Tim Marchman

A thing I think about constantly is how exhausting it must be to be, for instance, the person who has to explain you can learn as much if not more from simulating a nuclear test on a big computer than from an actual nuclear test and how this works in our favor because we have really big computers.

From A Scanner Darkly: "Let's hear it for the vague blur!" the host said loudly, and there was mass clapping. In his scramble suit, Fred, who was also Robert Arctor, groaned and thought: This is terrible. Once a month an undercover narcotics agent of the county was assigned at random to speak before bubblehead gatherings such as this. Today was his turn. Looking at his audience, he realized how much he detested straights. They thought this was all great. They were smiling. They were being entertained.

An Icegov tweet offering up a photo of new ICE training graduates--"American heroes" with their faces blurred out.

Philip K. Dick gets it right again.

Let's hear it for the vague blurs!

the assumptions made about the target audience by making the first two items "OnlyFans' and 'child support' are kind of incredible

The number of people who have shared or replied to this with the words “bitch,” “whore,” and “cunt” is depressing. You don’t need to use dehumanizing language to express a strong opinion. The government is already doing enough dehumanizing for everyone.

Nancy Mace tweeting angrily at the Post and Courier.

As an aside, for some reason, shortly after we reached out for comment, Mace began angrily tweeting at The Post and Courier about how senators use the airport entrance where police say she went on an unhinged tirade.

What she was apparently mad about was that the cops didn't meet her at the curb to escort her to her flight; it appears that's because she turned up 20 minutes late in a different type and color of vehicle and possibly at a different location than what her people arranged with the police.

Nancy Mace Curses, Berates Confused Cops in Airport Meltdown: Police Report At an airport in South Carolina on Thursday, representative Nancy Mace called police officers “fucking incompetent” and berated them repeatedly, according to an incident report.

NEW: Police say Nancy Mace fully melted down at the airport Thurday, calling cops "fucking incompetent," etc. A TSA supervisor said they'd be reporting her to their superiors. @jakelahut.writes.news has the scoop! This is outside our paywall as it's based on public records:

I wonder if bakeries that advertise their wares online get people commenting "Paywall!" after they go into the bakery and see that the tasty croissant someone posted a photo of actually costs money.

Pretty sure "attacking another country's military infrastructure within its own borders" has a name...

Every year I beg my family not to leave several pounds of peanut butter candy where I can see it and every year they demonstrate they want me to die.

No, SNAP Benefits Aren’t Mostly Used by Immigrants SNAP benefits are set to run out on Saturday. Far-right influencers and extremists are incorrectly claiming that immigrants are the main recipients of food stamps.

UPDATE:

A TikTok account dedicated to posting racist videos featuring an AI-generated Black woman named “Lakisha” was part of a trend pushing racist disinformation about SNAP benefits

TikTok didn't comment, but the account was removed after our report

www.wired.com/story/disinf...

ICE Wants to Build a Shadow Deportation Network in Texas A new ICE proposal outlines a 24/7 transport operation run by armed contractors—turning Texas into the logistical backbone of an industrialized deportation machine.

NEW: An ICE proposal envisions a 24/7 system where armed private contractors take custody of detainees from local police and move them between transport hubs placed in each of Texas' 254 counties, instrumentalizing local law enforcement. @dell.bsky.social has the story:

Inside the Star-Studded, Mob-Run Poker Games That Allegedly Steal Millions From Players NBA stars, mobsters, and marks with fat wallets are all part of an alleged ring of rigged poker games. Here’s how these games are assembled, who attends, and how the purported cheating happens.

NBA stars, mobsters, and marks with fat wallets.

I dove inside the seedy underbelly of private high-stakes poker games, how they can be cheated, and how alleged scams like the "Billups Games" take shape.

For @wired.com: www.wired.com/story/inside...

A New Startup Wants to Edit Human Embryos Seven years after the first gene-edited babies were revealed, biotech startup Manhattan Genomics is reviving the idea of editing human embryos to make disease-free children.

NEW: A new startup that was initially named for the Manhattan Project aims to make gene-edited babies—broad interest in which is probably indicative more of a "quasi-eugenics" mindset than anything else, says one expert. @emilymullin.bsky.social has the unsettling details:

Federal Workers Are Barely Making It Through the Government Shutdown The US government shut down 30 days ago. WIRED spoke with more than a dozen federal workers who have struggled to pay bills, worked side gigs, and relied on free food programs to get by.

NEW: Almost a month into the government shutdown, and some federal workers are barely making it through.

One fed, who spoke with @telliotter.bsky.social, is out tens of thousands of dollars waiting to be reimbursed for their husband's cancer care.

More here:

www.wired.com/story/federa...

