Dan Gillmor

Oil price expected to surge after Iran strikes and strait of Hormuz closure Markets around the world could tumble on Monday and motorists are likely to pay more at the pump

As oil prices soar due to the US attack on Iran, Iran's response, and the widening conflict -- that is a gift to Saudi Arabia, other Middle East petrostates, Putin, and US oil barons.

Not to mention distracting attention from the Epstein coverup....

Please don't reward ripoff artists.

This AI-generated podcast network publishes 11,000 episodes a day. It also ripped off media outlets Daily News Now tops search results for local news podcasts with AI content

Rewriting other people's original reporting and clickbait-wrapping the "new" story is not new. But a scumbag operation called "The Daily News Today" is doing it at AI-juiced scale.

Alexios Mantzarlis, one of journalism's expert observers of this stuff, explains here:

CBS "News" = Fox "News"

A White House Staffer Appears to Run Massive Pro-Trump X Account A popular right-wing account that called a video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes "a masterpiece" appears to be run by a White House staffer, according to records reviewed by WIRED.

A reminder that the Trump regime and its supporters are racist to the core.

Explosions rock Bahrain, Dubai, Jordan and Kuwait as war spreads across Middle East War launched by US and Israel on Iran has quickly escalated prompting anxiety and concern in whole region

The Epstein files coverup could be the cause of a new -- and final -- world war.

A reminder that Molly White (mastodon.social/@mol...) is, by far, doing the best job of covering the endlessly corrupt cryptocurrency "industry" -- her latest newsletter post, replete with Epstein Class dot-connecting, should make you furious.

www.citationneeded.n...

Sigh, the New York Times gives a massive amount of op-ed space to an AI founder who (surprise!) loves-loves-loves the technology.

So it looks like Larry Ellison's going to be pulling the puppet strings at CNN, not just CBS "News" -- another domino falling in the right-wing extremists' war on honest journalism.

Neither of those outlets has been remotely perfect in the past. But they're heading toward Fox Lite status now.

A.I. Isn't People How many Reddit posts does it take to teach a child to speak?

"A.I. Isn't People"

Another brilliant newsletter post by Rusty Foster:

www.todayintabs.com/...

"I don’t need to know what mechanism underlies human intelligence to rule out the possibility that it’s the same as what a large language model does."

Detentions and disappearances: how ICE has driven fear into Michigan’s Arab communities Arab Americans in Dearborn and beyond are being swept up by ICE at places of worship and work, with devastating consequences

Michigan's Muslim voters were (rightly) pissed at Biden administration's Gaza policy, so many voted for Trump, whose anti-Islam bigotry was well known, and helped give him the state's electoral votes. And now they're shocked, shocked to discover how self-defeating that was.

The Fix Is In: Lutnick Family Could Make Killing On Tariff Demise Almost every article on today’s tariff decision includes, somewhere two or three...

All corruption, all the time in Trump world.

The family of one of Trump's most vile apparatchiks -- Lutnick, who lied about his ties to Epstein -- stands to make hundreds of millions, or billions, on the likely refunds of the tariffs the regime illegally collected.

Why the Polymarket/Substack partnership is bad It strikes at the heart of the production of ethical sports journalism.

America is awash in gambling, and the "prediction markets" industry invites insiders to cheat everyone else, thereby making the situation even worse. Media organizations that make deals with this industry are begging to be shunned by honest journalists.

Don’t Be Fooled By the Corrupt Court’s Tariff Decision The depth of the Supreme Court’s corruption has forced us to find...

As Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall makes clear, the Roberts Court's tariff ruling may be the right one, but it doesn't even begin to remove the court's stink of corruption.

Germany's Merz calls for real names on the internet German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has called for an end to widespread anonymity on the internet, saying users should post under their real names. "I want to see real names on the internet.

Germany's leader wants to end anonymity online, demonstrating ignorance of both technology and the manifestly good reasons for anonymity (e.g. person with views govt doesn't like, whistle-blowers, etc.).

He, like so many before him, wants you to get a license to speak.

