Mark Coughlan

Russia really leaning into the Europeans Are Nazis thing of late (had gone quiet as a theme in their messaging for a couple years) - someone in the Kremlin has obviously decided that there’s a real opening with MAGA for this kind of disinformation to begin to resonate.

Wow. The International Criminal Court has opened proceedings against Hungary for failing to comply with the Court's request to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu and surrender him to the Court, and invited Hungary to provide submissions by 23 May 2025.

Russian propagandists and their geopolitical ambitions. This clip is from earlier this week.

"And we'll help Trump take Greenland. And Canada."

"And Ireland."

"He didn't ask for it."

"It's a holiday. St. Patrick's Day."

"Maybe Ireland wants to go to Russia. How do you know?"

"How? Again?”

McGregor's 'dangerous Dublin' claim traces to gambling site list Conor McGregor appears to have based one of the key views he expressed during his St Patrick's Day White House visit on a ranking of European cities published by an online gambling company.

A survey-anyone site ranks cities.

A gambling site uses that output directly in a press release.

Media pick up the release, run headlines like 'Dublin among most dangerous cities in Europe.'

Twitter users add their spice - it ends up in the White House.

2025 infocycle.
www.rte.ie/news/primeti...

Brown University Professor and Doctor Is Deported to Lebanon Despite a Judge’s Order (Gift Article) Dr. Rasha Alawieh, a kidney transplant specialist and Brown University professor who had a valid visa, was expelled in apparent defiance of a court order.

You may not recognize it at first, but life in this country will never be the same if people stop coming from abroad because they are not guaranteed protection under the law. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/16/u...

Man

*CDC PLANS STUDY INTO VACCINES AND AUTISM: REUTERS
*CDC PLANS STUDY ON POTENTIAL AUTISIM-VACCINES CONNECTION: RTRS

Not known for political coverage, Wired takes a leading role in tracking Elon Musk's team The tech outlet Wired set up a new politics team in time for the presidential election — but its most impactful work is coming after the election is over.

I had the privilege of talking to @apnews.com about WIRED's Elon Musk and politics coverage.

Most important thing: We're not slowing down, we're not stopping, and we're going to cover this story, relentlessly, for as long as we need to.

apnews.com/article/elon...

He is not the law. He is the president. In the United States that means he is supposed to execute laws passed by Congress, while supporting and defending the Constitution.

'Stand up for us!' Republican shouted down as he defends DOGE cuts at town hall Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA) tried to tout massive federal spending cuts proposed by tech billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency task force at a town hall in his heavily Republican ...

'Stand up for us!' Republican shouted down as he defends DOGE cuts at town hall www.rawstory.com/rich-mccormi...

Who Runs Elon Musk’s DOGE? Not Musk, the White House Says. A White House official declared that Mr. Musk was not the administrator of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. So who is?

"A lot of secrecy has surrounded DOGE despite Mr. Musk’s attempts to position it as 'maximally transparent.' The White House’s unwillingness to state who its administrator is only adds to that sense of opacity."

www.nytimes.com/2025/02/18/u...

"R1 1776 is a DeepSeek-R1 reasoning model that has been post-trained by Perplexity AI to remove Chinese Communist Party censorship. The model provides unbiased, accurate, and factual information while maintaining high reasoning capabilities"? huggingface.co/perplexity-a...

Laid-off IRS employee said he had voted for Trump: "I thought that someone with his business acumen would have come in with a fine-tooth comb and actually found it instead of coming in with a wrecking ball and destroying people’s lives for no reason."

www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/p...

The Incompetence of DOGE Is a Feature, Not a Bug A series of mistakes by DOGE shows just how arbitrary and destructive this slash-and-burn strategy can get.

"This is incompetence born of self-confidence. It’s a familiar Silicon Valley mindset, the reason startups are forever reinventing a bus, or a bodega, or mail. It’s the implacable certainty that if you’re smart at one thing you must be smart at all of the things."

www.wired.com/story/doge-i...

Trump expected to take control of USPS, fire postal board, officials say The move threatens to upend trillions of dollars in ecommerce business and the 250 year-old Postal Service.

Breaking news: Trump is preparing to dissolve the leadership of the U.S. Postal Service and absorb the independent mail agency into his administration, potentially throwing the mail provider and trillions of dollars of ecommerce transactions into turmoil.

