There's money behind the money behind the people pointing out that there's money behind the people pointing out that there are risks from intelligent machines

PIRATE WIRES PODCAST: Trump vs. Doomers, Lesbians vs. Masks This week, the great @BridgetPhetasy joins us once again as we talk Trump’s new deal with Greenland and how the president is perhaps the real champion of “abundance.” Plus: Nikole Hannah-Jones sacrifices her daughter to public school, a lesbian bar sacrifices its patrons to Covid, some juicy white bills around brain science, and MORE. Link below 👇

oh and finally: I do not hate the labs, and I do believe in ex risk, which is something I have spoken about, and written about, for over a decade

it is okay to publish true information about the people shaping national policy for what is possibly (probably?) the most important technology in human history, and you should not trust any person who tells you this is wrong

Our story has been updated with all the latest details. - DEY. was not just handling inbound interest; it was actively seeking media interviews for Jacob. - We saw an email of said OUTBOUND on September 9, the day *after* his viral post/WSJ story. - Still, 9/9 was quite early in that media cycle.

would be good to know who is paying the PR firm. coxon? his friends? someone else? I don't doubt everyone involved in jacob's tour believes in what they're doing and saying, but these are huge issues shaping the entire country, now, and all of it should be discussed in public.

Former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon became a media superstar after going public with his AI fears. He insisted that he wasn’t working with any third party organizations. Familiar sources told us a different story: DEY., a PR firm representing many of the most prominent AI safetyists, was booking his interviews. One source, who had direct knowledge, even said DEY. preemptively booked Nate Soares, a prominent AI safety figure, for interviews that directly overlapped with Jacob going public. Jacob working with DEY. is notable for two reasons: first, as mentioned, he previously said he wasn’t working with third parties. Second, we are in the middle of a national conversation about the future of AI that is actively determining how we regulate the most powerful technology in the world, largely thanks to the panic stirred up by Jacob — and it’s in the public’s interest to know who, exactly, is behind it. Scoop from @huntryerson 👇

As of this year, almost 1-in-16 deaths in Canada are MAID.

"No one person or company or country should be able to use the most powerful AI models to impose their worldview on everyone else. A company or country that believes only it can be trusted with this technology can use that belief to justify almost anything else." - Sama

In 2021, under Xavier Becerra’s HHS, taxpayers spent $782 million on a temporary 2,500-bed migrant shelter in Pomona that operated for just 203 days. Around $707 million went to Cherokee Nation Management & Consulting through a no-bid contract (there was no competition among vendors for the contract). Roughly 8,450 children passed through the facility, putting the cost at about $83,656 per child on the CNMC contract alone — or $92,608 per child once you include what HHS paid for the Fairplex itself. Based on the children’s average stay of 14 days, that’s $6,615 per child, per day for a literal cot, meals, and other basic amenities. California camps, on average, cost $1,000 for two weeks, including food and lodging. The contract was firm-fixed-price, meaning whatever CNMC did not spend, it kept. And for all that money on a single facility (there were $4.8 billion in no-bid contracts across 14 facilities total), whistleblowers who worked inside the program later alleged that children were being released to suspicious sponsors and potential labor- and sex-trafficking rings. Senator Chuck Grassley subsequently referred HHS records involving Pomona children to federal law enforcement, citing evidence of potential trafficking, while the NYT found children released by HHS working illegal, dangerous jobs — some suffering chemical burns, others being maimed by machinery, and some dying in workplace accidents. So the question really is: where did all our taxpayer money actually go — and who really is Xavier Becerra, the Democratic nominee responsible for all of this, who might actually become California’s next governor?

$43,000 per student sounds like the tuition to a fancy prep school. But that’s how much Brooklyn’s “underserved” public schools get per student in funding. And their students still can’t read or write at grade level. @FrannieBlock explains.

We went to LA to see if the hardware startups there have the Chinese work ethic. The investigation did NOT go well . . . for some. Full episode here - corememory.com/p/la-manufact…

However much you hate the legacy media, they still do have First Amendment rights

Why the public’s fear of data center water use makes no sense 👇 (but points to something deeper)

Rant at the end reminds me of Trae Stephens at The Hamilton Society debate: FIX THE SPENDING. FIX THE SPENDING. FIX THE SPENDING. Everyone throws up.

The Enshittification of Everything

Trump just now at the UN General Assembly: "I'm not going to stifle growth of something that will be bigger than the industrial revolution."