Gary Rivlin

For once, The Lincoln Project agrees with Trump.

One family to control CBS, CNN, HBO, and TikTok.

Get to Know the Name Jay Clayton—Our Fate May Depend on His Honesty There seems a chance that Trump’s self-appointed Epstein investigator may actually be on the level—but the orders he’s been asked to carry out will be anything but.

New Column: We're going to be hearing--and learning--a lot more about this fellow in the coming weeks and months. Who is Jay Clayton, and will he do Trump's and Bondi's bidding? Read on. newrepublic.com/article/2032... via @newrepublic.com

We? Other places in the world, yes. But in the U.S., it's the opposite story. We're staring down a crisis give given benighted energy policies. Electricity prices up 40% since Feb 2020, says the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Experts projecting steeper rises as more (and more) data centers come online

The New York Post is owned by Lachlan Murdoch, solely because his daddy bought it and passed it on to him.

And it's backing Andrew Cuomo, a meathead whose whole career in politics stems from his daddy being good at it.

But *Mamdani* is the nepo baby, because his mom was a filmmaker? Sure.

The cowardice of the elites is a defining feature of America in 2025

Just so I'm clear:

TV host says we should kill every homeless person? No big deal

TV host says the right must "go to war" with the left? Pfft.

TV host says the government is cracking down on critics? Well, the government cracks down on him for the criticism.

Free speech, everyone.

Inside Stephen Miller’s Reign of Terror

Everything you love or hate about Donald Trump’s America, you cherish or intensely loathe about Stephen Miller’s republic of fear.

Read about Miller’s eight months of remaking the nation and world: www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

spot on analysis of Silicon Valley by Nick Clegg. Though it's his self-pity line that most resonates and helps explain the Valley's sprint to the right: "If you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.”

Google in 2015: Our goal is to power 100% of our operations with clean energy

Google's President in 2025: I agree that Silicon Valley has been overtaken by a 'climate extremist agenda' and that powering data centers with coal plants is a "fantastic" idea

Screenshot of NYPost story: 'It's a 24-hour city': Mayor Adams defends party lifestyle By Jesse O'Neill Published Oct. 20, 2022 Updated Oct. 20, 2022, 2:26 p.m. ET Mayor Eric Adams claims he wants to encourage New Yorkers to go out again. Mayor Eric Adams has defended his late-night party lifestyle — insisting that he is helping the Bia Apole economv.

screenshot of amNY story: Op-Ed | Quality of life and ending the culture of'anything goes' By Mayor Eric Adams Posted on August 19, 2025 Every dav evervwhere I go — whether it's at a town

How it started… how it’s ending…

MSNBC → MS NOW. Carrying forward the proud legacy of HBO/Max rebranding brilliance.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Md: “What Donald Trump is doing is, in some ways, a dress rehearsal for going after others around the country. And I think we need to stop this."

nothing can be non-partisan, everything is politicized

Some observers even believe that China will become the world’s first “electrostate” — a country that runs on electricity, not oil. What it has already accomplished is, in some ways, more impressive: With its solar panels and batteries, China is on its way to turning energy production into something closer to a manufactured good. It is now able to sell solar panels, batteries and electric vehicles to the rest of the world as a low-cost, low-pollution alternative to fossil fuels or internal combustion vehicles. China did not pursue these technologies simply for the environment’s sake: Its national security needs have long led it to seek alternatives to petroleum. (It still builds a lot of coal-burning power plants for the same reason.) But Americans should not miss the significance of what seems to be happening: China’s low-cost electronic technologies once augmented gasoline and internal-combustion cars; now, they are replacing them. And as Chinese companies transform the global energy market with cheap solar panels, batteries and E.V.s, America is acting like a doddering industrial giant — too hooked on oil and gas revenues, and the political power that results from them, to exercise the economic muscles it will need in the future.

Of all of Trump's treachery, surrendering the future of renewable electricity to China while exploding the demand for nonsense AI slop and crypto crap may be the worst.

It will be the hardest to reverse, most expensive & the most excruciating for our kids' kids.

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/10/o...

It’s a hopeful sign that the finger-in-the-wind New York Democrats are sounding more like Pritzker every day.

💯.

Not snow nor rain nor gloom of AI hype: I used to edit him, now he delivers mail and mini-book reviews. Love how he sums up what I was aiming for: not hype, not alarm, but a clear-eyed account of how AI became the Next Big Thing. I was hoping for an A- but I'll take the B+

Book cover: AI Valley by Gary Rivlin

89. I mainly wanted to read this because I used to work with Gary and enjoy his writing. And it is what it says on the tin. Neither boosterish nor cautionary, it’s less about the ethics of AI than an account of how it became the Next Big Thing through following the players involved. #booksky

Who controls Hollywood? No single entity "controls" Hollywood. The entertainment industry is a complex ecosystem driven by major studios (Disney, Warner Bros., Universal, etc.), streaming platforms (Netflix, Amazon, Apple), talent agencies, and influential producers, directors, and actors. Power is distributed among these players, with influence shifting based on market trends, financial success, and cultural impact. For instance, Disney's acquisition of Fox and Marvel gave it significant sway, but independent studios and streaming giants also shape the landscape. Creative and economic decisions are often dictated by a mix of corporate executives, high-profile creatives, and audience demand. Claims of conspiratorial control (e.g., by specific groups) often lack evidence and oversimplify the industry's decentralized nature. If you want specifics on a studio, person, or trend, I can dig deeper. 企 Any particular religious denomination? There's no evidence that a specific religious denomination controls Hollywood. The industry is diverse, with individuals from various backgrounds—religious, cultural, and otherwise—-holding influence.

Grok seems chastened, but I assume it will be back to being incredibly offensive before we know it.

'“If you’re asking me how it got in there, no, I don’t know,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said ...

“I don’t know anything about it. I’m not sure what it does,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) added.

Both GOP senators serve on the Senate Finance Committee, which crafted the tax provisions of the bill.'

I know, right? Even Hoffman thinks there’s too much Reid Hoffman in the book. But I needed a narrative spine—and he went from 1980s Stanford AI nerd to original OpenAI investor to cofounder of an EQ-over-IQ AI firm (key to the future, if'n you ask me)— so hard not to follow him around

to me enshitification is a company compromising the quality of the product in pursuit of ever-more profit, w/Google search as its poster child. Trying to squeeze more money for less sounds more like plain old customer fuckery. Profit-maximizing fuckery? Platform fuck-you-ization? Defuckification?

wild to think we're only just beginning to enter the "find out" phase of "what happens when you introduce almost unheard-of levels of chaos into the economy in the form of tariffs + defunding the federal government & universities + rounding up and/or terrorizing millions of workers"

The $320B AI revolution lets you create ultra-realistic videos and chat with dead celebs — but could it also destroy us? “I don’t trust big tech and AI is in the hands of big tech,” one expert ominously told The Post.

“Could AI destroy us?” the NY Post asks in this article quoting me several times. My fear? Not the end of humanity but the people calling the shots. As I’m quoted saying, “I don’t trust Big Tech—but Big Tech controls AI. And that should scare the hell out of us.” bit.ly/4kmjsTN

"100% this. But I've also been thinking about how fast the establishment—editorial boards, the political center, business leaders—unites to demonize him. The establishment panic machine. The money will be just one piece of the onslaught

They told me if I voted for Kamala we'd have Middle East war, inflation, an economic slump, weaponization of DOJ, no peace in Gaza or Ukraine and incompetents all over govt. Well, sure looks that way now.

I like this Gavin more than podcast Gavin.