Daren Smith

If only the folks putting trillions into AI invested a tiny fraction in, you know, people

During a recent Transatlantic phone call:

We are witnessing a swift and sweeping consolidation of media (traditional and social) into the hands of a small number of billionaires who are actively aligned/aligning (both via free will and coercion) with Trump and his right wing political party. This is (I’ll say it) a fascist project.

The Montreal Canadiens mourn the passing of Ken Dryden | Montréal Canadiens Hall-of-Fame goaltender won six Stanley Cups with the team

This hits so hard.

In addition to backstopping the greatest hockey team I’ve ever seen, his books — “The Game” and “Home Game” — are two of the best ever written about the sport. www.nhl.com/canadiens/ne...

At a time when DMs are down at the other place, it sure would be nice if @bsky.app enabled multi-person chat.

#Journalism #KentuckyDerby

Gasparino's been right a lot and wrong a lot, but if he's right, he's unwittingly saying that the White House leaks information to friendly investors who can front-run the markets

Happy anniversary!

Ironic that many of the same Democrats who forced Biden to the sidelines refuse to step aside themselves.

The Post's Beacon of Inspiration As Jeff Bezos pushes The Washington Post to the right, publisher Will Lewis quietly met with a conservative editor last month.

Scoop: As Jeff Bezos pushes The Washington Post in a rightward direction, publisher Will Lewis quietly met last month with the editor in chief of the Free Beacon where the two discussed recruiting conservative journalists.

Details in Status: www.status.news/p/washington...

If you see this, quote post with a photo you took of a sunset.

How quickly we forget 1778, when Louis XVI and his foreign minister, Comte de Vergennes, berated Benjamin Franklin, Arthur Lee and Silas Deane for not being supplicant enough as France considered whether to provide aid to America at the height of the Revolutionary War.

Because it didn’t happen.

Oh, man, not Gene Hackman.

2025 can just fuck right off.

Okay. Let me tell you a little bit about Gene Hackman...

One pernicious step after another, Bezos encroached on the Post editorial policy. Today he seized it fully. The old Washington Post is gone. I'll never write for it again as long as he's the owner.

@elonmusk: Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump's instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week. Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.

This is the ultimate dick boss move from Musk - except he isn’t even the boss, he’s just a dick.

RFK Jr, Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, Russell Vought, Pete Hegseth, Pam Bondi, Elon Musk … just an unimaginable horror show. Cranks and drunks, fanatics and lunatics, traitors and idiots, megalomaniacs and liars. Again: we need to keep expanding our imaginations as to how bad this could get.

Just got a tip from a guy at the FAA. You'll never believe who is still getting new government contracts while all the contracts at the Department of Education and USAID and other agencies are being nuked from orbit.

And we’re done, Google Maps.

Cause. And effect.

Everyone have a good weekend? Okay, let's get back in it. Choose one place for your focus this week, one issue on the laundry list of horrors *where you can do something*. Then figure out how, and find people. It can be big or small (write a letter, make a call, organize a protest, offer shelter)

“This is how every Super Bowl used to be, son.”

This is a little overwritten … in a delightful way. “Pig-stupid rich kid” should become part of the daily lexicon.

Now the whole country gets the experience of what it's like when private equity buys the place you work

In its simplest terms, the apparent demise of #USAID is the result of the world's richest man ending a program that helps millions of poor people. You don't need a Ph.D. in moral theology to see why this is an evil. You can just read Jesus's parables on the rich and the poor.

The world’s richest man and his cadre of 20-somethings have all of our personal information, including Social Security numbers. We’re living the plot of a James Bond movie.

Maybe tomorrow a <single journalist> might bother to find the Speaker or the Senate Majority Leader & ask why the hell they aren't acting to stop unelected people who aren't even federal employees from violating the laws Congress already passed, & to explain why this isn't a constitutional crisis? 🤷‍♂️