Max von Thun

Inspired by Dorothy Thompson's famous essay, the NYT debates “Should We Go Nazi?”

Much stronger comments than what the European Commission's spokespeople managed to muster at a midday press conference today

If this AI data centre investment is not a bubble it will accelerate the destruction of the planet.

If it is a bubble it will accelerate the destruction of the US democracy (and of the Fed independence)

This is amongst the most impactful two minutes of broadcasting I’ve ever seen.

By Emma Murphy, International Editor, ITV News. #Gaza

Border Patrol and ICE Agents Are Arresting U.S. Citizens in Immigration Raids Capital & Main has documented nine Americans who have been held in federal custody after observing or protesting immigration raids.

“This is the way a democracy dies.” At least 9 U.S. citizens were arrested while protesting or observing immigration raids in L.A. Cerise Castle reports on a troubling crackdown on dissent:
trib.al/HkmbDR6

Europe’s trade deal with the US was dead on arrival – it needs to be buried. Here’s how to do it | Georg Riekeles and Varg Folkman Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. The EU should now steel itself and reject the terms imposed by Donald Trump, say Georg Riekeles and Varg Folkman of the European Policy Centre

"How could this happen? All EU member states wanted to avoid Trump’s 30% tariff threat and a trade war, but none perhaps as much as Germany and Ireland, supported by German carmakers and US big tech firms."

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Software Maker Figma Surges 250% in Debut After $1.2 Billion IPO Figma Inc. shares jumped 250% in their public debut after the design software maker and some of its shareholders raised $1.2 billion in an IPO, with the trading valuing the company far above the $20 b...

Figma – whose acquisition by Adobe was stopped by competition authorities in 2023 – has just had one of the most successful IPOs in decades, and is now worth nearly three times what Adobe offered. Guess mergers aren't that good for innovation after all.

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Twitter is now 75% bot activity. The dead internet theory aint a theory anymore.

Good to see Democrats in the U.S. Congress coming out in support of EU tech regulation – in this instance the DSA – and refuting the Republicans' (poorly-evidenced) claims about nefarious "foreign censorship".

democrats-judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-su...

Big Tech's entire business strategy over the past 3 years has been to leverage monopoly power by forcing proprietary AI products onto users, locking them in while locking out better – in terms of privacy, sustainability, accuracy – alternatives. Good to see that antitrust enforcers are waking up.

Who actually still believes this?

www.ft.com/content/b077...

this is what happens when infinite resources are poured into a technology based on 'promises' and 'potentials' rather than verifiable evidence (standard that applies everywhere except AI)

Subscribe to read The discipline is failing students by ignoring the biggest social, political and ecological challenges facing the world today

“#Economics today resembles Catholic theology in medieval Europe: a rigid doctrine guarded by a modern priesthood who claim to possess the sole truth. Dissenters are shunned. Non-economists are told to “think like an economist” or not think at all… It’s indoctrination.’ on.ft.com/4o3TSGf

People sometimes ask me why I continue to work on the effects of Brexit, and I say that Britain can't have an effective trade and industry policy if it memory-holes it.

Pete Aguilar (CA-33) Shomari Figures (AL-02) Ro Khanna (CA-17) Jared Moskowitz (FL-23) Greg Stanton (AZ-04) Gabe Amo (RI-01) Lois Frankel (FL-22) Raj Krishnamoorthi (IL-08) Seth Moulton (MA-06) Haley Stevens (MI-11) Wesley Bell (MO-01) Robert Garcia (CA-42) Greg Landsman (OH-01) Johnny Olszewski (MD-02) Marilyn Strickland (WA-10) Ami Bera (CA-06) Laura Gillen (NY-04) Rick Larsen (WA-02) Jimmy Panetta (CA-19) Suhas Subramanyam (VA-10) Brendan Boyle (PA-02) Jared Golden (ME-02) George Latimer (NY-16) Chris Pappas (NH-01) Tom Suozzi (NY-03) Julia Brownley (CA-26) Dan Goldman (NY-10) Susie Lee (NV-03) Nancy Pelosi (CA-11) Eric Swalwell (CA-14) Nikki Budzinski (IL-13) Jimmy Gomez (CA-34) Mike Levin (CA-49) Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (WA-03) Emilia Sykes (OH-13) Janelle Bynum (OR-05) Vicente Gonzalez (TX-34) Sam Liccardo (CA-16) Scott Peters (CA-50) Shri Thanedar (MI-13) Salud Carbajal (CA-24) Maggie Goodlander (NH-02) Ted Lieu (CA-36) Brittany Pettersen (CO-07) Mike Thompson (CA-04) Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (FL-20) Josh Gottheimer (NJ-05) Zoe Lofgren (CA-18) Nellie Pou (NJ-09) Dina Titus (NV-01) Katherine Clark (MA-05) Adam Gray (CA-13) Seth Magaziner (RI-02) Mike Quigley (IL-05) Ritchie Torres (NY-15) Herb Conaway (NJ-03) Josh Harder (CA-09) John Mannion (NY-22) Josh Riley (NY-19) Lori Trahan (MA-03) Lou Correa (CA-21) Jim Himes (CT-04) Doris Matsui (CA-07) Raul Ruiz (CA-25) Derek Tran (CA-45) Jim Costa (CA-21) Steven Horsford (NV-04) Lucy McBath (GA-06) Pat Ryan (NY-18) Gabe Vasquez (NM-02) Angie Craig (MN-02) Chrissy Houlahan (PA-06) April McClain Delaney (MD-06) Brad Schneider (IL-10) Marc Veasey (TX-33) Jasmine Crockett (TX-30) Jonathan Jackson (IL-01) Kristen McDonald Rivet (MI-08) Hilary Scholten (MI-03) Eugene Vindman (VA-07) Henry Cuellar (TX-28) Hakeem Jeffries (NY-08) Morgan McGarvey (KY-03) Kim Schrier (WA-08) Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL-25) Don Davis (NC-01) Julie Johnson (TX-3…

