Matteo Wong

But the fact remains that Grok’s latest bug, not unlike the flaws in Grokipedia, is really a demonstration of power over public information systems. Musk wields that power recklessly and brazenly, bending his platforms and tools to his own ends. Just yesterday, a user on X asked Musk, “Why is my feed suddenly flooded with lefty lawmakers spouting nonsense?” Musk replied that it was because X was “failing very badly with the recommendations algorithm.” Let us not forget the political project here. If successful, Grok and Grokipedia will work in tandem to write and rewrite both real-time and historical information, apparently according to their creator’s beliefs. Yesterday, Musk appeared to break his toy. It’s fixed now, but a bigger machine is still being built.

wrote with @matteowong.bsky.social about Elon's ritual humiliation at the hand of his chatbot, Grok. It's hilarious, yes. But it's also a reminder that he's trying to bend his platform/tools to rewrite or warp history (gift link) www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

The Pig Is in the White House This is what consequence-free misogyny looks like.

Bless @sophiegilbert.bsky.social @theatlantic.com: "The past decade has been a gloomy lesson in how limited a proportion of men actually see women as equal human beings...The fish rots from the head. The pig is in the Oval Office." www.theatlantic.com/culture/2025...

A sprawling criminal enterprise is responsible for all of those fake DMV texts, and it has a name: the smishing triad. @matteowong.bsky.social talks to the cybersecurity experts trying to take it down:
https://theatln.tc/aQKBYgGA

The Criminal Enterprise Behind That Fake Toll Text Beware the smishing triad

Of course even those fake toll fee texts are the result of SaaS—that is, Scamming-as-a-Service

www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

"The science backing up the idea that race can make someone a good or bad scientist or airline pilot is as solid as the logic behind 'orcs can’t be wizards' or 'a hobbit can never become a great fighter.'"

Just an excellent piece

I’m still fighting every day to get the answer to this question and now I have a FORM. Please for the love of God fill out the form (or email your answer to cweaver@theatlantic). I’ll let you know how it all works out in the end!!!! docs.google.com/forms/d/11de...

The New Brutality of OpenAI The company is pursuing aggressive legal tactics against its opponents.

OpenAI requested the names of anyone who cared for or supervised Adam Raine—whose parents allege, in a lawsuit, killed himself at ChatGPT's encouragement—over the past 5 years, including friends, teachers, school-bus drivers, and “car pool divers" [sic].

www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

No More Mr. Nice AI OpenAI is pursuing aggressive legal tactics against its opponents.

OpenAI is facing several high-profile lawsuits—and now the company is going on the offensive. @matteowong.bsky.social reports on the tech giant’s new, aggressive legal strategy:

YouTube video by The Atlantic Introducing: Galaxy Brain with Charlie Warzel

Hi! Preposterously excited (& tbh nervous in the good but also terrifying way) to say that i'm spinning up a podcast that will expand on all the work i do covering politics/technology/information hell. here's a lil teaser we made - first ep will come out 11/14! www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnDE...

The Mamdani Era Begins His opponents tried to smear him for his youth, inexperience, and leftist politics. But New Yorkers didn’t want a hardened political insider to be mayor—they wanted Zohran Mamdani.

In the end, Andrew Cuomo’s long record was a gift to Zohran Mamdani. “What I don’t have in experience, I make up for in integrity—and what you don’t have in integrity, you could never make up for in experience,” Mamdani told Cuomo in a debate.

I only call it like I see it

The Age of Anti-Social Media Is Here The social-media era is over. What’s coming will be much worse.

Defining and essential from @damonberes.com on how AI is ushering the age of anti-social media: "Although chatbots may be built on the familiar architecture of engagement, they enable something new: They allow you to talk forever to no one other than yourself."

www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

No Easy Fix for Easy A’s Students and professors are in a drawn-out battle over grade inflation. It may never end.

More essential @ibogost.com on the state of higher education—an incredibly smart, compassionate, and compelling view on the specter of "grade inflation"

www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

In our conversation, Skrenta downplayed the importance of any particular newspaper or magazine. He told me that The Atlantic is not a crucial part of the internet. “Whatever you’re saying, other people are saying too, on other sites,” he said. Throughout our conversation, Skrenta gave the impression of having little respect for (or understanding of) how original reporting works. Skrenta did, however, express tremendous reverence for Common Crawl’s archive. He sees it as a record of our civilization’s achievements. He told me he wants to “put it on a crystal cube and stick it on the moon,” so that “if the Earth blows up,” aliens might be able to reconstruct our history. “The Economist and The Atlantic will not be on that cube,” he told me. “Your article will not be on that cube. This article.”