Incredible stuff in here: They ID'ed him, in part, by going to court hearings and watching him post

PARIS-Vice President JD Vance said Thursday that the U.S. would hit Moscow with sanctions and potentially military action if Russian President Vladimir Putin won't agree to a peace deal with Ukraine that guarantees Kyiv's long-term independence. Vance said the option of sending U.S. troops to Ukraine if Moscow failed to negotiate in good faith remained "on the table," striking a far tougher tone than did Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who on Wednesday suggested the U.S. wouldn't commit forces.

I have a question. What is the foreign policy of the U.S. government?

www.wsj.com/world/europe...

At this point, there are only two options:

A) Elon is so dishonest that he is willing to peddle obvious lies to score PR points

B) Elon really is this stupid

Video generation not too far behind.

Greek-statue-based prompt driven by an AI-generated still image generated from 10 original actual images of me.

AI image generation is... really good. Like, really good.

This was AI generated after being trained on about 10 pictures of me.

I would recognise it as me, but it is not a photo that has ever been taken of me.

Trump admin claws back $80M given to NYC to house migrants — but comptroller calls it ‘highway robbery’ Millions in FEMA funds sent to New York City last week to help with the migrant crisis were clawed back Wednesday, officials said.

This morning, President Trump and his crony Elon Musk illegally seized $80M in congressionally-appropriated FEMA funding from NYC bank accounts.

Trump and Elon stole tens of millions of dollars straight from our bank accounts--this is highway robbery, and NY cannot take this lying down.

Pardoned by Trump, Jan. 6 Defendants Assail Those Who Worked on Their Cases While there have not yet been physical attacks, experts have raised concerns that the frequency of the incidents could increase the risk of eventual violence against agents and prosecutors.

An increasing number of Jan. 6 defendants who were pardoned by Trump have gone on the attack on social media, lashing out at the agents and prosecutors who worked on their criminal cases. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/11/u...

Let’s see now…

1,500 in 15 days: What Musk's Trump-era tweets reveal about him Using a bespoke social media search tool Prime Time downloaded and analysed all his tweets from his first 15 full days working in the US government, to try to get an insight into his activity, mindset...

Latest work here… analysing the remarkable scale of Musk’s tweets during his first two weeks in government.

www.rte.ie/news/primeti...

The Government’s Computing Experts Say They Are Terrified Four IT professionals lay out just how destructive Elon Musk’s incursion into the U.S. government could be.

New: We spoke to government IT employees/contractors about DOGE. Their warnings were dire. The people who maintain the systems that keep the country working are terrified. "This is the largest data breach and the largest IT security breach in our country’s history—at least that’s publicly known."

‘60 Minutes’ Head Producer Says He Won’t Apologize Over Trump’s Lawsuit Bill Owens, the show’s executive producer, addressed his staff as CBS’s parent company, Paramount, pursued a legal settlement with the president.

The head of “60 Minutes” told the show’s staff on Monday that he would not apologize as part of any prospective settlement in a lawsuit brought by President Trump against CBS, according to people with knowledge of the remarks.

“We are crushing it! Palantir is here to disrupt and… to scare enemies and on occasion kill them. And we hope you're enjoying being a partner.”

(Earnings call. Alex Karl, CEO of (Peter Thiel backed) Palantir, weaponry and software.)

Is it me or do tech CEOs seem to love the new language climate?

CSPAN cut the feed after the press conference but the members of Congress and Senators have entered the main lobby where USAID HQ is located. The door is being blocked by law enforcement.

Photo provided to me:

DeepSeek: What happened and what does it say about our AI future? The release of DeepSeek rocked stock markets, shocked global politicians, and forced major companies across the world to reassess their strategies this week. So, what exactly happened this week, and s...

What happened with DeepSeek this week? And what does it all say about our future?

Trying to figure it out here: www.rte.ie/news/primeti...

Summarise all this in one word… anyone?

Why I'm quitting the Washington Post Democracy can't function without a free press

This is, or should be, a big deal -- Ann Telnaes, an absolute legend, quitting WaPo due to censorship of a cartoon criticizing billionaires

anntelnaes.substack.com/p/why-im-qui...