Here's a link to the unsealed indictment against Kat Abughazaleh and five other activists relating to an ICE protest at Broadview. It's a short read. Key allegations as to Abughazaleh are as follows.

storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee Bennie G. Thompson said in a statement “Mobile Fortify is a dangerous tool in the hands of ICE, and it puts American citizens at risk of detention and even deportation.” He also said “ICE officials have told us that an apparent biometric match by Mobile Fortify is a ‘definitive’ determination of a person’s status and that an ICE officer may ignore evidence of American citizenship—including a birth certificate—if the app says the person is an alien. ICE using a mobile biometrics app in ways its developers at CBP never intended or tested is a frightening, repugnant, and unconstitutional attack on Americans’ rights and freedoms.”

New incredible detail here: ICE says a match in its facial recognition app Mobile Fortify is a "definitive" determination of a person's status, and that this overrides birth certificates. This is an app ICE is using in the field to scan people

www.404media.co/ice-and-cbp-...

Donald Trump Is the First AI Slop President How do AI videos end up on Donald Trump’s social media accounts? WIRED investigates.

NEW: If you were wondering—and I have been—it does appear that a set of distinctly short fingers are directly involved in AI slop making its way from the internet to the account bearing Donald Trump's name. @jakelahut.writes.news has the terrifying details in his subscriber newsletter

When the FBI arrested Terry Rozier and Chauncey Billups, the basketball-watching public turned to sports media to help make sense of the story. What explanations were on offer? Before disclosing its own BetMGM partnership, The Athletic called “all of sports” complicit in the scandal. Bill Simmons dismissed the episode as ”a couple bad apples,” growing pains typical of a growth industry. Zach Lowe had ESPN's betting guy on his podcast; together they concluded that these issues can be tinkered out of existence by limiting prop bets and changing how teams report injuries. Lowe's podcast, like Simmons's, began with a FanDuel ad. The takeover of sports media by gambling companies imposes hard boundaries on the domain of these conversations. Most importantly, these captured discussions always obscure the social and political choices that enable the gambling industry to entrench itself. Allowing people to gamble on their phones and allowing sports gambling companies to spend untold sums on lobbying and advertising are choices. These choices, not some law of nature, are why millions of people have started gambling in recent years. Likewise, other sports media companies have chosen to offer up their audiences as prey to gambling outfits. Defector has chosen something else: We never have and never will take money from gambling companies. Subscribers fund our operations, which allows us to remain independent, critical, and uncompromised. Consider making that choice.

NBA media is not built to cover a gambling scandal, but Defector is: defector.com/products

Sort of like how it's very easy to think clever player acquisition and development strategies are the most important thing in baseball when the main thing is whether you have a lot of guys who hit the ball good.

I guess I think people who do political messaging really overestimate the impact of marginal shifts in political messaging and really underestimate the impact of candidates' personal charisma.

OpenAI Says Hundreds of Thousands of ChatGPT Users May Show Signs of Manic or Psychotic Crisis Every Week OpenAI Says Hundreds of Thousands of ChatGPT Users May Show Signs of Manic or Psychotic Crisis Every Week

by OpenAI’s own estimates, hundreds of thousands of ChatGPT users are showing signs of manic or psychotic crisis every week

AI of a Thousand Faces What happens now that AI is everywhere and in everything? WIRED can’t tell the future, but we can try to make sense of it. Behold: 17 readings from the furthest reaches of the AI age.

🎇New package alert @wired.com! This one has been in the works for months. If WIRED was going to tackle AI -- something we cover daily -- we had to go big. So here are 17 different stories about the way AI is changing us, even as the technology itself keeps moving www.wired.com/ai-issue/

Hundreds of People With ‘Top Secret’ Clearance Exposed by House Democrats’ Website A database containing information on people who applied for jobs with Democrats in the US House of Representatives was left accessible on the open web.

NEW: The personal information of thousands of people who applied for jobs with Democrats in the House over the past two years, including hundreds with top secret clearance, was left exposed. This is from @lhn.bsky.social and @mattburgess1.bsky.social

Absolutely deadly behavior causing another crash on Spruce Street at 5th st early this morning. This is on the busiest bike lane in Philly with over 1,500 riders who use it daily.

We deserve so much better than paint and flexposts, we deserve real protection.

Startled to discover on the last page that The Portrait of a Lady is a 500-page setup for a punchline about the “hard manhood” of a guy named Caspar Goodwood.

I think this is largely because they’re ridiculously British and their best records are concept albums about stuff that was illegible to Americans even at the time.

There was only one satellite covering the area (?) and it was blind; there’s speculation this may have been due to a CYBER ATTACK by an adversary who was able to pull that off but then only launched one missile.

Gotta be up there.

It would be totally absurd but I could accept “Eh AI got into offline systems I guess? It’s science fiction!” for the sake of the plot a lot easier than what they did.