Ryan Mac 🙃

A Day at Two San Francisco Malls, One That Died and One That Thrived

For years, San Francisco Centre was a grand downtown mall and destination. Stonestown Galleria out toward the ocean was a suburban-style afterthought. Then their fortunes reversed.

Two teams spent a Friday evening at each. Here’s what we learned about their fates.

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/02/u...

To explain the FBI's rationale for using two privacy exemptions under the #FOIA to justify redacting Trump's name in the Epstein files I went on a deep dive and cited my own battles trying to obtain records on high profile public figures

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thank you!

Character Limit by Kate Conger, Ryan Mac: 9780593656136 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books Named a Best Book of the Year by Kirkus Reviews “Riveting . . . Character Limit offers a telling lesson in the cost of getting everything you want.” —The Washington Post “You...

Well this is blowing up... if you uhhhhhh want more details about what Elon ate as he paid $44 billion to buy and wreck a social media company, go out and get our book, Character Limit

www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/737290...

sarah you are asking me questions that go beyond my pay grade

wait can you explain this

footyscran!

this is what they call the nitro matcha. I didn’t stir it or anything. It came this way. It had the flavor of cardboard.

I actually tried the food there too and well… yea.

his post is still up

not sure if anyone remembers, but in September Musk reposted a 4chan screenshot that basically argued that women shouldn't be able to vote

bsky.app/profile/whst...

Man dressed up as a Tesla Robot holding a cigarette while looking at camera

I went to the Tesla Diner and all I got was a robot smokin a cig

superintelligence is the friends we made along the way

excerpt from Mark Zuckerberg manifesto that reads: We believe the benefits of superintelligence should be shared with the world as broadly as possible. That said, superintelligence will raise novel safety concerns. We'll need to be rigorous about mitigating these risks and careful about what we choose to open source. Still, we believe that building a free society requires that we aim to empower people as much as possible. The rest of this decade seems likely to be the decisive period for determining the path this technology will take, and whether superintelligence will be a tool for personal empowerment or a force focused on replacing large swaths of society. Meta believes strongly in building personal superintelligence that empowers everyone. We have the resources and the expertise to build the massive infrastructure required, and the capability and will to deliver new technology to billions of people across our products. I'm excited to focus Meta's efforts towards building this future. – Mark

This is classic Zuckerberg framing: Come with us, if you want the good "superintelligence" and not the one that will replace you.

He used a similar argument when fighting against US regulation ofFacebook/Meta: Don't hamper American progress because Chinese companies will take over.

Excerpt from Mark Zuckerberg manifesto on "superintelligence" that reads: The intersection of technology and how people live is Meta's focus, and this will only become more important in the future. If trends continue, then you'd expect people to spend less time in productivity software, and more time creating and connecting. Personal superintelligence that knows us deeply, understands our goals, and can help us achieve them will be by far the most useful. Personal devices like glasses that understand our context because they can see what we see, hear what we hear, and interact with us throughout the day will become our primary computing devices.

Interesting to see after all these years that Zuckerberg's north star is still "connecting" people. And funny to think that so-called "superintelligence" will supposedly foster people connecting as opposed to turning inward.

I guess, he doesn't clarify who or what people are connecting with...

Zuckerberg writes a manifesto on bringing "personal superintelligence" to everyone to improve humanity, but doesn't even define what superintelligence means.

www.meta.com/superintelli...

This L.A. Taqueria Makes Magic With Smoke and Salsa

"Everyone knows that immigrant labor powers restaurants across the country, but immigrants are more than their labor." www.nytimes.com/2025/07/29/d...

wow, language grandma

let it cook

freedom of speech *and* freedom of reach

Elon Musk: Amazing Dmitry Medvedev ~ @MedvedevRussiaE • 1h It's not for you or Trump to dictate when to 'get at the peace table'. Negotiations will end when all the objectives of our military operation have been achieved. Work on America first, gramps!

Lindsey Graham v @LindseyGra..•2h S.. To those in Russia who believe that President Trump is not serious about ending the bloodbath between Russia and Ukraine: You and your customers will soon be sadly mistaken. You will also soon see that Joe Biden is no longer president. Get to the peace table. © Dmitry Medvedev & @MedvedevR...•6h Trump's playing the ultimatum game with Russia: 50 days or 10... He should remember 2 things: 1. Russia isn't Israel or even Iran. 2. Each new ultimatum is a threat and a step... @ 557 7228 O 1K Dmitry Medvedev & @MedvedevRussiaE Follow It's not for you or Trump to dictate when to 'get at the peace table'. Negotiations will end when all the objectives of our military operation have been achieved. Work on America first, gramps! 2:49 PM • 7/28/25 • 116K Views

Elon Musk quote-tweets Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev with “amazing.”

Medvedev was responding to Lindsey Graham’s call for Russia to end the war in Ukraine.

(Musk is a U.S. military contractor who’s ostensibly on Ukraine’s side in this war.)

Under Siege From Trump and Musk, a Top Liberal Group Falls Into Crisis

"Even as the battle continues, Media Matters stands as an example of how legal warfare waged by powerful ideological opponents can squelch influential voices and stifle political dissent." www.nytimes.com/2025/07/25/u...

whoa whoa whoa

The piece later does have context about Boring Company's missed promises, so why would you ever allow someone anonymity to say this? And what does it even mean to "begin with startling speed" anyways?

www.axios.com/local/nashvi...

Elon Musk post on X reads: "Samsung’s giant new Texas fab will be dedicated to making Tesla’s next-generation AI6 chip. The strategic importance of this is hard to overstate. Samsung currently makes AI4. TSMC will make AI5, which just finished design, initially in Taiwan and then Arizona."

"these go to 11"

yea and the (bad) book is based on my reporting

If Esper truly believes this, I’d ask: why did Hogan drop his emotional distress claim in the Gawker lawsuit (thereby nullifying Gawker’s publication insurance and made the org on the hook for any damages)?

Interesting to see this lawyer who worked with Charles Harder claim that Thiel was “not directing the litigation behind the scenes”. That’s technically true because Thiel had a middle man who was doing that: www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryan...

Lawyer Dilan Esper writing about how amazing the Bollea v. Gawker case was for him while insisting no harm done to the 1st Amendment. I can't say that much about our mediation strategy (it's shrouded in lawyer-client privilege and work product) but I have seen Nick Denton make accusations about it, and they are false. We were willing to settle; Gawker needed to offer a lot more than they did though. In other words, Peter Thiel was not my client and he was not directing the litigation behind the scenes. We were actually litigating the case exactly the same way we would have had Bollea been personally paying his bills. Thiel may have had his reasons for getting Gawker (and to be clear, he apparently paid the bills for several cases that were brought by us and others against Gawker), but the strategy doesn't work without a viable case. Gawker hung itself with its conduct towards Bollea. The bottom line is I take a great deal of professional pride in what we did. Precisely because we actually didn't ruin the First Amendment. No outlet is prevented from doing real journalism as a result of the Bollea v. Gawker case. We simply enforced a long existing norm. And drew a line in an era of "anything goes" content on the Internet. This was Hulk Hogan's legacy, and in a very real way, it is mine as well.

I had to spend two and a half years fighting a frivolous lawsuit that was a direct result of Bollea v. Gawker. And that lawsuit massively decreased our capability to do what we do, so I take issue with one of Hulk Hogan's lawyers claiming that Bollea v. Gawker had no impact on journalism