John McQuaid

Opinion | Trump’s Fantasy Is Crashing Down

I wrote about Trump's fantasy of omnipotence and invulnerability crashing against the material reality of a interdependent world. This insane, heedless war will ruin us all. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/06/o...

To be clear, I think there’s a decent chance we eventually reach a point where much more significant action is warranted, but that will depend on stronger evidence of imminent, concrete danger than we have today, as well as enough specificity about the danger to formulate rules that have a chance of addressing it. The most constructive thing we can do today is advocate for limited rules while we learn whether or not there is evidence to support stronger ones.

dario amodei is clearly the most thoughtful person running an AI company today. he talks with evident genuine concern about risks and safety and supports limited regulation. but ultimately, i have my doubts abt his approach to public control.

Almost 25 years ago we took our 2-year-old son to his first in-theatre movie, Shrek, which he loved from the first frame. Vivid memory of watching the movie + his viewing experience.

Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War A statement from our CEO on national security uses of AI

This is a major PR coup for Anthropic. In rejecting the DoD's demands that it allow the surveilling of Americans and autonomous killing, it gets immediate claim to the moral high ground, which other AI co's won't take. Anthropic is the AI company that *won't* kill and surveil you.

U.S. I LAW DOJ to Review Whether Epstein Files About Trump Were Improperly Withheld

This is an all-timer in headlines where the use of the passive voice obscures a VERY SERIOUS PROBLEM with the basic premise of the story

Straight-up journalism malpractice at this late, late hour

Great conversation with @andreapitzer.bsky.social today on @jamellebouie.net’s newsletter messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/dynamic/rend...

Jesse Jackson reading "Green Eggs and Ham" is so wonderful. RIP

Thus, no Catholics either. (Vance, a convert with the right genealogy, would get a pass presumably)

This is the story of AI development from the beginning; researchers develop/deploy tools that mimic human capabilities, with little understanding of those capabilities or the potential harms of mucking around with them

“I am not a crook.”

Screenshot of an excerpt from a Becca Rothfeld article in the New Yorker: "There are still plenty of places to read about literature, many of them excellent. There are older and more established outlets, like the London Review of Books and The New York Review of Books; cult favorites, like Bookforum; and irreverent newcomers, like The Drift and The Point, the latter of which I edit. These magazines are delightful and, in their own way, consistently surprising; I love reading them, and I have loved writing for them. But they are produced for an audience that already knows it cares about literature. The books section of a newspaper plays an altogether different role. It does not cater to aficionados; it seeks new recruits."

"There are still plenty of places to read about literature.…But they are produced for an audience that already knows it cares....The books section of a newspaper plays an altogether different role. It does not cater to aficionados; it seeks new recruits."
www.newyorker.com/books/page-t...

Senior management at the Post were livid when they discovered that Lewis was attending festivities around the Super Bowl in San Francisco around the time of the news of the job cuts. It came off as “callous”, said a newsroom source, adding that “the Super Bowl thing was the last straw”. “Bezos lost patience after the Super Bowl thing”, the source added.

Lewis was criticised in the newsroom last month for not offering words of public support after a reporter’s home was searched by FBI agents, which was seen as a further escalation of President Donald Trump’s attacks on the media. “We’re under siege from the FBI and the Pentagon and he just walled himself off,” the person said.  The sense that Lewis had lost the newsroom only increased on the day the job cuts were announced. “There was no communication from him about buyouts,” the person added. “He didn’t put out a statement. Senior editorial leadership was furious.”

I still cannot get over this detail reported by the Financial Times: www.ft.com/content/5fa6...

No signs of a new local paper starting, unfortunately, and not sure who the white knight would be. But certainly there is now a market for it.

Wondering if what happened in the New Orleans newspaper wars could play out in DC:
1. Owner destroying established newspaper
2. Rival alt-publication starts backed by local $$
3. Established paper fails
4. Owner gives up, sells name/brand to alt-publication, institution continues

I can say without any fear of contradiction that I know as much or more than anyone in modern American journalism about the absolute, no excuses necessity of operating in the black. In many cases much more since if you’re a big player there are lots of creative ways to operate ….

