you have tips about DOGE and its data collection, you can contact Ian and Charlie on Signal at @ibogost.47 and @cwarzel.92.If you were tasked with building a panopticon, your design might look a lot...
View ArticleThe Great Language Flattening
In at least one crucial way, AI has already won its campaign for global dominance. An unbelievable volume of synthetic prose is published every moment of every day—heaping piles of machine-written news...
View ArticleWho Gets Panzer Tattooed on Their Arm?
On the long list of reasons the United States could have lost World War II—the terribly effective surprise Japanese attack, an awful lack of military readiness, the relatively untrained troops—there is...
View ArticleEverything Is the ‘Twitter Files’ Now
Updated at 1:02 p.m. ET on May 2, 2025Darren Beattie, a senior official at the State Department, is concerned that his agency has abused its powers under previous Democratic administrations. To rectify...
View Article‘The Worst Internet-Research Ethics Violation I Have Ever Seen’
When Reddit rebranded itself as “the heart of the internet” a couple of years ago, the slogan was meant to evoke the site’s organic character. In an age of social media dominated by algorithms, Reddit...
View ArticleWe’re Back to the Actually Internet
Updated at 1:53 p.m. ET on May 5, 2025One Friday in April, Meta’s chief global affairs officer, Joel Kaplan, announced that the process of removing fact-checking from the American versions of Facebook,...
View ArticleElon Musk’s Most Alarming Power Grab
This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here.When Elon Musk’s engineers bundled a batch of prototype satellites into a rocket’s nose cone six years ago,...
View ArticleThe Brands Are Very Sorry About Your Trauma
Cameo is a platform that allows everyday people to commission B-to-Z-list celebrities to record personalized videograms for any occasion. Some time ago, when my friend Caroline was in the hospital, I...
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