Jeremy Hsu

A Thanksgiving story...

Nearly the entire brussels sprouts supply in the US comes from California’s central coast.

"Those in power recognized that oppression is best maintained by keeping the masses illiterate, and those oppressed recognized that literacy is liberation... Don’t surrender to AI your ability to read, write and think when others once risked their lives and died for the freedom to do so."

David Sacks tried to kill state AI laws — and it blew up in his face A leaked executive order reveals that the tech billionaire would have become America’s AI policy gatekeeper.

"Populist Republicans, particularly those in the MAGA base, immediately saw how much Sacks had influence throughout the entire order, and how much the order would threaten any state." - @tinanguyen.bsky.social on the politics of last week's draft AI EO:

“With the U.S. absent, the European Union had a chance to lead; instead, they stepped into the vacuum as the primary obstructionist." 👀

Pentagon Investigates Misconduct Allegations Against Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly The review comes after Kelly, a retired Navy captain, appeared in a video with other lawmakers telling military members not to obey unlawful orders.

Senator Kelly’s remarks in the video are “a 100% accurate representation of what the law says."

“No American citizen should have to deal with this type of preposterous investigation.”

- Professor Eugene Fidell, leading military justice expert in Wall Street Journal

www.wsj.com/politics/mar...

CBS News poll finds most would oppose U.S. military action in Venezuela, say Trump hasn't explained Those prioritizing economy say Trump is not spending enough time on it, as ratings of economy, his handling of inflation slip.

Just one in five Americans polled recently even know much about the US military buildup in the first place.

But 70 percent of those polled oppose US military action in Venezuela.

www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-ve...

Deadly airstrikes and a military buildup: how the US pressure campaign against Venezuela has unfolded in the Caribbean US has used claims of a ‘war on drugs’ to justify its attacks, which have resulted in 83 deaths that the UN has called extrajudicial executions

The Trump administration has created the largest US military buildup in the Caribbean since the 1989 invasion of Panama while pressuring the Venezuelan government of Nicolas Maduro.

US officials recently said a "new phase" in the operation was about to begin.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Flight tracking data showed a US Air Force B-52 bomber with an escort of at least two F-18 Super Hornet fighter jets flying off the coast of Venezuela near the capital of Caracas on Monday, November 24. Image taken from the Flight Radar 24 service.

Flight tracking data showed a US Air Force B-52 bomber with an escort of at least two F-18 Super Hornet fighter jets flying off the coast of Venezuela near the capital of Caracas on Monday, November 24. Image taken from the Flight Radar 24 service.

Latest show of force by the US military near Venezuela just now was again clearly visible on open source flight tracking data.

At least one B-52 bomber with an escort of two visible F-18 Super Hornet fighter jets flew off the coast of Venezuela past the capital of Caracas.

My hot take is that over the next 10 years, we're going to see more emphasis on and investment in the humanities at Ivy League and other fancy schools just as state schools and small privates continue to decimate and even eliminate the humanities.

since the "google is now training gemini on your email contents" thing keeps bumping around here: it's _not happening_. I say this not to defend google but because I know a lot of people that have broken their filtering and made their lives much more annoying from sheer misinformation.

High school senior, a U.S. citizen, detained by ICE in Oregon The 17-year-old was held more than five hours Friday in an ICE facility, his brother said.

The teenager told officers he was a U.S. citizen, but an officer broke the car’s driver’s side window and detained him. In a video, the boy can be heard telling an officer that he is a citizen, to which the officer replies, “Get out of the car” and “I don’t care.”
www.oregonlive.com/portland/202...

White House blew past legal concerns in deadly strikes on drug boats The Trump administration sidestepped skeptical lawyers across national security agencies as it pursued a military campaign against alleged narcotraffickers, officials say.

On the patently unlawful boat strikes

It's hard for USGs to claim ‘mistake of law’ or ‘advice of counsel’ – when they’re firing lawyers who wouldn't sign off on the strikes.

WaPo's new revelations on firings or removals:

1) CIA General Counsel
2) NSC Legal Adviser
3) CIA Mission Center’s lawyer
🧵

Behind this important reversal is a member of the Coast Guard who saw what was happening and had the courage to leak it to the press. That person deserves serious praise.

"Far from beating back China, America under Trump may come to resemble it."

Today the Department of the Interior announced they will hold the six offshore lease sales across off of California. I wrote about Reagan’s Interior Secretary James Watt opening up 80 million acres of offshore waters to oil and gas about a year ago. The last offshore lease in California was 1984.

We originally set up an alert to track our mentions @towcenter.bsky.social - but soon found that my name cropped up a great deal, (false ‘Dr’ added), talking about the things I talk about (tech + media) but none of the quotes were real. AI slop me has been pretty busy….

Underfunded humanities departments giving knowing looks to society as tech companies reckon with the poetry knowledge gap in their AI safety teams.

Certain flagship AI models are apparently susceptible to the modern equivalent of a bard debuff / charm spell?

Perhaps not that surprising for anyone paying attention to successful jailbreak techniques that have bypassed large language model guardrails, but still remarkable.

“We don’t deserve the trust of the nation if we’re unclear about the divisiveness of swastikas,” the [Coast Guard] official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity due to a fear of reprisal.

if you are considering submitting an application for this position, you still have just under 2 weeks to do so

any and all suitable candidates, please apply. everyone else, pls share with your networks

This is the first story I ever did that got more than a million views

Some good results from accountability journalism. Even more important because the US still lacks a comprehensive data privacy law on the national level.

Trump officials give $1 billion loan to restart Three Mile Island The plan to reopen Three Mile Island to supply Microsoft with power wins a federal loan guarantee, shifting some of the risk onto taxpayers.

"The owner of the shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear plant has been awarded a $1 billion federal loan guarantee that will enable it to shift onto taxpayers some of the risk of its plan to restart the Pennsylvania facility and sell the electricity to Microsoft for its data centers."

A screenshot of the Dallas Police incident report

A screenshot of the FBI report

Last Thanksgiving, two Dallas Police officers knocked on my door, citing a tip from the FBI national threat operations center that I was beating my girlfriend. The incident report confirms this. Today, I obtained a file from the FBI via FOIA that states the FBI has no record of receiving such a tip.

Retired US law enforcement and military personnel "without any official role in government would be tasked with tracking down targets for ICE... Some potential candidates for the pilot were recruited on LinkedIn and were told they would be given vehicles to monitor the targets."

United States could soon follow Canada in losing measles elimination status.

"The capability is powered by both Motorola Solutions and Thomson Reuters, the massive data broker and media conglomerate, which besides running the Reuters news service, also sells masses of personal data to private industry and government agencies."

WETA to cut staff, cancel ‘PBS News Weekend’ and close News Hour West bureau The restructuring includes the elimination of 34 positions, following another round of cuts made in September.

PBS NEWS WEEKEND has been cancelled and 34 jobs will be cut at WETA in Washington D.C.

The NEWS HOUR West Coast bureau will also close and the updated daily West Coast broadcast will end.

“We cannot fully compensate for the scope of the federal funding loss.”

current.org/2025/11/weta... #PBS

Just an incalculable loss from which we won’t soon recover.

Alice was the best of us and I hope we all do (or keep doing) the kind of good work that burnishes her memory.

Fuck ableism. “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.”