“We can’t police that whole thing,” Common Crawl said. “It’s not our job. We’re just a bunch of dusty bookshelves.”

Meanwhile, CC has accepted hundreds of thousands in donations from AI companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic. And it expressed open antagonism toward the media:

Be sure you get to the kicker in this essential investigation into Common Crawl, the data archive behind the AI boom

Mamdani Has a Point About Rent Control The YIMBY case for rent control

Zohran Mamdani argues that “freeze the rent” is not just a way of delivering relief from exorbitant housing costs—it is the only way to get enough voters on board with a growth agenda. Rogé Karma spoke with Mamdani to see if he has a point.

Here’s How the AI Crash Happens The U.S. is becoming an Nvidia-state.

so @matteowong.bsky.social & I wrote on data centers: arguably the most important buildings in the world & are, in a way, holding the economy hostage. Byzantine financial instruments, private equity, depreciating tech, hype, $trillion valuations. it’s all there. an ai crash prob starts here.

Here’s How the AI Crash Happens The U.S. is becoming an Nvidia-state.

Hundreds of billions spent on AI with little to show, a potential $1 trillion IPO without a path to profit, byzantine financial arrangements that, yes, can be sorted in tranches. @cwarzel.bsky.social and I on how the AI boom could come crashing down:

www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

Put the Data Center in the Box K-cup project finance, box spread rates, Best Egg and an Instagram interview.

"It is a simple sort of arbitrage: If you can convince your ratings agencies and accountants that it’s not debt, and you convince the debt investors that it is debt, then you can raise cheap debt financing without it counting against your pristine credit profile."

www.bloomberg.com/opinion/news...

Can the Golden Age of Costco Last? With its standout deals and generous employment practices, the warehouse chain became a feel-good American institution. In a fraught time, it can be hard to remain beloved.

"But what exactly makes Costco Costco?"

www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Elon Musk’s Holy Trinity X, Grok, and now Grokipedia have constructed a parallel universe in the billionaire’s image.

Grokipedia is the crown jewel in Elon Musk’s propaganda apparatus. According to Musk’s site, Apartheid wasn’t that bad and the AfD is “preserving German” heritage: www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

In Praise of Jewel Thieves How nice to read about a heist rather than a massacre

Talkie-walkie?!

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

‘Screen Time’ Does Not Exist The first step to recovery is acceptance of this fact.

I wrote about why “screen time” is an incoherent concept when you live among a proliferating infinity of screens.

OpenAI Wants to Cure Cancer. So Why Did It Make a Web Browser? The AI giant has lost its imagination.

OpenAI just launched an AI-powered web browser that looks, more or less, like every other web browser. @matteowong.bsky.social on what’s really behind the move:

A ‘Death Train’ Is Haunting South Florida The Brightline has been hailed as the future of high-speed rail in the United States, but it has one big, unignorable problem.

"If Brightline really is the future of rail in the United States, the most important question is obvious: Why are so many people dying?"

Such a compassionate, sharp, and captivating story:
www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

AI’s Invasive Species The slop is winning.

Hi. I wrote an essay about AI slop: How it feels like an invasive species for the internet. How its boosters describe building a future that’s devoid of craft. How frictionlessness can be nihilistic & how this stuff seems to leach part of our shared humanity out of the world. I hope you'll read it.

Lost in AirPod Translation Apple promises to put an AI interpreter in everyone’s ears. It couldn’t even help me order tamales.

We tried the new Live Translation feature that Apple has heavily marketed. It turns out to be optimized for Spanish as spoken in Spain (pop. 49 million) as opposed to Latin America or the Caribbean (663 million), which makes it kind of a disaster to use in the U.S. And that's just one problem. Alas.

Lost in AirPod Translation Apple promises to put an AI interpreter in everyone’s ears. It couldn’t even help me order tamales.

I tried Apple's new AirPod Live Translation feature. It told me I was being sold tamales filled with MDMA.

www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

Harvard’s Public-Health School Is on Life Support Its dean is stumbling through the political reality of the Trump administration.

www.theatlantic.com/health/2025/...

"If the Trump administration’s aim has been to upend American science, [the Harvard School of Public Health] is a prime example of what that looks like."