Alex Shultz

I assume the calculus for tapping Markwayne Mullin is you have to pick someone stupid enough to get excited about a job offer phone call from Donald Trump; someone who, in their excitement, does not consider how 2 years as DHS head under a lame duck is 100x worse than being a Senator in a safe seat

Brady-Fanatics Saudi Flag Football Event Likely Moving to U.S. The flag football event planned for Saudi Arabia later this month is likely moving to the U.S. amid the regional war.

Glenn Greenwald soon: Donald Trump's war against Iran has successfully put a stop to sportswashing in the Middle East, and yet, liberals won't give him any credit

Karoline Leavitt just cited the Iran Hostage Crisis (1979) and the Beirut barracks bombings (1983) as evidence of the "threat" posed by Iran now, in 2026

Bari Weiss posted this because she’s giddy but also because she wants to normal people at CBS to be disgusted by her behavior and then quit their jobs

I think it's good Amodei is taking this stand, and the Pentagon's freakout is evidence that Amodei is making the right call. I guess I just view this saga as less of a moral victory for Anthropic, and more of an AI company/its CEO trying to have it both ways until they couldn't anymore

Dario Amodei has been walking this tightrope for a while, excusing Anthropic's military and intelligence services contracts as being in service of "democracy over autocracy" — basically, America good, China bad. It's a little too cute of a framing for the guy running the "ethical" AI company

Don't Be Fooled By Anthropic's Magnanimity Anthropic is taking a righteous stand against the Pentagon. The AI company and its CEO, Dario Amodei, also got greedy.

Left unsaid in the discussion about Anthropic's (correct!) decision to decline the Pentagon's ultimatum: Anthropic did not *have* to get into business with the Pentagon or Palantir, especially after Trump won again. But it did! This was a self-inflicted mess. Anthropic stands to benefit anyway.

Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War A statement from our CEO on national security uses of AI

lol incredible timing, literally 10 mins after I pubbed! Just made some minor updates, take still holds.

Don't Be Fooled By Anthropic's Magnanimity Anthropic is taking a righteous stand against the Pentagon. The AI company and its CEO, Dario Amodei, also got greedy.

Got my Anthropic take/prediction in before Pete Hegseth’s 5:01 pm deadline on Friday

NEW from ProPublica:

Guards at Trump's family detention camp are grabbing kids' writing, artwork, and crayons.

They've even taken one kid's drawing of Bratz dolls.

www.propublica.org/article/dill...

by @mckenziefunk.com and @micarosenberg.bsky.social

Cuban Government Says 4 Are Killed in Gunfire Exchange With Florida Speedboat

*very* odd story: Cuban Coast Guard killed 4, wounded 6 who showed up on a speedboat w/Florida plates & opened fire on the Cuban Coast Guard. Someone only identified as a "U.S. official" told NYT "the firefight involved a U.S. civilian boat that was part of flotilla to get relatives out of Cuba"

there is also a name on the list that is the same as a fairly famous sportswriter/pundit -- I am struggling to imagine it's actually the same guy, but if it is, it'd be very, very funny

there are lots of other newsworthy names on the list, but I have to admit I have locked in on Richard A. Starbuck. The man's name is Dick A. Starbuck.

EXCLUSIVE: I obtained the attendance list for the Bohemian Grove. Weaving Spiders Please Come Here

San Francisco Giants principal owner Charles B. Johnson was a 2023 Bohemian Grove attendee according to this list; so was his son Gregory Johnson, who's the chairman of the Giants. They were part of the same "camp" as Henry Kissinger, now-Sen. Dave McCormick, Niall Ferguson, and Mike Bloomberg

The entire incoming Asmongold Caucus of Gen Z/late millennial Republicans will own red gamer chairs

Great flow, also does not look like a 30 year old (his actual age)

btw the guy who's presumably (?) going to beat Rep. Tony Gonzales in the March primaries and then replace him in Congress is Brandon Herrera, a YouTuber who goes by "The AK Guy" for reasons you can glean from this screenshot

did not mean to earnestly express the "he just tweeted it out..." meme oops

also, sometimes you're working on the same story and you get beat to the punch. it stinks! it's happened to me! still gotta drop a link to the reporter/outlet who pubbed first.

There are a few outlets who routinely do this -- they consider it to be fact-checking/verifying a reporter's work, which is fine/good, but it's *also* news aggregation. It wasn't your idea or "exclusive"! If you aggregate reporting, you gotta credit w/a link by the end of your nut graf at the latest

Detecting and preventing distillation attacks Anthropic is an AI safety and research company that's working to build reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems.

here's the full post from Anthropic, which doesn't list any dates about when the "distillation attacks" occurred

www.anthropic.com/news/detecti...

Setting aside the hypocrisy of Anthropic's complaint (difficult!), I find this update to be v peculiarly timed. We don't know *when* these attacks happened, but we do know that right now, Anthropic's trying to save face w/the Pentagon. Seems not-coincidental they're pushing the China Scary button.

Last week I went to Arizona to take in the media circus surrounding Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance. It left me feeling pretty gross about the true crime ecosystem.

Matt Yglesias (badly) riffing off a surface-level Nate Silver analysis about my favorite team.....what have I done to deserve this......I'm already a Wizards fan......

Sifting through just-released court filings in the lawsuits against Meta/Alphabet, just spotted this Google slide from what I think was an early-2010s presentation about their efforts to get YouTube into more schools

also it's fine and often important to report on/interview shitty people of fleeting fame; the looksmaxing stuff is a real spinoff of inceldom and shouldn't be ignored. But you do not need to gift Clavicular/Mitchell Jackson a splashy photoshoot and/or a cutesy lede! (Yes, I read the profiles.)

My Clavicular take is that he's probably going to end up in prison and the coverage about him being ascendent will look pretty silly

After a discussion with their attorney, I have confirmed that Juan, his 16-month-old sister, his mom, and his dad have been deported.

I was one of those laid off. I agree that the Ohana sentiment seems dubious. I kinda felt that the culture within the company was more cult than strategic. Don’t get me wrong, lots of good people there and talent but the company didn’t end up being a good move for me. Unfortunately I went from a mid level position with 25 years of experience to sleeping in my car driving uber. Not sure if having them on my resume has hurt my employment opportunities or if it’s just the current state of the job market.

"Unfortunately I went from a mid level position with 25 years of experience to sleeping in my car driving uber. "

A reddit comment in response to @alexshultz.bsky.social's story on @hardresetmedia.com yesterday

www.reddit.com/r/technology...

Marc Benioff’s Quarterly Crises Are Compounding Salesforce workers (and executives!) are pissed off. How many more controversies until Benioff is pressured into an early retirement?

As we await the latest Marc Benioff apology…