Nukes, Spooks, & l'affaire Epstein L’affaire Epstein continues to roil the political world. The NYT has an article titled, or is it entitled, “The Epstein Files and the Hidden World of an Unaccountable Elite.” Now, that’s rich. The entirely unaccountable NYT, vice unmatched, pointing fingers at their readers. They should provide a list

Do read Joe Costello's sharp takedown of (among other things) the unaccountable New York Times' laughable pearl-clutching over the "Unaccountable Elite" connected to Jeffrey Epstein.

There is no one I admire more than Cory Doctorow, an extraordinary author, activist, and person. In his 6th anniversary post at his Pluralistic blog, he gives you a sense of the hard work that goes into his work.

pluralistic.net/2026...

George W. Bush uses extremism-friendly platform to pretend to throw shade at Trump. Another con from the second-worst president in American history.

archive.ph/hJGdx

For ICE to build concentration camps quickly, they're leaning on this Dept. of War program WEXMAC TITUS helps contractors bypass the traditionally lengthy government contract bidding process

Marisa Kabas is doing some of the best reporting on the Trump regime's abuses of law and people. In this case, she explains the chicanery involved in a massive program to build new concentration camps -- in warehouses. (Big Journalism hasn't noticed, of course.)

Here's a useful guide to voting on California's proposed wealth tax. The massively corrupt cryptocurrency "industry" and (of course) the state's billionaires absolutely hate the idea.

That is a key reason why I'm voting for it, and urging everyone I know in California to do the same.

Ireland launches data protection probe into Grok's deepfakes This latest investigation, on behalf of the EU, will look into whether X violated the bloc's data protection rules. Violations can lead to hefty fines.

This story needs context. Namely: Big Tech owns Ireland's government. If that "sovereign" nation does any serious regulating of Musk's company it will be because other tech companies ordered it to do so.

Federal judges keep ruling that Trump's violent, masked goons are illegally arresting and jailing people, but the regime goes right on doing it.

How close are we to outright fascism? This close.

www.reuters.com/lega...

NY Times headline: Columbia Punishes 2 Who Helped Epstein’s Girlfriend Enter Dental College The release of documents tied to Jeffrey Epstein has sent ripples through the worlds of business, politics and academia, including at Columbia, where he helped his girlfriend gain entry.

Columbia University is notorious for its repeated, pathetic capitulation to Trump's fascism. But apparently there IS at least one ethical line it's willing to draw.

U.S. Deports Nine Migrants in Secret, Ignoring Legal Protections Most had court orders protecting them from removal to their home countries, so they were sent to detention in Cameroon.

The Trump regime is routinely telling US judges to go screw themselves -- ignoring and violating court orders, and flagrantly spitting on people's constitutional rights.

So far, not even one regime apparatchik has been held accountable in any serious way.

So many evil aspects of the Trump regime, but normalizing sexual abuse of minors by rich white men has to be near the top.

Donald Trump’s Disingenuous Promise to Champion Free Speech It is Donald Trump’s systematic campaign to stamp out dissent and punish those who disagree with him that will be remembered as among the most singularly un-American aspects of his disruptive tenure.

Totally sick of pearl-clutching legacy-media journalists discovering -- to their amazement, it seems -- that Trump really hates the press and dissent, and runs a regime that is doing everything in its considerable power to stamp out speech it doesn't like.

Gallup polling organization joins the quislings, announcing it'll stop doing presidential approval surveys, not coincidentally just when Trump's negatives are super-high.

thehill.com/homenews...

Trump's absurdly named "Board of Peace" is a plot to replace the United Nations, and its members are all run by despots. www.epc.eu/publicati...

Palantir for Governor? Why is extremist MAGA billionaire Joe Lonsdale funding a California Democrat?

Californians need to know that a "Democrat" running for governor is basically a tool of the worst tech barons. Gil Duran explains.

With Ring, American Consumers Built a Surveillance Dragnet Ring's 'Search Party' is dystopian surveillance accelerationism.

If you have a Ring (Amazon) camera, you are -- or will become -- a tool of the surveillance state. Is that really what you want to be?