The House voted 308 to 122 for the GENIUS Act, the corrupt crypto industry bill to set the stage for the next financial crisis, encourage money laundering, and bless Trump's corruption.

102 Democrats voted yes, including 4 out of the 5 memberships of House Dems's Leadership Team.

Disinformation warriors are ‘grooming’ chatbots Russian hackers are exploring ways to inject propaganda into the training data of generative AI models

A report from the UK think-tank Royal United Services Institute has found that Russian hackers were actively exploring ways of injecting propaganda or biased material into the training data of generative AI models to skew their output.

www.ft.com/content/2712...

Brussels stalls probe into Elon Musk’s X amid US trade talks EU was expected to finalise its investigation before the bloc’s summer recess but will now miss this deadline

Disastrous if true. Selling digital regulation down the river for lower tariffs will fatally undermine the EU's legitimacy as a global regulator, signal weakness to the bullies in the White House, and leave Europe's citizens defenceless against the tech oligarchs.

www.ft.com/content/8f38...

Annnd @xai just deleted Musk's new prompt which told the Grok LLM to "not shy away from making claims which are politically incorrect, so long as they are well substantiated."

That prompt seemingly caused the LLM to become Nazi 4Chan, and has now been deleted, but other recent changes remain.

Tony Blair’s staff took part in ‘Gaza Riviera’ project with BCG Former UK prime minister’s institute participated in meetings on plan to turn shattered enclave into trading hub

FT reveals Tony Blair’s staff took part in ‘Gaza Riviera’ project with BCG and suggested the term. Now trying to frantically distance themselves ↘️ on.ft.com/4lJ8FnV

One of the many prescient pages in “The Every,” a novel by Dave Eggers published in 2021.

The real surprise came after the experiment. Fred Lambert, who writes for the blog Electrek, pointed out the same autopilot disengagement that the NHTSA had documented. “Autopilot appears to automatically disengage a fraction of a second before the impact as the crash becomes inevitable,” Lambert noted.

In a horrifying article about the dangers of Teslas, one point stands out: Teslas automatically disengage self-driving mode <1 second before an imminent crash--not enough time for the driver to react, but enough for Tesla to deny responsibility for fatal crashes, since self-driving "wasn't engaged."

Fantastic list. My favourite of these were the memoirs of Haffner, which I read ~20 years ago, but stuck with me ever since with the vivid retelling of how a society can change so rapidly:

‘Golden Share’ in U.S. Steel Gives Trump Extraordinary Control

“To save its takeover of U.S. Steel, Japan’s Nippon Steel agreed to an unusual arrangement, granting the White House a “golden share” that gives the government an extraordinary amount of influence over a U.S. company.”

www.nytimes.com/2025/06/15/u...

Another visitor to the US shares their story of being detained for 12 hours, denied entry and deported because of social media posts.

This is spot on by @alemanno.bsky.social.

The right, and only, response to today’s existential threats is deeper and faster European integration grounded in liberal democratic values. Not the xenophobic, deregulatory path Europe’s leaders are pursuing instead.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

One of the effects of posting your good, true stuff on X is that it launders the misinformation. Makes the platform look like a neutral, credible medium.

The NYT and WaPo are so cooked.

The tech industry needs serious, meaningful regulation about the things it can sell and how it can sell them, and the neoliberal bullshit of “free markets” has allowed this nakedly harmful software to proliferate, taking advantage of the fact that more people than ever feel alone and desperate

Why is Zuck spending so much to reboot his AI efforts? Llama has fallen so far behind that Meta product teams have discussed using outside models www.theverge.com/command-line...

Why Superintelligent AI Isn’t Taking Over Anytime Soon Despite claims from top names in AI, researchers argue that fundamental flaws in reasoning models mean bots aren’t on the verge of exceeding human smarts.

"A primary requirement for being a leader in AI... is to be a herald of the impending arrival of our digital messiah: superintelligent AI... Before you get nervous about all the times you were rude to Alexa, know this: A growing cohort of researchers...aren’t buying [it]" www.wsj.com/tech/ai/arti...