(Last sentence highlighted) Harvard has been the top target in Mr. Trump’s sweeping campaign to exert more control over higher education. Hard-liners in his administration had wanted Harvard to write a check to the U.S. Treasury as part of a deal to address claims that university officials mishandled antisemitism, The New York Times previously reported. But Harvard, wary of backlash from liberal students and faculty, has rejected the idea.

Struck by this NYT framing of Harvard’s purported rationale for standing up to Trump. Such factors play a role, but come on – this suggests the NYT/reporters/editors have no clue about what is actually at stake in this fight
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/u...

Though the coach did have some recognizable humanity

Let's check in on how the national media doing in balancing the tension between reporting the news objectively while recognizing the long record of bad faith arguments, actions and arrests by the current administration.

No apparent military or diplomatic strategy in any of this. There must be thousands of people at the Pentagon who work on Iran and/or strategic analysis sidelined and watching dumbfounded as we just blow shit up because it feels good

That this same poll finds Trump approval at 37%—while approval of his *policies* is at Bush II nadir levels of 27%—reminds us once again that his appeal has little to do w policy.

I'd add that it also suggests a technocratic view of politics as fundamentally about policy cannot make sense of Trump.

see the robot hit a child, but in a laudable way

Non-media people may not appreciate the depth of contempt that media people have for things like this. Interviewing his mom on national TV! It doesn't get more pathetic than that.

TCM Becomes “Ongoing Home” of the Looney Tunes Library (Exclusive) A new six-year licensing deal brings the classic cartoons to the channel. It starts in February with 45 shorts featuring Star of the Month Bugs Bunny.

There was some actual good news today
www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/t...

Palantir Defends Work With ICE to Staff Following Killing of Alex Pretti “In my opinion ICE are the bad guys. I am not proud that the company I enjoy so much working for is part of this,” one worker wrote on Slack.

SCOOP: Palantir Defends Work With ICE to Staff Following Killing of Alex Pretti

WIRED obtained Slack conversations + an updated internal Palantir wiki defending the company's work for ICE to outraged workers.

More here:
www.wired.com/story/palant...

A Crisis of Confidence for ICE and Border Patrol as Clashes Escalate Current and former officials describe growing frustration with the Trump administration’s approach, even as they support the goal of immigration enforcement.

Sulzberger has to be joking us here.

"Crisis of Confidence" no what

The content of the story - there are a lot of people in ICE who are concerned/despairing - is interesting. But the framing is terrible. The people pulling the strings, and the ones doing the damage, they seem pretty confident!

Story about a bar: The regulars file into Ye Old Pickle Factory in Nisswa, Minn., before 10 a.m. most days, taking their seats at the bar. Chili pepper lights hang from the ceiling, and neon beer signs glow against wood-paneled walls. A television flickers on. “The Price Is Right” is about to start. They have been doing this since the mid-1980s, gathering in this small, dim room, waiting for someone on the game show to spin exactly $1 on the big wheel. When that happens, everyone receives a token for a free drink. Lately, they had been in a lull. No one had hit the dollar in weeks — until Wednesday. Nisswa is a town of about 2,000 people in the Brainerd Lakes Area, a popular summer vacation destination about 150 miles north of Minneapolis. Most of the regulars on hand this morning say they prefer not to go to the city anymore. Not since the summer of 2020, when George Floyd was murdered by a police officer and the city erupted. Now, Minneapolis is in the news again. An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed a woman, Renee Good, during an immigration operation last week, and demonstrators are back on the streets.

1/2
I actually thought we had seen the end of "guy in a diner" stories, for cliche and self-parody reasons if nothing else.

This one has the minor twist of "guys in a bar"

So close to @nytpitchbot.bsky.social's work (just read the opening grafs) that I wonder if this could be quiet homage to him