Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence firm xAI has deleted “inappropriate” posts on X after the company’s chatbot, Grok, began praising Adolf Hitler, referring to itself as MechaHitler and making antisemitic comments in response to user queries.
Wednesday, July 09, 2025
Full Nazi
Is Journalism On
Cameron Hamilton, FEMA’s former acting head, was pushed out of the agency in May after he testified before Congress that he did not believe the agency should be eliminated. David Richardson, his replacement, has no background in disaster response and told employees last month that he did not realize the country had a hurricane season. It was not clear if Mr. Richardson was joking.FEMA director isn't always newsworthy, but at the moment...
Tuesday, July 08, 2025
Captain Planet Wasn't A Woke Environmentalist When I Was A Child
They Know What They're Doing
These are choices.
The New York Times On A Rampage
For one thing, it came to the Times due to a widespread hack into Columbia’s databases, transmitted to the paper through an intermediary who was given anonymity by the paper. That source turns out to be Jordan Lasker, who – as the Guardian has reported – is a well-known and much criticized “eugenicist”, AKA white supremacist.Can't shame people who can't feel shame, can't correct people who think they are are infallible.
Traditional journalism ethics suggests that when news organizations base a story on hacked or stolen information, there should be an extra high bar of newsworthiness to justify publication. Much of Big Journalism, for example, turned their noses up at insider documents offered to them about JD Vance during last year’s presidential campaign, in part because the source was Iranian hackers; in some cases, they wrote about the hack but not the documents.
The Mamdani story, however, fell far short of the newsworthiness bar.
A ranking Times editor, Patrick Healy, responded to criticism of the story in a thread on X, justifying it as part of the paper’s mission “to help readers better know and understand top candidates for major offices”.
Soledad O’Brien, the prominent media entrepreneur and journalist, called that explanation “a joke”. The publication of the Mamdani story is “an absolute embarrassment” for the Times, charged O’Brien, who herself is of mixed-race ancestry and identifies as Black.
Good Luck Everybody
Now a month later, while not a hurricane, the first big natural disaster since Noem tightened her grip has struck–and it shows.I'm not sure what precise combination of ideology and incompetence this is, but you don't have to choose one over the other!
“We would have hundreds of people on scene in FEMA jackets registering people for assistance, regional coordination center fully activated, national at least partly activated,” a current FEMA employee whose identity is being protected for fear of reprisal told The Handbasket. “Setting up disaster recovery centers with federal partners, we’d have our search and rescue there already. We would have mission assigned other agencies like USACE (US Army Corp of Engineers) to clear debris and establish power.”
I never quite figured out why they hate FEMA so much - seems like the smarter play from some grifters would be to see it as an extraordinary grift opportunity with a small side in handling aid - but I'm sure there are some nonsensical reasons.
Framing
Monday, July 07, 2025
Another Fine Elon Product
In its first year on the road, the Cybertruck ended up being tied to five fire fatalities through Jan. 1, a concerning trend that makes the rate of such fatalities higher than that of the notorious Ford Pinto, which was in production from 1970–80.
Baby Steps
The debate is no longer progressive vs. moderate; that is very 2017.
— Elissa Slotkin (@ElissaSlotkin) July 6, 2025
The debate is how do you answer one question: Is the second Trump administration an existential threat to democracy or is it bad but survivable?
I believe it is an existential threat. https://t.co/0AT2AUjMqo
Sure, Jan
🚨 EXCLUSIVE: President Trump's Justice Department and FBI have concluded they have no evidence that Jeffrey Epstein blackmailed powerful figures, kept a "client list” or was murdered, according to a memo detailing the findings obtained by Axios.https://t.co/Dyt4ycKRuV
— Axios (@axios) July 7, 2025
An official Trump White House account posted this 5 months ago btw https://t.co/3TxT72LAcb
— Democrats (@TheDemocrats) July 7, 2025
Agendas
It's always clear when the NYT has an agenda, but they do the "I know you are but what I am I" thing when you point out the obvious. The critics of the Times are always "activists" who expect the newspaper to depart from its Vulcan objectivity and impartiality to push an agenda, while they are the platonic ideal of journalistm, merely pursuing truth wherever it may lead.
Death Cult
Texas braces for more rain as death toll mounts to at least 82 with dozens missing