Benjamin Riley

This is excellent. In the era of American fascism, no one has disappointed me more than Ezra Klein. Squandering his massive platform to shill for Charlie Kirk and AI. An abundance of shame.

Yes

So great to be back in America after a few weeks of travel.

Thank you for sharing it, Alberto!

From Nikole Hannah-Jones's article on Charlie Kirk: "Oklahoma, of course, is a deeply red state. But in the wake of Kirk’s death, individuals and institutions across the nation moved not just to condemn his killing and political violence, but to venerate him. It was unsettling to many to see politicians from across the political spectrum speak with reverence about a man who espoused the racist Great Replacement Theory, which argues that white Americans are being systematically replaced by multiculturalism and by brown and Black immigrants; who continuously claimed that “there’s a war on white people in this country; who said it was “a fact” that “prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people”; who gave a platform to people who believe in eugenics and race science; who contended that Black people commit more crime than white people and that the blame lies in a Black culture that accepts that Black men “impregnate women and they don’t stay around”; who referred to a transgender athlete as an “abomination” and called “the transgender thing” a “throbbing middle finger to God”; and who declared that Islam, the world’s second-largest religion, “is not compatible with Western civilization” and that it is a sword being used “to slit the throat of America.”"

I continue to watch @nhannahjones.bsky.social in awe. This paragraph, whew. Charlie Kirk was a bigot. The national delusion to the contrary is indicative of how rapidly we are unraveling.

I get it. I relish that the predominant posture here is AI hater, but it can be a bit much.

YOU are getting attacked as an AI shill?!?

It’s the city’s new most expensive private school — and AI is the teacher At Alpha School, students do only two hours of academic work a day, and MrBeast is supposedly a consultant.

Oh god, another story about AlphaSch...wait, this one actually doesn't fall for the hype and nonsense? And quotes @audreywatters.bsky.social? Good reporting here!

(MrBeast my god)

sfstandard.com/2025/09/19/a...

Catholicism. I'm looking into it.

"Trump is already unpopular. He is getting more unpopular. His actions are unpopular. It is the elites, the big diversified corporations and monopolies who have tossed aside most rapidly Americans’ instinctive disdain for kings and dictators."

Mark your calendar, October 18. NO KINGS!

This is 90 seconds of pure porn for me. The best part is Zuckerberg and this dude trying to blame the WiFi as the AI totally fails.

This is necessary reading, but focus on this: RESIST THE BEGINNINGS. I swear there is still time to defeat American Fascism but it requires getting involved, right now. Pace yourself, but join the fight. At least once a month, make one major act of defiance. We can win back our country.

No Kings Unveils a Big New Trump Protest, and the Stakes Couldn't Be Higher Ezra Levin of Indivisible on how protest can stop Donald Trump’s authoritarianism.

Talk to friends and family members who have never protested before and get them out on October 18.

We are the song death takes it own time singing In the sweetness, in the bitter

Your vital if heartbreaking reporting informed a recent essay of my own; thank you for all you're doing.

open.substack.com/pub/buildcog...

Definitely weird vibes

We will need this to be a massive display of pro-democracy force on the street. If you're aghast at what's happening, don't just bitch about it on here, make a plan, annoy friends and family, there is true power in the people but we have to fucking mobilize.

Image of table at which sit headless figures, a military figure, and a top hatted capitalist whispering in his ear. The sun above includes a dollar sign

Have been thinking about continuing relevance of Dada artist George Grosz's political critiques. His scathing 1926 painting "Eclipse of the Sun" portrays alliance between feckless political & military leaders and capitalist financiers. Grosz, branded "degenerate" by the Nazis, fled to the US in 1933

This 100%. What's happening is not popular. A majority of Americans don't want this. But there's a massive leadership vacuum on the Left that must be filled quickly.

We could do worse than Kimmel being part of that leadership.

Well that's because we are for democracy, free speech, pluralism etc etc.

He Raised Three Marines. His Wife Is American. The U.S. Wants to Deport Him.

"Mr. Barranco, 48, was weeding between bushes when men in masks descended on him. His memory of his arrest is fragmented: the blinding sting of pepper spray; beefy federal agents taking him down and pinning him to the pavement; their relentless blows; the pain radiating from his left shoulder."

AI generated email where the sender forgot to delete the place where AI told it to "mention a specific article" I've written to "make it personal"

This email did not find me well.

Yes, the complete failure to imagine the warping effect of AI usage by students suggests that everyone involved in this "AI literacy" framework is not in fact AI literate.

I suspect some in MBA programs, focused as they are on commercial activity and "productivity," may not value reading in the same way as in, say, English or philosophy departments.

Parody may be forthcoming.

Drawing of a 10yr old girl named Sofia, it is suggested she should use AI to explore different plots and dialogue for stories she writes. It's unclear if anyone at the European Commission, the OECD, or Code.org have met a real human 10 year old.

Reviewing a draft "AI Literacy Framework" from the European Commission and the OECD, with assistance from Code.org, and I am wondering if anyone affiliated with these organizations knows a real, human 10 year old? What are we doing here?

A Matter of Words | The Point Magazine Over the course of the past two years, university committees focused on the impact of artificial intelligence have assembled across the country.

"For a lot of us, our motivation to enter academia was primarily about helping to form students as people....Our frustration is not merely that we don’t care about what AI has to say and therefore get bored grading; it is that we actively miss reading the thoughts of our human students."

Bus stop ad for Cluely.com which is marketing AI as a cheating tool -- their words! -- to ensure kids don't actually learn anything.

Awesome. The "Roy" here is CEO of Cluely, who has boasted he keeps his company as "fratty" as possible. $15 million in funding led by Andreessen Horowitz because of course.

Good lord

A hallmark of fascism is its incoherence.

Yeah?