Fred Barrett

incredible photo that's definitely worth at least 1,000 words from Andrew Harnik of Getty

When I worked in WaPo Opinions in 2017-2018, senior editors specifically told junior editors not to factcheck Marc Thiessen and other MAGA columnists, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to publish anything by them at all, and “we need them for intellectual diversity.”

This exactly. It is not real. They are all pretending. Everyone is playing along with them fucking pretending. bsky.app/profile/sjjp...

AI Is the Bubble to Burst Them All I talked to the scholars who literally wrote the book on tech bubbles—and applied their test.

Wired: AI Is the Bubble to Burst Them All

"So yes, Goldfarb says, AI has all the hallmarks of a bubble. “There’s no question,” he says. 'It hits all the right notes.' ... On that 0-to-8 scale, Goldfarb says, it’s an 8. Buyer beware."

www.wired.com/story/ai-bub...

I think that the next step in the civil resistance campaign to Trump should be inflicting punishment on elites and institutions who cave. They need to understand that there are costs to compliance

"In settlement and compromise of the Released Claims in this Agreement, UCLA shall pay the United States the sum of One Billion Dollars ($1,000,000,000.00), payable in equal
installments. The first payment shall be made within five (5) business days of the Effective Date..."

The West Wing to now be called Wing.

BREAKING: Over a sharp dissent from Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Kagan & Jackson, the Supreme Court will not stop Alabama from killing Anthony Boyd tonight.

Sotomayor tells the reader to count to four minutes on their phone. "Now imagine for that entire time, you are suffocating."

If anyone's wondering how this is possible, the answer is these strike teams are moving terrifyingly fast. Grab first, ask questions later. We were about 8-15 minutes behind them today for several hours. They're jumping out of vans, chasing people across lawns, taking them from bus stops, etc

Someday this could be you or someone you love

A tangled web of deals stokes AI bubble fears in Silicon Valley Some are worried that the rapid rise in the value of AI tech companies may be a bubble waiting to burst.

And from the BBC:
"It's going to be really bad": Fears over AI bubble bursting grow in Silicon Valley
www.bbc.com/news/article...

Just noticed this post from Cory Doctorow from a couple of weeks ago: The real (economic) AI apocalypse is nigh
pluralistic.net/2025/09/27/e...

Bank of England Warns of Impending AI Disaster The Bank of England has sounded the alarm, warning of an intensifying risk of a "sudden correction" due to an AI spending frenzy.

I guess I'm not the only one:
futurism.com/artificial-i...

This really has me worried.

i think it is cool that a government run by fanatical bigots is on track to plunge the economy into a mountain and cause a food crisis

It’s important to flood social media and news channels with news about how ICE lies, so that potential jurors see it.

"We're going to create superintelligence" How about making outlook search work first. How about that

"They was terrified. The kids was crying. People was screaming. They looked very distraught. I was out there crying when I seen the little girl come around the corner, because they was bringing the kids down, too, had them zip tied to each other," Watson said. "That's all I kept asking. What is the morality? Where's the human? One of them literally laughed. He was standing right here. He said, 'f*** them kids.'"

This raid is disgusting, abominable behavior, traumatizing children and families in their homes.
abc7chicago.com/post/ice-chi...

Hi! I borrowed $300m from the worst people in the world to buy your favourite thing! Now your favourite thing owes me $300m and sadly it looks like it can’t pay me back so I’ve taken it out back and shot it. Anyways, just wanted to ask… what’s your *second* favourite thing?

Instead of the next judicial education session, all the judges watch this tiktok instead.

The greatest innovation billionaires have come up with is they found a way to have billions of dollars and still be miserable and angry all the time

The label of a drug is close to a sacrosanct document. It represents the trust between the government and the user of the drug that the drug is safe and effective and that all risks and benefits are accurately outlined. Changing it to suit a political agenda is imo an earthshaking matter

Yeah man we should really fight back by staying on X

This is a very important point. We need principles, we need proportionality, we need Disney to set an example here and maybe start the tide turning in another direction.

Becoming increasingly clear we’re gonna have to build a parallel infrastructure for all the media we really love. The reason all of this is happening under the color of law is hyperconsolidation, dissent being traded straight up for merger approval, or fear of harassment.

What I Think About Last Wednesday September 14, 2025 What happened last Wednesday was truly terrible. Have I said enough? Many friends and colleagues, people I both like and respect, have been telling me for days that they are look…

"I am now afraid to publish things...[with] a perhaps significant chance of getting me into hot water with people who have real power and who are cruel and vindictive and motivated by values that are anathema to freedom."
jeffreycisaacdesign.wordpress.com/2025/09/14/w...

Glad to see @wcvb5.bsky.social and @cnn.com covering this and framing it like this. This is how it should be reported.

“Hey why don’t you invest billions of dollars in a factory here, and every four years we’ll flip a coin and maybe a posse of mouthbreathing thugs will throw hoods over your employees’ heads and fly them to a foreign prison”

Please don't forget, and don't let anyone else forget, they did this openly.

being totally comfortable speaking this way to millions of people is one of many signals that we're in an extremely dark place